light, camera, sound!!
Bangalore witnessed a week-long celebration to commemorate the Platinum Jubilee of Indian Talkies. Puja Goyal examines the journey of movies from silence to sound.
VIJAY TIMES LIFE PAGE - 3
IT HAS been 75 years since sound entered the film world and Alam Ara our first talkie premiered at the Elgin Talkies in Bangalore in 1931. Here is a look back:
Alam Ara (1931): March 14, 1931 remains a historic day for Indian cinema. Ardeshir Irani of Imperial Movietone released Alam Ara, the first full-length Indian talkie film at the Majestic cinema in Bombay. Written by Joseph David, a playwright from the Parsi Imperial Theatrical company, the movie was adapted from a play with the same name and inspired by Universal's Showboat.
The story: It is a rather clichÈd legend about a king of an imaginary kingdom and his two wives, Naubahar, and Dilbahar, who is issueless, harbouring an illicit love for the chief minister Adil. When Adil spurns her, she plots to have him imprisoned and his daughter, Alam Ara exiled. Alam Ara is brought up among gypsies, a chance visit to the palace allows cupid to strike as a young prince falls in love with her.
Irani in an interview to a scribe said, "There were no sound-proof stages, we preferred to shoot indoors and at night. Since our studio is located near a railway track most of our shooting was done between the hours that the trains ceased operation. We worked with a single system Tamar recording equipment. There were also no booms. Microphones had to be hidden in incredible places to keep out of camera range." Irani and his assistant Rustom Bharucha picked up the rudiments of recording from Wilford Deming, an American engineer.
The arrival of the talkies: As a film, Alam Ara was a pioneering effort. Three weeks after Alam Ara, Madan Theatresà released Jamai Sashti (Bengali); Shireen Farhad (Urdu), a spectacular success, featuring the most popular singers, Jahan Ara Kajjan and Master Nissar; Kalidas (Tamil, 1931), Bhakta Prahlad (Telugu, 1931), Ayodhyecha Raja (Marathi, 1932), Narasimha Mehta (Gujarati, 1932) and Dhruva Kumar (Kannada, 1934).
Apparently, the early attempts to make motion pictures audible were the device used by Edison in 1913 which employed the phonograph record for the source of sound. This method barely worked, and the sound reproduction did not fill a theatre. The reproduced tone did not sound natural enough to give the proper illusion.
Nostalgia: The number of films released (post Alam Ara)with naach gaana blended with antics, increased ten folds. A Lahori Tonga driver was said to have pawned his horse to see Shireen Farhad some 22 times. The film with 42 songs, was a bigger hit than Alam Ara.
Chandidas, directed by Debaki Bose became an outstanding commercial and critical success for the New Theatres ethos. Chandidas a story of the 15th century historical priest-poet of Bengal, who fell in love with a low-caste washer woman, had a stupendous run of 64 weeks in a Calcutta theatre. It was known as "The Wonder Picture of 1939."
Talkies that flooded the market were merely musicals, as opposed to talkie dramas. Stories were loosely patched together to make room for songs. Artistically, New Theatres, Prabhat and Bombay Talkies were the most important, but the more productive ones were Ranjit Movietones, Sagar, Imperial and Wadia.
The silence after the talkies: "We were on the verge of making really fine films-stories of social value, good respectable actors coming in, silent masterpieces from abroad, everything going for us," Jairaj recalled. "Then came the talkie film and it destroyed everything. There was chaos."Technically, the talkie era pushed back the Indian film industry by many years. Camera noise drowned the soundtrack. The film and its songs were made on long takes from a single point to attempt a resolution of the problems of combining photography with sound. Actors were self-conscious while performing as they had to huddle around a hidden, low-fidelity microphone. Trial and error resulted in wastage of raw stock and many films were abandoned.
However, though sound was welcome in cinema, it had serious implications for the whole industry and its associates. The talkies era silenced a whole generation of artistes, filmmakers and technicians.
Many studios unable to switch over to sound closed down; Anglo-Indians who did not speak fluent Hindi or Urdu were the worst hit. Those who could not sing were also hit as there was no playback and direct recording meant artistes had to sing their own songs. On the other hand, the box-office returns enabled cinema houses that had shut down during the Depression to reopen. Also, it gave a temporary respite from pressing foreign competition.
VIJAY TIMES LIFE PAGE - 3
IT HAS been 75 years since sound entered the film world and Alam Ara our first talkie premiered at the Elgin Talkies in Bangalore in 1931. Here is a look back:
Alam Ara (1931): March 14, 1931 remains a historic day for Indian cinema. Ardeshir Irani of Imperial Movietone released Alam Ara, the first full-length Indian talkie film at the Majestic cinema in Bombay. Written by Joseph David, a playwright from the Parsi Imperial Theatrical company, the movie was adapted from a play with the same name and inspired by Universal's Showboat.
The story: It is a rather clichÈd legend about a king of an imaginary kingdom and his two wives, Naubahar, and Dilbahar, who is issueless, harbouring an illicit love for the chief minister Adil. When Adil spurns her, she plots to have him imprisoned and his daughter, Alam Ara exiled. Alam Ara is brought up among gypsies, a chance visit to the palace allows cupid to strike as a young prince falls in love with her.
Irani in an interview to a scribe said, "There were no sound-proof stages, we preferred to shoot indoors and at night. Since our studio is located near a railway track most of our shooting was done between the hours that the trains ceased operation. We worked with a single system Tamar recording equipment. There were also no booms. Microphones had to be hidden in incredible places to keep out of camera range." Irani and his assistant Rustom Bharucha picked up the rudiments of recording from Wilford Deming, an American engineer.
The arrival of the talkies: As a film, Alam Ara was a pioneering effort. Three weeks after Alam Ara, Madan Theatresà released Jamai Sashti (Bengali); Shireen Farhad (Urdu), a spectacular success, featuring the most popular singers, Jahan Ara Kajjan and Master Nissar; Kalidas (Tamil, 1931), Bhakta Prahlad (Telugu, 1931), Ayodhyecha Raja (Marathi, 1932), Narasimha Mehta (Gujarati, 1932) and Dhruva Kumar (Kannada, 1934).
Apparently, the early attempts to make motion pictures audible were the device used by Edison in 1913 which employed the phonograph record for the source of sound. This method barely worked, and the sound reproduction did not fill a theatre. The reproduced tone did not sound natural enough to give the proper illusion.
Nostalgia: The number of films released (post Alam Ara)with naach gaana blended with antics, increased ten folds. A Lahori Tonga driver was said to have pawned his horse to see Shireen Farhad some 22 times. The film with 42 songs, was a bigger hit than Alam Ara.
Chandidas, directed by Debaki Bose became an outstanding commercial and critical success for the New Theatres ethos. Chandidas a story of the 15th century historical priest-poet of Bengal, who fell in love with a low-caste washer woman, had a stupendous run of 64 weeks in a Calcutta theatre. It was known as "The Wonder Picture of 1939."
Talkies that flooded the market were merely musicals, as opposed to talkie dramas. Stories were loosely patched together to make room for songs. Artistically, New Theatres, Prabhat and Bombay Talkies were the most important, but the more productive ones were Ranjit Movietones, Sagar, Imperial and Wadia.
The silence after the talkies: "We were on the verge of making really fine films-stories of social value, good respectable actors coming in, silent masterpieces from abroad, everything going for us," Jairaj recalled. "Then came the talkie film and it destroyed everything. There was chaos."Technically, the talkie era pushed back the Indian film industry by many years. Camera noise drowned the soundtrack. The film and its songs were made on long takes from a single point to attempt a resolution of the problems of combining photography with sound. Actors were self-conscious while performing as they had to huddle around a hidden, low-fidelity microphone. Trial and error resulted in wastage of raw stock and many films were abandoned.
However, though sound was welcome in cinema, it had serious implications for the whole industry and its associates. The talkies era silenced a whole generation of artistes, filmmakers and technicians.
Many studios unable to switch over to sound closed down; Anglo-Indians who did not speak fluent Hindi or Urdu were the worst hit. Those who could not sing were also hit as there was no playback and direct recording meant artistes had to sing their own songs. On the other hand, the box-office returns enabled cinema houses that had shut down during the Depression to reopen. Also, it gave a temporary respite from pressing foreign competition.
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