Bollywood was born in the early years of silent film revival in Europe and the United States. Fueled by our extremely talented artists with huge potential to easily entertain large amounts of people. India and surrounding regions quickly formed their bastions of movie production. The nickname for this movie industry – Bollywood, similar nickname “Tollywood” was first taken by the cinema of West Bengal, but it was soon adopted by Mumbai (Bombay) cinema fans.
From the first Bollywood movie ever created to today, Indian cinema used a mix of influences that were gathered from their long history, with a touch of outside trends taken from Hollywood and later on Global Television.
Sanskrit theatre was popular in India until the 10th century AD. This gave Bollywood movies a sense of spectacle, dance, music, and artistic gestures. Parsi theatre, which gave Indian movies a sense of humor, melodic song, elaborate dance routine, the mix of realism and fantasy, narrative and stage spectacle. Hollywood, with the musicals and scope of production. Music television channels such as MTV brought profound changes in the way Bollywood movies were produced after the 1900s.
The first full-length Bollywood silent movie “Raja Harishchandra “ was created in 1913. Its great success paved the way for the countless movies that followed him and the expansion of the Indian cinema industry to incredible heights. Less than 20 years later, India was producing 200 movies per year. One of the largest successes of that time was “Alam Ara” from 1931, the sound movie that became the basis of the joyful modern Bollywood musical. Quickly after its release, the country of India entered into a period of turmoil. The Great Depression, WW2, Indian Independence, and the violence of the Partition pushed filmmakers to start introducing serious themes into their movies, usually as backdrops to the plots of musicals and dramas. The First Indian color movie “Kisan Kanya” was created in 1937, but such movies found popularity only in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
As many historians remember today, the Golden Age of Indian cinema took place between the 1940s and 1960s. During that time countless influential Bollywood movies were released, exploring new storytelling techniques, social themes (mostly struggles and wonders of urban life), epic productions such as Mother India (1957), reincarnation, and more. This period also popularized many Indian actors (Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt) and actresses such as (Nargis, Vyjayanthimala, Meena Kumari, Nutan, Madhubala, and others).
The 1960s gave the birth of the Modern Bollywood cinema, which was most easily spotted with the release avalanche of the two genres that were previously seldom-used – action and romance movies. This caused the resurgence of new movie stars, and by the 70s, gangster and crime movies entered into popularity. The 80s and 90s brought back into spotlight musicals, family-centric romantic storylines, comedies, and stunt-based action films. Art films also strived, especially after the release of Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya (1998), which kick-started the genre of Mumbai noir (noir films exploring struggles of urban life).
In the new millennia, Bollywood finally managed to reach outside of India and land in the West. Many of their lavish productions received significant box office success all around the world, especially after the critical success of “Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India” in 2001.
I still believe Bollywood has a lot of potential and off course picture abhi baaki hai mere dost…
- Anushka Jain
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