A Cinema House in Poona

A Cinema House in Poona

1.

The motion pictures came to Poona with the coming of electricity in 1910. The first cinema house to be set up was the Napier Cinema in the Poona Cantonment. The Napier started showing silent movies to paying audiences in a shed-like structure, probably the first one in Poona.

With time and waxing popularity, the Napier was refurbished by 1919, or thereabouts, into a fairly well-boned neo-Classical building, with timber framing and a stone gable, punctuated with a Baroque-ish front. The Napier was very popular, and is mentioned in several accounts of Poona at the time. One peculiar feature was the screening of (what we today call) serials, short features of interminable stories that attracted the masses to the theatre weekly.

     "Monica also took Mehera to the movies. Once when her ayah, her seven-year-old brother, and Mehera went together to the Napier Theatre (later renamed the West End Cinema), Monica wanted to buy chocolates at the concession stand and pushed some British soldiers out of the way.
     Mehera was flabbergasted. "I'm not going to push a soldier," she thought. "Monica can get away with it; she's a Westerner."
     Most of the movies screened in Poona were American. A serial titled The Broken Coin (1915), starring Grace Cunard and Francis Ford, was a favourite. Every week there was a new episode, but eventually they became tired of it as the story went on forever with no conclusion."
     - 'Mehera-Meher, Volume I: A Divine Romance' by David Fenster; Meher Nazar Publications

Located on a busy thoroughfare, but on an un-demarcated plot, the theatre had, in its immediate neighbourhood a lovely fountain and a bandstand, that was very popular, gathering audiences whenever 'The Napier Cinema Band', which consisted of British (or Indian) army-men stationed in the Cantonment, performed. 

Thank you, Amit Vachcharajani, for this image.

     

"In 1916, the first Poona (Anglo Indian) and the 2nd Poona (the first Indian company) gave a concert at Napier Cinema in aid of the War Fund, raising 100 Rupees. The Rosebuds (in nighties) sang 'Goodnight Mr. Moon' and were encored, before Miss Sawyer (Captain of the 2nd Poona) posed as Britannia in the concluding patriotic pageant.

     -'Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World', edited by Shirleen Robinson and Simon Sleight, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pg. 172

The Napier Cinema became Napier 'talkies' in 1931. Not long after that came the big theatres in Bombay, under the patronage of the great American Studios like the Universal, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Bros. Many old cinema houses were refurbished in this, the Indian Golden Age of Hollywood, and the Napier seems to have undergone a change too. Perhaps under the influence of the Western India Theatre Association and 20th Century Fox (I am speculating), the Napier was blessed with a two storey RCC front and a new name- the West End.

The new building was superimposed on the old gable. You can see the poor gable sticking out of the top of the new building in the photo below. The new West End highlighted its own name twice on the facade, once in large concrete letters inset as the second floor balcony balustrade and the other as a vertical mast along its axis of symmetry, sticking out upwards, and skywards from the building in an Art Deco manner. While not an Art Deco building as such, the new front, with a cantilevered porch, fake arches, and vertical ornament striping its sides fell well within the fashion of the time. The West End shows some proto-Deco flattened ornament, sloping chajjas and a Palladian symmetry. Notice the protruding porch supported on concrete brackets.

This West End was the cinema house of my childhood. Now that I look back, many elements of the old Napier still remained even then, especially the old timber staircase that I remember vividly, painted olive.

2.

The West End Cinema was within spitting distance of the Empire Cinema and the Marz-o-Rin Fast Food Place, famous for its eggy, mayonnaise chicken rolls and sandwiches and guava juice in milk bottles.

The West End marks one site of my misbegotten youth. This was my second school, where I saw all sorts of movies my parents did not approve of. Between the late sixties and the very early eighties, this is where I was indoctrinated in a variety of World Cinema, and force-fed such dire gems as Sssssssnake (Don't say it, hiss it!) (US), 3 Fantastic Supermen (Italy), Fantomas Stikes Back (France) and The Swiss Conspiracy ("My father always told me- son, never lose your head, or your arse goes with it")(Germany/US). I can safely bet that none of you have ever heard of any of these atrocities, much less seen them.

I specifically remember being taken to watch Lost in the Desert (South Africa) as a special school outing during my 2nd or 3rd standard. A horribly traumatic choice for us young-uns (and a reflection on our teachers) considering the terrible, terrible things that happen to the child in the film, including being spat in the eye by a venomous snake, after surviving a plane crash.

The theatre was bounded into a rather large compound, as you can see, that had a low brick boundary that bounders and lowlifes (such as myself) would sun themselves on. On one corner was a marquee that displayed two large posters- one for the feature and another for the matinee. You can see how much these posters would have impacted my innocent self.

And observe the building extending in the rear. That was the site of a genuine 'merican soda-fountain, that we would aim directly for, if we had any money leftover after buying the tickets. A proper Saturday Night Fever experience, a movie I saw here too. My combed back hair dates from this vintage. The West End made me much of who I am today, I am sorry to report.

Later, the fountain became a traffic roundabout and the bandstand vanished.
Later still, in the 1980s, the West End itself was demolished to exploit the real estate value of its compound.

All that remains today is the traffic roundabout.
So it goes.

Time Out Mumbai- Nanny State of Mind

This piece appeared in an edited version in my 'After Words' column in Time Out Mumbai, February 2014

Nanny State of Mind

One of the first actions the new CEO of the Central Board of Film Certification has taken is to rollback all permissions granted to movies in the last few months on the grounds that the previous board was too permissive of objectionable content. One of them, ‘Sholay-3D’, was pinpointed for lacking seriousness in its content. The movie was screened in the presence of the CEO, his Board, his parents, his wife, her parents, his daughters, and their neighbors from the same floor. The following cuts and modifications to ‘Sholay-3D’ were demanded:

Vigilantism in all forms is disapproved, as when a currently serving policeman is commissioned by a retired Inspector to source delinquents to carry out encounters. The scene showing Thakur giving supari to Jai and Veeru should be removed.

All three coin tossing scenes to be excised as a British Raj coin is used in independent India. Also said coin was forged (heads on both sides).

The Inspector, shown sitting in the same space as two convicts in a goods train should be replaced with a havaldar. Also, when in uniform, the inspector should be addressed correctly as ‘Inspector Saab’ and not ‘Thakur’ (proper hierarchy must be followed).

Scenes showing Veeru running on tops of railway compartments should be deleted. This wrongly encourages rooftop travelling by children in suburban trains and violates several clauses of the Indian Railway Act.

The song ‘Yeh Dosti’ is to be entirely deleted for promoting cultural prurience. Far too much love and physical displays of affection are visible between two full-grown males. Not only do they hold hands but one actually mounts the other’s shoulders while riding a motorcycle. Sec 377 to be referred to, also traffic laws regarding reckless endangerment while riding a two wheeler. The board also found objectionable the lyrics that openly refer to same-sex love (‘aisa apna pyaar’, etc.)

Scenes of the main actors openly extorting beedis from Soorma Bhopali without a ‘Smoking Kills’ disclaimer is a lapse needing rectification. A later scene of Imam’s son moving to work in a tobacco factory is discouraged on religious grounds. Alcoholism, consuming unbranded country products by respected senior film stars encourages illegal haath bhattis and leads to liquor tragedies.

Scenes of a widow turning off lights in the verandah outside her bedroom while another man ogles her while playing a mouth-organ were found to be too suggestive. The implied invitation to promiscuity cannot be overlooked. The scene of Radha handing over keys of father-in-law’s safe to criminals shows the Indian widow in poor character.

Russian roulette in Gabbar Singh’s introductory scene is of foreign origin. It is suggested that this be replaced with the Indian game of chausar. Firing bullets in the air is a waste of ordnance, an action not desirable in a developing country such as ours. Also, harvesting mangoes using guns is discouraged as it divests the unskilled unemployed of a proper day’s wages under NREGA.

All scenes of eve-teasing and physical proximity in song ‘Holi ke din’ should be removed. The producers are requested to see Barjatya’s wholesome films for positive influences.

The Board also frowns upon the excessive use of the Arabo-Turko-Persian vocabulary that permeates the entire movie, ignoring our homegrown Sanskritic heritage. To redress this, it is suggested that the following phrases be replaced-
‘yeh dosti’ by ‘yeh maitri’,
‘mehbooba’ by ‘premika’
and
‘kitne aadmi the?’ by ‘kitne purush the?’

Also, to avoid the issuance of an ‘A’ certificate, the following obscenities must mandatorily be replaced-
‘haramzaadae!’ by ‘dusht!’,
‘hijdon ki fauj’ by ‘ardha-nar sena’,
‘soovar ke bachchon’ by ‘murgi ke chooze’
and
‘chakki p*****g’ by ‘micturation’.

All lady members of the audience walked out during the ‘Mehbooba’ song, while covering the eyes of their young ones. Helen was not wearing skin-colored, full-body innerwear, as Sandhya and Vyjantimala have respectfully done in the past. Also physical thrustings of certain body parts in 3D to R D Burman’s rhythms were too much for older members of the board. On second thoughts, an ‘A’ certificate is unanimously advised.

Horses, poultry and insects were all harmed in this film. Such scenes should be replaced by CGI and a certificate to the effect should preface the main titles.

Depicting the surgical amputation of Thakur’s limbs is deemed unacceptable as the swords were not sterilized before the operation. Also Thakur was not put under general anesthesia by a qualified medical person. This encourages bad practices.

The use of spikes outside of a sport pitch can send wrong messages to school going children to wear them to classroom and home and should be replaced with sneakers (with the brand blurred). Also, stamping on someone’s palms with shoes on is against the Indian tradition of respect and humility. On the other hand, the Board commends the depiction of the ill-effects of dancing without shoes in public places.

The last scene of a man and a woman publicly embracing in a train compartment makes us hang our heads in shame. We condemn the previous Board for allowing such vulgarity to go though and recommend an enquiry (by appointing a retired judge) on their possibly mala-fide intentions of ruining the ethos of our great nation.

Ten Hindi Movies Only I have Seen

Ten Hindi Movies Only I have Seen

Since I should not be left behind in the list-making that everyone is indulging in to celebrate 100 years of Indian Cinema, here is my list of 10 Hindi movies that only I have seen (or so I believe). Who else would want to see them- some of the most weird, most peripheral and some of the most dire (what-the-fuck-were-they-thinking variety of) Hindi movies ever made and released?
Says something about me, I suppose.

1
Aman (1967)
Dir. Mohan Kumar, with Rajendra Kumar, Saira Banu, Balraj Sahani, and 
Bertrand Russell (as himself, died 1970, no connection)

The movie begins with a dedication to Jawaharlal Nehru (framed photo with rose), and this title slide appears anon:

“Lord Bertrand Russell, 

courtesy Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation 

in Emkay Productions’ 

‘Aman’”.

Here is a brief plot summary from Wikipedia: 
Dr. Gautamdas (Rajinder Kumar) attains his qualifications in London, England, and with the blessings of Lord Bertrand Russell (himself) decides to re-locate to Japan, which has been devastated by the explosion of atom bombs on two of its cities - Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I saw this on Bombay Doordarshan, and it was notable for two guest appearances:
1. Laaard Bertrand Russell, whom ‘Jubilee Kumar’ Rajindr Kmar meets and gushes: "Iyyum Haanered! Iyyum incraeged!"
2. Two half naked acrobats doing the most incredible splits (not at the same time as the above)

2
Birbal My Brother (1973) 
Dir. Raja Thakur, with Sachin, Lilian, William Soloman and Poonam Vaidya

I saw this one on Bombay Doordarshan, too.
This was an ‘English’ movie about a tour guide in Agra ferrying an English mem around. The movie would slip into Hindi at will, and return with locals speaking to locals in English. I remember that Sachin ends up being killed by dakus, and one incredibly risqué scene (to my childhood eyes) involving a lady in a string choli and ghagra and a packet of itching powder.

In an additional bit of trivia, Bhimsen  Joshi sang a juglabandi  of Raag Malkauns in this film along with Pandit Jasraj.



3
Jeevan Sangram (1974)
Dir. Rajbans Khanna, with Shashi Kapoor, Padma Khanna, Jalal Agha, Iftekhar, Radha Saluja and Om Shivpuri
Screenplay and dialogues by Gulzar and Qamar Jalalbaadi

For a longish time, almost nothing was available about this movie on the web, but this was probably the one of the best action movies made in India before ‘Sholay’ (1975) rewrote the textbooks. 

The story involves the radicalization of one of the disembarked passengers of the famous 'Komagata Maru' steamship in 1914 (Shashi Kapoor), and his exploits as a revolutionary. Some amazing stunt work, as I recall, especially the taking down of a train carrying armament (reminiscent of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, later also attempted rather poorly in ‘Rang De Basanti’) and a climatic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid type shoot out.

I would like to see this once again, and now I have my chance.
Here is Jeevan Sangram on You Tube.

(From Wikipedia)
The Komagata Maru incident involved a Japanese steamship, the Komagata Maru, that sailed from Punjab, India to Hong Kong,Shanghai, China; Yokohama, Japan; and then to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1914, carrying 376 passengers from Punjab, India. Of them 20 were admitted to Canada, but 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims, and 12 Hindus, all British subjects were not allowed to land in Canada, and the ship was forced to return to India.The Komagata Maru arrived in Calcutta and was stopped by a British gunboat, and the passengers were placed under guard. The government of the British Raj saw the men on the Komagata Maru not only as self-confessed lawbreakers, but also as dangerous political agitators. When the ship docked at Budge Budge, the police went to arrest Baba Gurdit Singh and the 20 or so other men that they saw as leaders. He resisted arrest, a friend of his assaulted a policeman and a general riot ensued. Shots were fired and 19 of the passengers were killed. Some escaped, but the remainder were arrested and imprisoned or sent to their villages and kept under village arrest for the duration of the First World War.This incident became known as the Budge Budge Riot. 


4
Chala Murari Hero Ban ne (1977)
Dir. Asrani, with Asrani, Bindya Goswami and Simi Garewal
and special appearances by 
Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Premnath, Amitabh Bachchan, A.K. Hangal, Keshto Mukherjee, Jagdeep, Ashok Kumar, Paintal, David, Sunil Dutt and Kishore Kumar

Asrani directed this movie about a village bumpkin rising in the Bombay film industry to become a major star. Around this same time another similar film was being bandied about on Vividh Bharati called ‘Naya Bakra’ (Baaaaa!) but I am not sure that ever saw the light of day.

Lots of Asrani’s friends made cameos in this film. This was a total ‘B’ movie that I saw in Bombay’s (now) only surviving ‘B’ theater Edward, where the balcony had the cheaper seats, wooden benches that you had to run to catch.

Why did I see this? Probably this was the age when we saw anything with Amitabh Bachchan in it, however fleeting his presence, a trait we would soon learn to regret.


5
Be-Sharam (1978)
Dir. Deven Verma, with Amitabh Bachchan, Sharmila Tagore, Amjad Khan, A. K. Hangal, Iftekhar, Nirupa Roy and Deven Verma

Every comedian in Hindi films has probably directed one movie, lost everything and retired with tail-between-legs. Here is another one. One of the direst. Even as we watched this, we were appalled at the kind of things Bachchan was in. Typically, a movie without a story, probably put together as the shooting went on. Not helped at all by Deven Varma in triple role- of a comedic sidekick and his mummy and his daddy; and a scene with Sharmila Tagore in black-face.


6
Devata (1978)
Dir. S. Ramanathan, Sanjeev Kumar, Shabana Azmi, Danny Denzongpa and Sarika
Music by Rahul Dev Burman

Alas, I remember this well.

A kind of channeling of ‘Les Misérables’ set in a Katlick community, where in the first half a 40-year-old Sanjeev Kumar (as a 21-year-old Jean Valjean) in a half-chaddi spends time romancing Shabana Azmi, with the over-the-top song: ‘Chand chura ke laya hoon, chal baithe Churrrch ke peeche’.

The second half is all about Danny Denzongpa (as Javert) trying to expose the identity of Sanjeev Kumar, now returned from the dead with a French beard and a three-piece suit.
And this final dialogue: 

Mere andar ke jaanwar ko mat jagaao Inspecktuuuuurr!" 


7
Jurmana (1979)
Dir. Hrishikesh Mukherjee with Amitabh Bachchan, Raakhee and Vinod Mehra

Terrible, this movie, whose central regressive conceit is a bet between Vinod Mehra and Amitabh Bachchan to get Rakhee inside Amitabh's bedroom. What was Mukherjee thinking?

This movie opens with a completely gratuitous fight sequence in a pub whose only reason seems to be to get the Bachchan fan to buy a ticket.  Incidentally, the shooting of this very scene would make a reappearance in HM’s epical ‘Golmaal’ made the same year, where Amol Palekar is taken by Deven Varma to meet Mr. Bachchan.


8
Morchha (1980)
Dir. Raveekant Nagaich, with Ravi Behl, Aruna Irani, Suresh Oberoi, Jagdeep, Shakti Kapoor,
Music by Bappi Lahiri, Lyrics by Ramesh Pant and Faruk Kaisar

Silly enough story of a prepubescent snotfaced kid who turns to karate after his family members are raped/murdered (by rote). Had one song in which Jagdeep rhymes karate with ‘parathe’. I went to see this perhaps taken in by the director’s previous film ‘Suraksha’, the camp James Bondish caper with Mithun Chakravorty as Gunmaster G9, but this was a disappointment.

Except for one thing:
The awesome tribute song by Bappi Lahiri ‘Let’s Dance for the great guy Bruce Lee’ (click on link), sung by Bappi and Annete Pinto, full of ‘Hoo! Hah!’ kung fu-style, and bubbling electro sounds like an upset stomach.


9
Spandan (1982)
Dir. Biplab Roy Chowdhury, written by Biplab Roy Chowdhury (story) and Vijay Tendulkar (screenplay), with Amol Palekar, Utpal Dutt, Anita Kanwar

This was a relentlessly morbid ‘art’ film that book-ended the phase of 1970s indie films and the rise of the VHS cassette, which is how I came to see this film. Nothing of this shows a trace on the webs, not even an image.

Spandan (pulse) is about a good for nothing type who resorts to smuggling aborted foetuses to medical colleges. Towards the end he tries to make his pregnant wife believe that she has a tumor instead of a baby, to harvest this foetus too.

I have done many things in the cause of art, as you can see.


10
Star (1982)
Produced by Biddu, Dir. Vinod Pande, with Kumar Gaurav, Rati Agnihotri, Raj Kiran
Music by Biddu, songs sung by Nazia Hassan and Zoeb Hassan

This, of course was, for Nazia Hassan (and Biddu, seen in cameo below), the only other paradigm apart from A R Rahman more than a decade later to seriously challenge the entrenched Hindi film music stronghold. ‘A Star is Born’ garden-variety film, which should have run on its music alone, but after the high of ‘Aap Jaisa Koi’ and the album length ‘Disco Deewaane’, Biddu could not sustain an entire movie of platitudes and songs that went ‘Ooie Ooie’ and ‘Boom Boom’ (which is the only thing from this movie that has survived, thanks to the remix).

This tanked so badly that it would be 26 years before a similar attempt was made with ‘Rock On!!’

Time Out Mumbai- Hindi Picchers

This piece appeared in a slightly edited version in my 'After Words' column in Time Out Mumbai,  Volume 9 Issue 18, April 26-May 9 2013.

Hindi Picchers

Indian Cinema is a 100 years old. I have been around for approximately half that time. I can measure my life out in matinee shows (do they even call it that anymore?). My back-story begins, so I am told, with my sleeping through most of ‘Shikar’ (1968). My mum would wake me whenever the tiger made an appearance and I would make loud growling sounds, irritating all the other Dharmendra fans. I was four.

In the same year, I was given a choice of seeing either ‘Brahmachari’ (chakke pe chakka) or ‘Raja aur Runk’. I chose the latter as I already knew Mark Twain’s ‘The Prince and the Pauper’, read out to me from Classics Illustrated comics. I still haven’t seen ‘Brahmachari’, except for the song where Mumtaz in a cut-off saffron sari shakes a jelly belly.

In the late 60s, movies came to us through advertising rather than actual movie going. As a schoolboy, my eyes were stabbed by the flash of psychedelic hand-painted billboards of ‘Hare Krishna Hare Ram’ (1971) and ‘Bobby’ (1973). One poster I can never forget is of ‘Bhoot Bangala’ (1965) with its skeletons doing the twist and Tanuja screaming on the Radio Cinema; a rerun, in a rundown theatre. Radio would make its way to dusty death in 1974, to be replaced by the pyro-happy Manish Market, home of ‘do number ka maal’.

I readily believed in ghosts for several years after, an obsession fuelled weekly by very cinematic radio plays called ‘Adbhut Kahaniyaan’ on Vividh Bharati. Radio is where we got our primary movie education. New movies would be presented in 15 minute ‘radio-programs’. The phrase ‘kitne aadmi the?’ was on everyone’s lips much before ‘Sholay’ opened on 15th August 1975, thanks mainly to the radio, our very own social media. Television was something we knew of only by reading American Gold Key Comics.

Television (1972) brought with it the back catalogue of films (from the 40s to the most recent) which we assiduously imbibed every Sunday evening at a convenient neighbour’s house, and learnt songs by heart every Thursday with ‘Chhayageet’ and antakshari. Hindi films (and advertising) also educated us in Urdu. Even as a child I knew some impressive words- ‘Aalingan’, ‘Ulfat’, ‘Jwar Bhata’, ‘Salaakhen’, ‘Saawan Bhadon’.

It is lesser known, but world cinema was regularly telecast on Bombay Doordarshan in the 1970’s. I vividly remember every ‘bloody’ scene from Chabrol’s ‘Le Boucher’ (1970) telecast in B/W when I was 8 or 9. Even after television, radio-programs for films would survive well into the 1980s, when the Asian Games, colour TV and Delhi Doordarshan killed all civilised programming that once came out of Bombay’s Worli studios. The memes of popular cinema continued as songs, thanks to Radio Ceylon and toothpaste. Ameen Sayani would host the weekly ‘Binaca Geet Mala’ right until 1988.

Seeing movies was something we took for granted in our fledgling years. All movies ran at the same time- 3.30, 6.30 and 9.30 pm, while children’s films had matinee shows at 10.30am. I saw 3 movies a day several times, especially in college, hopping from theatre to theatre all located near Bombay VT.

Even the prices were mostly the same: cheap seats were the Lower and Upper Stalls, the Balcony was costlier and the Dress Circle the costliest. A carryover from the days of drama, many of Bombay’s cinemas were converted playhouses, which meant that sometimes you had to hope that you wouldn’t get a seat with a column in front of you.

Movies were like comfort food. They would begin with advertisements, the Indian News Review, a Films Division Documentary, the trailers (forthcoming attractions) and a cartoon, all before the main (feature) film started. We missed none of these pleasures.

Hindi picchers were to die for. I waited 2 days straight in line for a ticket of ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’ (1977) and went back home disappointed after reading ‘House-full’ in every seating slot just above the booking window. I had to content myself with radio-programs for several weeks before I finally witnessed the awesomeness of Manmohan Desai’s magnum opus (but I knew all the dialogues before that). Do movies ever go ‘House-full’ anymore?

Seeing a movie ‘First Day First Show’ was a matter of peer pressure. We could not believe how one bunch of kids in school always managed to do that. They would gleefully commit the unforgivable sin of telling you the story and ruin everything. We hated them.

The only movie I managed to see in all its First Day First Show glory was Attenborough’s ‘Gandhi’ (1982) at the Regal. We got lucky, buying tickets from the ‘panch ka pachhees-wallahs’ at no extra cost because on an unusual police presence. Of course, this hardly a story we could tell the next day to those smug so-and-so’s and return the favour.