Bollywood and Western Cinephilia – Senses of Cinema

Bombay cinema was my initial movie passion – commencing with the Hindi film documents our Indian neighbour continually performed when I was a kid in late-1970s Dublin.1 Extensive right before I was initiated into the mysteries of Melville and Mizoguchi, I swaggered along with Raj Kapoor and swooned with Nargis. I couldn’t imagine there was an total movie marketplace devoted to my favourite genre, the musical. This was a passion, having said that, that was not nourished in the outlets wherein I learned the other web sites of planet cinema, such as the film journals I read through or the arthouse cinemas I attended. I could study about and see American musicals, European musicals, even Soviet and Chinese musicals, but not Hindi musicals. It might seem to be absurd to claim the popular Hindi cinema as marginalised – Bollywood is a worldwide, billion-greenback sector whose merchandise make the major tens of most nations around the world in the world every single week, and are viewed by hundreds of thousands and thousands of filmgoers in just India by itself it is an industry that is arguably liable for aspect-lining substitute cinemas in that. However, it carries on to be ignored by Western cinephiles and less than-represented in film history.

In 2003, scholar Jyotika Virdi protested:
A scandal in cinema studies of the last handful of a long time has been the absence of notice compensated to Indian well-known cinema, the world’s most significant film field.2
Points have improved marginally in academia – there has been an elevated output of journal articles or blog posts, essay collections, and monographs more than the past two many years about factors of Hindi cinema, albeit nothing like the printer’s ink expended on that other global movie field, Hollywood. 
Academia does not generate flavor, having said that – it reacts to and attempts to interpret it. Movie historical past, movie canons, and the scope of modern day cinephilia is not determined by academia, but by a shut circle of programmers and festivals movie magazines like Cahiers du Cinéma, Sight & Sound, Film Remark, and Cinema Scope and household amusement providers these kinds of as the Criterion Collection. This circle has expanded in recent yrs, most notably in its tentative embrace of African cinema, but it proceeds to come across tiny area for well known Hindi cinema.
Because the 1950s, Western cinephilic appreciation of Indian cinema has been restricted to Satyajit Ray (whose Pather Panchali [1955] was voted the eighth biggest film of all time in the 1992 Sight & Seem critics’ poll) and, latterly, Ritwik Ghatak. Equally filmmakers ended up, appreciably, Bengali, belonging to a loaded cultural, primarily literary custom extended appreciated in the West, and epitomised by the Nobel Prize-winning author Rabindranath Tagore, lots of of whose performs were being tailored by Ray. Both of those filmmakers conceived of character, plot, location, and official style in the individualistic or subjective conditions that paralleled the arthouse films of other nations Ray, for occasion, was frequently in comparison to the neo-realists, Chekhov, or Jean Renoir (the simple fact that Ghatak began his profession crafting for the Bombay Cinema is often conveniently neglected). Popular Hindi cinema typically ignores these Western norms, getting its roots in community spiritual, mythological, and well-liked sorts – communal forms – that reject the set factors of Western perspective, plausibility and logic. As a outcome, it is overlooked by Western critics. Only one particular Hindi filmmaker has been ‘saved’ for the Western canon – Expert Dutt, director of Pyaasa (1957) and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959). Dutt is admired specifically mainly because he is held to adhere to the sort of cinema Western cinephiles hope. The canon-obsessed Mark Cousins’ 2006 appreciation of Dutt, in which he referred to as him the Indian Orson Welles, and compared him to Hollywood musical maestro Vincente Minnelli and New York Team Theatre alumnus John Garfield, is standard of this form of Orientalising response.3
Expert Dutt in Pyaasa
*****
Take 3 bold Western cinephile projects released in the ten years following Virdi’s remonstration, and you will see how the pattern of aspect-lining Hindi cinema is inscribed, recurring, and interconnected.  

Exhibit 1 is Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Vital Cinema: On the Requirement of Movie Canons (2004). Rosenbaum is rightly revered as a critic who tried to broaden and deepen the scope of environment cinema, and to introduce US audiences in unique to a larger wide variety of movie cultures. Even Homer nods, however, and Hindi cinema has been a single of Rosenbaum’s blind places. Appended to this quantity is a chronological checklist of Rosenbaum’s 1000 ‘personal’ favourites from 1895 to the date of the book’s publication.4 There are films from all corners of the world, which include India, which is represented, as regular, by Ray and Ghatak (three movies apiece). There are no well known Hindi movies – indeed, there are considerably more films created by Westerners about Westerners in India, these as Bhowani Junction (George Cukor, 1956), India (Roberto Rossellini, 1958), The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb (Fritz Lang, 1959), and India Tune (Marguerite Duras, 1975) – then there are films by Indians addressing their have mass viewers. In this, Rosenbaum is adhering to the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences he so usually criticises, which throws Oscars at movies these as Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, 1982) and Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008), the two designed by English directors, and ignores Hindi cinema. You could argue that Rosenbaum, like several ‘serious’ movie critics, promotes elite relatively than well known cinema, but his checklist is dominated by Hollywood, regardless of his lifelong protest at, to estimate the subtitle of a further Rosenbaum e-book, ‘how Hollywood and the media conspire to restrict what movies we can see’.

Show 2 follows the similar mind-set to India and cinema.  Like Rosenbaum, David Thomson chose a single thousand films from around the world in “Have You Seen…?” (2008). The greater cinephilia has an effect on to disdain Thomson these days, but his influence on taste need to not be underestimated. A Biographical Dictionary of Movie (1975) was voted the very best film ebook of all time in a 2010 Sight & Audio critics’ poll,5 and Thomson’s perform in common is rare in reaching outside of the cinephile community to impact the ‘wider culture’ – Martin Amis and John Banville are enthusiasts – in a way another person like Jonathan Rosenbaum could only aspiration of. When someone like Thomson proposes a canon, it really should be taken very seriously as it will shape a lot of readers’ movie viewing (I know I gifted the e book to several folks when it arrived out).  Like Rosenbaum, Thomson utilizes Ray (3 entries) and Western filmmakers – incorporating Gunga Din (George Stevens, 1939) and The River (Jean Renoir, 1951) to Rosenbaum’s examples – to characterize India in a planet cinema context. Thomson’s Eurocentric bias is apparent: he writes that Ray “helped introduce the concept of Indian movie to the planet – not Bollywood, but an Indian motion picture that could be determined and witnessed outdoors India”.6
The ‘vacuously pretty’ Amitabh Bachchan in Khuda Gawah
Rosenbaum has often criticised Thomson for his slim geographical and chronological conception of planet cinema. In contrast to Rosenbaum, on the other hand, Thomson does contain just one Hindi film in his listing – Khuda Gawah (Mukul S. Anand, 1992), or God is my Witness as it is translated in the book. There is no proof in the text that Thomson actually viewed Khuda Gawah, the essay is entire of ignorant factual glitches. Blockbuster Hindi epic Mother India (Mehboob, 1957) was not directed by the experimental Parallel Cinema filmmaker Mani Kaul. His description of direct Amitabh Bachchan as ‘vacuously petty’ looks odd for a fifty-calendar year-outdated actor participating in a tribal Afghan chief from center- to previous-age, his confront obscured by significant ringlets and a beard. Thomson is not interested in Khuda Gawah as a discrete movie with discrete creative features. It has been chosen to stand for the Bollywood cinema he wants to diminish any title would have carried out. Thomson at the very least has the grace to confess that his desire for Western or Western-sanctioned representations of India is problematic, but the fundamental racism of his situation – and, I would argue, the Western cinephilia that Thomson embodies – is laid bare when he writes of “a lifestyle that takes place to be centuries older than ours whilst however primitive by comparison”.7 Well known Hindi cinema is an ‘other’ that are unable to be assimilated into the canon since it is too unique from ‘us’. Effectively, sorry David, but some of ‘us’ think of Hindi cinema as ‘ours’ as properly, portion of ‘our’ cinematic inheritance.

The last exhibit is the 2012 consequence of the decennial, canon-shaping Sight & Sound critics’ poll of ‘The Greatest Movies of All Time’.8 With the 2022 poll due in September, it is value revisiting the 2012 iteration. Significantly was produced at the time of the endeavor to broaden the canon by growing the geographical and generational achieve of the members, and the array of media retailers they lead to. The 846 critics who responded chose 2045 films. Ray acquired the greatest number of votes for an Indian filmmaker (56, such as 32 for Pather Panchali, the optimum-placed Indian film at no. 41) Ghatak gained 12 votes. These directors had been voted for by critics throughout the planet, from Japan and the Philippines as a result of Norway and Germany to Peru and United states, and so are firmly section of the canon of earth cinema. Renoir’s The River, a film about an English loved ones in India, adapted from an English novel by a French filmmaker, acquired 13 votes, extra than any personal Hindi movie (Lang’s Tiger of Eschnapur got 5). There had been only 25 votes for common Hindi motion pictures. If we take out from this complete the 9 specified to ‘saved’ Expert Dutt, and the votes of tutorial professional in Hindi cinema Rachel Dwyer, we locate that only 4 worldwide cinephiles out of 846 felt that preferred Hindi movie deserved a location in the canon of planet cinema. To give these figures some context, there were 35 Hollywood movies in the Top 100.
*****
Has considerably improved in the 10 years considering the fact that the 2012 poll? Sight & Sound, the self-professed ‘International Film Magazine’, is specified here as my instance since it is the magazine I have go through and loved given that 1992 and therefore know very best, but it is also consultant of the other influential publications that direct cinephilic taste.  The respond to is no, matters have not improved. Whilst Hollywood carries on to dominate the magazine’s protection (just about 60% of Sight & Sound covers in between Oct 2012 and June 2022, or 66 out of 111, featured a Hollywood film, director, star, or theme – such as 4 for Stanley Kubrick, who, you may perhaps be astonished to master, died in the previous century), there has not been a solitary whole-length function about a Bollywood matter, earlier or existing, among 2012 and 2022.  

Mainly because it is a publication of record, and mainly because Bollywood films are launched weekly in the Uk, it has to publish evaluations of Bollywood movies, but these critiques are usually given to 1 author, the indefatigable Naman Ramachandran. This critic is rarely invited to produce about other kinds of cinema in the journal, so his Bollywood protection is not integrated into the mainstream of its output. Conversely, its star writers – the ones who attend festivals like Cannes, Berlin, and Venice, and whose recommendations make your mind up what distributors will obtain and display in British isles cinemas, and what ‘serious’ newspaper critics will cover prominently on release – never create about Bollywood. And so, Bollywood is confined to a crucial ghetto. 
Yet again, it could be objected that Sight & Sound only puts ‘serious’ Hollywood films on its addresses. Yet again, I reply that by giving various-site include stories to the likes of Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino, Sight & Audio admits that it is doable for a business sector to produce operates worthy of essential commentary. Whether or not the will is not there, or the demographic bias of its contributors skews it toward selected sorts of cinema, the journal doesn’t extend this perception to major figures in present-day Bollywood, this sort of as Aamir Khan, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Farah Khan, or Rajkumar Hirani. Even when a publication does make a unique energy – these types of as Movie Comment’s Might-June 2002 ‘Bollywood 101’ special issue, it is an isolated gesture. Movie Comment did not go on to contain Bollywood in just its typical features or overview slate, in spite of the presence of Hindi film fan Devika Girish on its editorial board, just one of the several Indian writers in a prominent posture at an influential film magazine.

This sample buildings each and every component of the cinephile method, these types of as movie exhibition – which is hardly surprising, when so many programmers are previous or practising critics. Given that 2014, I have lived in the United kingdom, in which there is a massive Indian diaspora, and a vocal and progressive educational populace intrigued in Bollywood (numerous of whom have contributed to this dossier). The British Film Institute’s flagship cinema elaborate on London’s Southbank has considering the fact that 2014 mounted movie seasons on numerous international locations, administrators, genres, periods, and stars, but not a solitary one devoted to a Bollywood subject (there is a total Satyajit Ray retrospective scheduled for July 2022, following a past just one in 2013). I know the identical goes for comparable establishments in the US and Australia, which also have big Indian diasporas.
The same applies to house entertainment. Choose the Criterion Collection, whose really identify indicates excellence and style-earning exclusivity. Giving a ‘series of crucial vintage and present-day films in particular editions’, Criterion follows the Rosenbaum/Thomson/Sight & Audio design by equating Indian cinema with Ray (11 titles out there for purchase), Ghatak (two), western filmmakers such as Louis Malle, Alexander Korda, and Wes Anderson, as effectively as Mira Nair (two titles), a filmmaker who, like Ray ahead of her, has very long been essential of well-known Hindi cinema.9  

It would appear to be, consequently, that there is a website link amongst what films get written about in specific publications, what films get shown in specific cinemas, what films are produced by touchstone house amusement corporations, and what constitutes the film canon. That canon does not contain well known Hindi cinema.
*****
There are doubtless all types of sociological, psychological, financial, geopolitical, cultural, historical, postcolonial etc and so on things that could clarify why this is so. Anecdotally, I know that most cinephiles’ disdain for Bollywood is not centered on the actual working experience of looking at Hindi movies, but on a caricature derived from new music video clips, Baz Luhrmann pastiches, comedy skits, adverts, and Television idents. For what it’s well worth, I have my possess theory to explain the marginalisation of Hindi film from the canon. There was a time when Hollywood was dismissed by the cultural elite as manufacturing unit-produced pap in the identical way as Bollywood is now. It was not until eventually the Cahiers critics in the ’50s, their Uk followers at Movie journal in the ‘60s, and the publication of Andrew Sarris’ The American Cinema in 1968, that the principle of ‘Hollywood’ as a homogenous mass, an business pedalling disposable and ideologically conservative merchandise, was replaced with a single where particular person filmmakers with person designs and outlooks could be determined, categorised, when compared, and contrasted. In which a regimented generation process could yet facilitate own artistry and expression.  

No this sort of mainstream important try was ever manufactured with Hindi cinema. In academia, in which critical fascination in Bollywood does exist, the aim tends to be sociological, anthropological and ethnographic relatively than creative or intentionalist – how does this film or genre reflect individual social developments or embody certain ideologies, consciously or usually? There has been no Truffaut or Godard proclaiming the distinctiveness of unique Hindi administrators, no Perkins or Bordwell analysing features of type, no Mulvey or Robin Wood inspecting the ethical articles of specific oeuvres (Laura Mulvey, incidentally, incorporated Dutt’s Pyaasa in her leading 10 for the 2002 Sight & Audio critics’ poll). Auteurism is usually dismissed as an out-of-date critical framework but, as implied over, it proceeds to dictate how most cinephiles experience cinema, although in film research it was a necessary vital steppingstone before other techniques could be created.10 
This file, as a result, was born of aggravation at the marginalisation of well-liked Hindi cinema in the discourse of Western cinephilia. The phone for submissions was framed in unashamedly auteurist phrases in an endeavor to complicate and diversify the monolithic thought of ‘Bollywood’. I considered that this angle would attraction to the contributors of Senses of Cinema, with its auteurist aim – this is the journal with a famous ‘Great Directors’ area, right after all! Unfortunately, none of Senses’ standard contributors responded to the call, and I was forced to bombard the educational departments in the Uk and somewhere else with pleas for contributions. I am deeply grateful to everyone who agreed to generate for this dossier at small observe, making some outstanding and thoughtful texts on topics as varied as literary adaptation, diasporic viewing circumstances, and Bollywood’s complicity in promulgating the caste method. I also thank my co-editor Amanda Barbour for giving me the opportunity to initiate this dossier, and then guiding me by my to start with modifying challenge.
The operate of starting up a Bollywood response to The American Cinema will have to hold out an additional working day. Until then, delight in this Senses of Cinema dossier!
Sridevi
Endnotes