Bollywood: The Intro

In the opening sequence of the film Ghost World, Enid — the young Bohemian lead — has the television on. As the camera travels past other alienated, depressed people smoking cigarettes and staring out into the night, Enid is dancing. She's watching a musical sequence from a 1965 Bollywood thriller called Gumnaam. We see less than a minute; fortunately, the whole five minutes and thirty-three seconds of the original sequence is included in the DVD's extras. In 2002, we sat there with our mouths open.

There's not anything like this dance scene in any movie I can remember, and I've seen a lot of movies. The music itself is a Tijuana Brass-Dick Dale hybrid, Miserlou colliding with Casino Royale. On top of this rich mix is the breathless vocal of Mohammed Rafi, one of the great male "playback" singers (as in Marni Nixon). In India, since pop tunes have always been drawn primarily from soundtracks, playback singers are pop stars of the highest order, respected by the masses and critics alike. Rafi is — as they say in Bollywood — "picturized on" a wiry little guy who works an old RCA mic like Elvis in his prime. He sports a John Waters mustache and, inexplicably, a racoon mask, as do the dancers and the band.

Meanwhile Laxmi Chhaya — billed as the "Masked Dancer" on the IMDb, a very cute brunette with a Gene Tierney overbite — is going nuts with a series of twitchy, hand-wringing, head-shaking moves amidst the chorus boys. (One of the top current Bollywood directors, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, talks about her influence in a recent article posted here.)

With its Touch of Evil oblique angles, rapid cutting, epileptic choreography and mariachi surf stomping, there is nothing else like Jaan Pehchan Ho. We were hooked. A few weeks later we realized we could rent these movies from the same Mom-and-Pop spice store where we were already getting our curry powder and chilis. Mom-and-Pop were happy to recommend the first features we watched, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Hum Aapke Hain Koun...! (see the next page). Just a month or two later, right in the middle of this first flush of Bollywood fever, Film Comment's invaluable May/June issue of 2002 hit the stands. It remains a fabulous primer.

I have to qualify any best-of list by saying that I am no expert. Indian studios make about 800 titles a year, though only about a third of those qualify as the Hindi-pop confections we call Bollywood. The first full-length Hindi feature Raja Harishchandra, written and directed by Dhundiraj Govind Phalke — Dadasaheb, seen to the left on the office wall of the National Film Archive of India — was released in 1913, two years before Birth of a Nation. My point is that no one in the West can claim to be an expert; there are simply too many films. Canon-creation is problematic, perhaps impossible. If you specialized solely in the films of a single actor — Amitabh Bachchan, for instance — and watched one of his three-hour films every week, a year later you still would not have seen Sarkar Raj, his latest US release as of this writing.

A note to US residents: even if you are fortunate enough to live in Jackson Heights, Queens, or Union, NJ, or some other community where the NRI (Non-Resident-Indian) population supports a theatre or two, you will probably not be lucky enough to see these films on the big screen. And of course it's even worse for any film that is not in current release. Even in India it is almost impossible to find a revival house for Hindi classics. Aside from a few film clubs and college programs — and the wonderful National Film Archive in Pune — older films are seen exclusively on DVD, VCD, tape, or satellite broadcasts. Here in the US there are Bollywood channels carried as separate packages on DirectTV. To get them would double the bill, however, so your experience of these pictures, like mine, will probably be from DVD.

You can get many of the classics from NetFlix, or if you prefer to buy, try nehaflix.com or your local spice shop. Prices range from $20 to about $5, depending on many factors. Many, many films are remarkably inexpensive; we're talking five or six bucks. At the same time, you're going to see some terrible menu authoring. Some companies lock you out for as long as five or six minutes at the start of the DVD while they run the same ad loop you've already seen a million times. There are very few examples of restored prints or remastered anything if the movie is more than a few years old. It is typical, particularly with anything old, to see transfers from prints that have been on the road for years. Recent flicks like Lagaan and Dil Chata Hai are beautifully transferred, though even with Lagaan our first DVD was impossible to show to anyone because the subtitles were all jammed together. High rates of disc failure are also endemic. This may all be due to the pervasiveness of bootlegs, which are sometimes difficult to spot and vary wildly in quality.

With prices this low, however, so what? I went through three copies of Sholay. Cost me $15...

To see an annotated list of some of our favorites, click here.

Three cheers to the magnificent Carla: Filmi Geek is not only of the best Bollywood sites ever, it is one of the best personal web sites I have ever seen. The writing in dozens and dozens of reviews is consistently erudite and personal at the same time. And there are tons of pictures, too! (Plus I totally agree with her on Shabana Azmi and Shahrukh...)

For a great critical review of subjects Bollywood, go to Upperstall.com - A Better View of Indian Cinema. The site also includes a new Bengali section that is really good.

For amusing and comprehensive intros to a wide variety of topics, check out Bollywhat?: The Guide for Clueless Fans of Hindi Film.

Another great site on the movies: Philip's Fil-ums: Notes on Indian Popular Cinema by Philip Lutgendorf

For a great article from Suketu Mehta (Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found) on why he loves Bollywood movies, click here.