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Movies Forum Index » Silent Movies Forum » Hindustan Times: Canned forever...
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| Bruce Calvert... |
 Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 5:56 pm |
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http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=1a417e1e-dcce-4b72-ab24-ee7fb4242a7b&MatchID1=4709&TeamID1=10&TeamID2=14&MatchType1=2&SeriesID1=1189&MatchID2=4710&TeamID3=7&TeamID4=18&MatchType2=2&SeriesID2=1189&PrimaryID=4709&Headline=Canned+forever
Canned forever
Khalid Mohamed , Hindustan Times
Email Author
June 23, 2008
First Published: 20:31 IST(23/6/2008)
Last Updated: 20:38 IST(23/6/2008)
Preserve the faith. Perhaps it’s far too late, a cry in the classic
wilderness, a mission impossible. At a modest estimate at least 9,000
Hindi language films — this is news as well as a comment — have just
skedaddled with the wind. Which is to say, because of a combination of
avoidable factors, a chunk of Indian cinema heritage has been lost
forever. And more film prints are perishing even as these words are
being written.
A majority of films which have vanished without a trace date back to
the 1930s and 40s, the early years of the talkies. Of the silent era,
only fragments of about 24 titles have survived. The British Film
Institute, which fortuitously possessed reels of three Himansu Rai-
Franz Osten silent films — Light of Asia (1925), Shiraz (1928) and
Throw of Dice (1929) — gifted their prints to the National Film
Archive of India, Pune. Woefully, though, not a single frame survives
of Alam Ara (1931), India’s first sound film. Only 20 film production
stills are repeatedly reprinted.
There is no trace of Paul Zils’ classic Zalzala (1952), which was
spoken of with tremendous nostalgia by the pre-Independence
generation. Its socialistic concerns and a screenplay adapted from
Rabindra-nath Tagore’s Char Adhyay had wowed the audience in the
throes of nationalistic fervour. Not a single frame survives of Alam
Ara (1931), India’s first sound film. Only 20 film production stills
are repeatedly reprinted.
Kidar Sharma’s Chitralekha (1941) — featuring Mehtab in the title role
— which was later remade, and is considered a groundbreaking
‘feminist’ work, has been lost to time, neglect and apathy. Jwar Bhata
(1944), which introduced Dilip Kumar to cinema, is missing. As for the
medium and small-budget films from the black-and-white golden era of
Bombay cinema, they have been decimated. Ask around for Black Cat
(1959) — a film noir with Balraj Sahni as a Bogart-style, cigarette-
puffing detective — and you’re laughed at for being hallucinatory.
No status reports can be obtained about a range of delightful 1950s
movies like Johnny Walker as a ‘post-graduate hero’ in Mr Qartoon MA
(1958). Whatever happened to the Chandulal Shah-produced kiddie
delight Zameen ke Taare (1960)? The swashbuckling adventures by
Kamran, actor-producer-director of action movies during the 1950s-60s,
appear to have been cremated. His daughter — director-choreographer
Farah Khan — states that constant efforts to track down the prints of
some of Kamran’s most commercially successful movies have been futile.
The untraceable works include Aandhi aur Toofan, Do Matwale, Khoon ka
Khoon and Robin Hood.
Bharati Jaffrey, daughter of Ashok Kumar, has complained that the
prints of some of the films that her father produced — like Kalpana
(1960) — cannot be found for love or money.
The life span of a film in its pristine form is not more than a
decade, unless it is carefully stored in ideal climactic conditions,
periodically restored and ‘treasured’ as it were. Many film processing
laboratories in Mumbai, which stored hundreds of prints, would issue
advertisements till three years ago. The ads would state that if the
films were not picked up by their copyright holders within a
stipulated date, the reels kept in tin cans would be destroyed.
Storage costs have spiralled. Moreover many film producers and studios
have just not claimed their property.
One such laboratory, which had issued the ‘destruction’ notice, was in
a shambles. Those in charge said that most of the film cans had rusted
and the celluloid reels were ongoing fire hazards. There were at least
a hundred films lying in various stages of degeneration in a room
without any lights or air. Eventually, the laboratory closed down. No
prizes for guessing the fate of those orphaned film cans. Similarly,
scores of godowns in Mumbai and in the old-worldy studios have had to
just ‘kill’ the original but ageing film prints. In several cases, no
one can even identify their titles. The disowned movies are likely to
be deleted and dumped in the trashcan.
P.K. Nair, a crusading film lover who once headed the National Film
Archive, has reiterated that countless films have been sold and
continue to be sold to raddiwallahs for a pittance; celluloid strips
have been converted into decorative armlets and bangles. In fact,
Suresh Chabria, film scholar and former chief of the archive,
retrieved and restored fragments
of Baburao Painter’s Murliwalla (1927) from a Kolhapur utensils dealer
who had picked up the reels for their ‘junk’ value.
The Pune archive has collected about 1,500 Hindi film prints made
over six decades. The original prints of films by eminent filmmakers
Mrinal Sen, Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani are believed to be in a
‘threatened condition’. Recently, Ketan Mehta was shocked to learn
that only a 16 mm print survives at the archive of his seminal film
Bhavni Bhavai (1980).
Needless to emphasise, there are many more films — good, bad and the
significant — that have just evaporated because no one cares. Also the
situation is as, if not more, lamentable as it is in other parts of
the nation’s film-producing centres. Individual film lovers can only
touch the tip of the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Organised
authorities must deal with it as a primary concern — be it the central
or state government’s film-related bodies, the new corporate studio
bosses or film industry associations. Otherwise more hidden
masterpieces of our movie culture will go down like the Titanic.
Bruce Calvert
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