Semiotics of Films

Objectives:The objective of this chapter is to familiarize the students with the

grammar of films and to enablethem to read signs and codes of films.
Key words: sign, codes, semiotics, connotation, denotation

What is semiotics?

The word ‘semiotic’ is derived from ‘semeion’, the Greek word for sign. The
modern disciplines of semiotics are invented by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-
1914) and Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), later published as Course in
General Linguistics (1906-1911). Essentially, semiotics is the study of signs.
Filmmaking is choosing the precise images for the particular story, and every
picture tells a story. It is noteworthy what can be read from a single image. For
Peirce, there were multiple types of sign, and three main types are worth
discussion. The icon, or a sign which is similar to what it signifies, the index,
which is affected by what it represents, and the symbol, a sign that is connected
to what it signifies by a law or convention.

How does a film use signs?

Film is the art of visual abbreviation. Cinema is synesthetic as it arouses senses.

Roland Barthes, the French semiotician, states in Mythologies, “trivial aspects
of everyday life can be filled with meaning”, and this includes even a
character’s hairstyle. The basic tenet of semiotics is that a sign has two parts:
the physical, or the sign-as-object and the psychological, or the sign as concept.
Filmmakers show and we understand visual signs such as smiles, scars,
guns, badges, hairstyle etc. At this point, an important term you should be
familiar with is synecdoche, that is, relationship of a part to a whole (the crown
represents the king or the queen, the Oval office stands for the President, the
badge symbolizes law and order). It is the little things that fill our everyday
lives with meaning, and the same holds true for films. Consider Javier
Bardem’s hairstyle in No Country for Old Men (2007). Does it say anything
about his character? Film images are signs, look at any film poster and you will
notice how posters and publicity materials send signals that tell you about the
genre of the film.

A key field of study in semiotics relates to the text (literature, film, or even a
piece of music).Films construct meaning through signs. Sign has two parts:
Signifier/signified. Signifieris the physical part; or the tangible
thing we see/hear. It is what we perceive. Signified is the psychological part,
the reaction to the object, the mental picture a signifier evokes; the internal
response to the signifier;
Signified could mean different things to different people.The signifier is the
vehicle and the signified meaning. The key aspect is that the relationship
between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. Lets consider a scenario
where a man gives a woman a red rose. In most cultures this signifies romance
or passion though Gertrude Stein famously declared, “A rose is a rose is a
rose.” Thus, in American Beauty, (2000) Lester Burnham fantasizes about his
teenage daughter’s friend Angela’s body covered in roses that are in saturated
shade of red.
A key feature of semiotics is that the sign exists within a system of differences.
Thus, a sign is part of a code,which permeates the whole of social life.

Feminist film theory criticizes classical cinema for its stereotyped

representation of women. Its aim is to adequately represent female subjectivity
and female desire on the silver screen. During its heyday in the 1970s and
1980s a poststructuralist perspective domineered the approach to cinema,
claiming that cinema is more than just a reflection of social relations in that it
actively constructs meanings of sexual difference and sexuality. The semiotic
study of woman as image and the psychoanalytic study of the male gaze had a
lasting impact not only in film studies, but also within the wider fields of visual
culture and cultural studies. In the 1990s feminist film theory moved away
from a binary understanding of sexual difference to multiple perspectives,
hybrid identities, and possible spectatorships, which resulted in an increasing
concern with questions of “race” and ethnicity, masculinity and queer
sexualities. [Please note that much longer versions of this article are available:
'Feminist Film Theory' in The Cinema Book from 2007; and 'Lara Croft, Kill
Bill and Feminist Film Theory' from 2009].
Laura Mulvey was born in Oxford on 15 August 1941. After studying history
at St. Hilda's, Oxford University, she came to prominence in the early 1970s
as a film theorist, writing for periodicals such as Spare Rib and Seven Days.
Much of her early critical work investigated questions of spectatorial
identification and its relationship to the male gaze, and her writings,
particularly the 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, helped
establish feminist film theory as a legitimate field of study.
Between 1974 and 1982 Mulvey co-wrote and co-directed with her
husband, Peter Wollen, six projects: theoretical films, dealing in the discourse
of feminist theory, semiotics, psychoanalysis and leftist politics. The first of
these, Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons(1974) explored concerns central
to Mulvey's writings: the position of women in relation to patriarchal myth,
symbolic language and male fantasy. Penthesilea represents an experimental
British venture into territory pioneered by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard. With
its counter-cinema style and relentlessly didactic approach, however, its
appeal was inevitably limited to a restricted audience.
The most influential of Mulvey and Wollen's collaborative films, Riddles of
the Sphinx (1977), presented avant-garde film as a space in which female
experience could be expressed. Remarkable formalistic innovation, notably
360-degree pans, inform the film's content, describing the mother's loss of and
search for identity. The result is a challenging, forceful and intelligent film.
AMY! (1980), a tribute to Amy Johnson, is a more accessible reworking of
themes previously covered by Mulvey and Wollen, but it is ponderous and
slow. Far from a conventional biopic, the aviator is used as a symbolic figure,
her journey exemplifying the transitions between female and male worlds
required by women struggling towards achievement in the public sphere.
Crystal Gazing (1982) represented a departure from the emphatic formalism
of Mulvey and Wollen's earlier films. It demonstrated more spontaneity than
previous works, both in performances and in the storyline, elements of which
were left undecided until the moment of filming. Bleak, but with playful
touches, this representation of London during the Thatcher recession was
generally well received, despite criticism of Mulvey for the lack of a feminist
underpinning to the film. She admitted she had been reluctant to incorporate
feminist polemics fearing they would unbalance the film.
Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1982) and The Bad Sister (1982) followed,
revisiting feminist film issues. After these, Mulvey did not return to film-
making until 1991 when production began on her solo project Disgraced
Monuments, an examination of the fate of revolutionary monuments in the
Soviet Union after the fall of communism.
Laura Mulvey is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck
College, University of London.

ROLE OF A FILM CRITIC

The role of professional film critics over the past 20 years has been vastly
altered. The arrival of the internet, the waning of traditional print media, the
continued rise of the critic-proof blockbuster and the aggregating of reviews by
sites like Rotten Tomatoes have all changed the field. Additionally, corporate
consolidation of media has had a major negative impact on criticism - for
example, Rupert Murdoch (now retired) owns the New York Post and the Wall
Street Journal as well Fox News, 20th Century Fox and Fox Television. The
original idea of synergy has increased the pressure on critics - not just at
Murdoch’s publications - to become part of the publicity arm as opposed to
standing objectively on the side. The rise of celebrity culture has also had an
impact - if you want to get that big cover conversation with Ben Affleck can
you slam his Batman V Superman elsewhere in your publication? The demand
for click bait, which results in critics writing about trailers, and the fact that a
cute cat will get more traffic than a curmudgeonly critic, has made a difference:
fuzzy feline or baldy critic, you choose. The line between criticism as a form of
entertainment journalism and film publicity and marketing has narrowed.

So, in sum, there has been a diminishing power. The once-mighty Vincent
Canby at the New York Times has given way to less influential critics who
frequently don’t act as the critical barometer of a Canby or a Pauline Kael or an
Andrew Sarris once did. When I began, there were critics I looked to when I
was wondering whether to see a movie (Sarris was one) and then those that
were negative barometers. If they loved a movie, I stayed away.

Simultaneously, there has been a rise in access for younger critics taking
advantage of the expansion of the internet. For readers, this has led to some
confusion: who to trust? Who to follow? Hence the rise of Rotten Tomatoes,
which samples a relatively wide variety of critics in one place, and pasteurizes
their opinions into the thumbs up or thumbs down, fresh or rotten simplicity.
Another problem in this new economy, in contrast to the old model, is how to
monetize the work of the internet critics. One reason that there has been a rise
in coverage of the Oscars and the Awards season is that there is a clear ad
revenue stream attached.

In short: everybody is a critic, but not everybody gets paid a living wage to
offer their opinions on contemporary films. Many people want to write; few are
articulate, compelling and film literate.

There is also another surprising issue that has not improved as much as I
anticipated when I entered the field twenty years ago when I joined the New
York Post (following the critic Jami Bernard who has since left the field.). After
an initial rejection, I gained a spot in the male-dominated New York Film
Critics Circle. I believed that by now, with my help, and that of my sisters,
there would be many more powerful women in film criticism, continuing to
encourage strong female-driven movies and supporting female directors,
cinematographers, screenwriters and the like. Instead, as the researcher Martha
Lauzen has shown, equity between male and female critics has lagged
dramatically. In her latest report Center for the Study of Women in Television
in Film [1], basically men outnumber women among critics three to one. And
that ratio isn’t changing anytime soon. Many senior female film critics have
been downsized or disappeared from major publications.

In part because of this dynamic, and my desire to see more female-driven

fiction, I continued to write stories even as I reviewed films and expanded my
journalism to interviewing, op-eds, and reporting, in print and online. I write
the stories I want to see. In the new economy, flexibility is an advantage in the
new economy. The marble print pedestal is gone along with the once revered
critic who was relatively free to voice opinions from on high.

Tired of the same boring programmes on your television? Turn off your
television sets. In fact, throw them out. Instead, tune into Web Series which
give you a breather from contrived monotonous weepathons on cable
networks. As the taste and demands of the new-age viewer changes, content
providers are exploring new ways to deliver original programmes specific to
the digital audiences. We know a show is a hit in today’s digital world when it
spawns internet memes and T-shirts with dialogues from the show. In June this
year, a five-part web series, with 40-minute episodes, met with unprecedented
success and pervaded popular culture. A nascent but definite revolution is
brewing in the online space in the world. Web series or shows meant
exclusively for the internet are catching the fancy of audiences, and, as an
extension, of content producers and advertisers.
The web series, as a concept, took off in the early to mid 2000s. In 2003, Red
Vs. Blue, an American comic sci-fi series was distributed independently using
online portals like YouTube. It reached the 100 million views mark and is the
longest-running series till date. Soon, it wasn’t just about hits, but serious
awards. Netflix original and Kevin Spacey-starrer political drama, House of
Cards (2013 onward), became the first web-only TV series to receive major
Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Within the web series industry, there
are three sometimes overlapping streams of activity. These streams are: 1) Web
series: narrative video series original to the web and standalone – not an
extension of an existing TV or Film property. 2) Web video/web show: a web
show is produced via the same model as web series but typically defined as
non-narrative content 3) vlog: serial video blog – for example “YouTubers” are
considered to be “vloggers”.

Crossover cinema is a complex term to define, because of the many factors

which differentiate it from other forms of cinema. Khorana (2013) defines
crossover cinema as “an emerging form of cinema that crosses cultural borders
at the stage of conceptualization and production”. As an emerging form of
cinema, the question remains: How does crossover cinema affect audiences and
the content being produced?

In order to fully comprehend the emerging form of cinema that is Crossover

cinema, it is essential to identify the factors or characteristics that define or
differentiate it from other forms of cinema. The 2014 South Korean/North
American film “Snowpiercer” directed by Bong Joon-ho demonstrates clear
characteristics of crossover film. The film, which is entirely set on a train in a
post-apocalyptic world, was shot principally in the Czech Republic and was co-
produced by South Korean company “Moho films” and by North American
company “RADiUS-TWC”, which is run by The Weistein Company. These
production elements alone demonstrate the cross-cultural nature of the film.
However, multicultural productions don’t solely define a film as crossover
cinema. The elements of the content also have to be considered.

Few films have exerted such profound and lasting influence on viewers the
world over as The Bicycle Thieves, which was made sixty years ago. Its maker,
the legendary master of Italian neorealism, Vittorio de Sica (19011974),
directed a series of outstanding films, but none with a greater impact on the
connoisseur and commoner alike than The Bicycle Thieves. One of the
founding fathers of the neorealist movement in cinema (along with, notably,
Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti and the ideologue, Cesare Zavattini),
Vittorio de Sica is known primarily for the moving trilogy of solitude he made
in the period 19461952. Shoeshine, The Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. took
a close and compassionate look at the deceived and deprived lives of
individuals in the citys lower depths in the aftermath of World War II. The
economic and moral crisis of the upheaval left a deep imprint on De Sicas
sensitive and cultured mind which, in turn, came to be reflected in the trilogy.
Shoeshine (1946) is about two young boys, Pascale and Giuseppe, who survive
the cruel war days by shining shoes. They are good friends who share in many
smalltime adventures, but one day they are arrested and put in a reformatory for
juvenile offenders where their trials really begin. They make a desperate bid for
freedom and manage to escape but they cannot ward off their tragic destiny. In
the film, De Sica dramatically shows the corruption of youthful innocence by
the adult world. Its bleakness and almost unrelieved gloom endorse the view
that while men fight and win or lose wars, the worst sufferers in any war are
unprotected children (and equally vulnerable womenfolk). It is difficult to think
of Shoeshine without its condemnation of the ideology of war. In contrast, The
Bicycle Thieves (1948) ends on a note of assertion of the human spirit which,
when the film was made, seemed weighed down heavily by the material and
psychological consequences of the World War, particularly for those on the
losing side. The films protagonist, Antonio, is an impoverished worker who
finds himself offered the chance to hang posters, but for the job he must have a
bicycle. After selling or pawning everything he owns, including the family
linen, he manages to buy one, only to have it stolen. Accompanied by his small
boy, Bruno, Antonio scours the urban wilderness for the thief and his bicycle
but to no avail. Meanwhile, the ultimate humiliation awaits Antonio which he
overcomes by virtue of a divine moment of unspoken solidarity with his little
son. For six decades, The Bicycle Thieves has had the kind of international
influence that any filmmaker of class would give his life for. The views of at
least two unabashed lovers of this great human, artistic and political document
may be recalled. At home, the role that De Sicas film played in helping Satyajit
Ray decide to become a filmmaker is by now a part of the folklore of serious
Indian cinema. It was during a visit to London in 1949 that Ray first saw The
Bicycle Thieves and felt immediately attracted to it. It gave him the confidence
he needed to use nonprofessionals as well as outdoor locations (for Pather
Panchali). In years to follow, Ray was to see the works of other neorealist
masters but, as he was to repeatedly say, for him De Sica represented the
highest achievements of Italian neorealist cinema. His admiration was
particularly reserved for The Bicycle Thieves, and some years before his death
he told the documentarist K Bikram Singh how he always marvelled at De
Sicas eye for detail; his ability to cram a wealth of information in a single shot,
etc. Among renowned film scholars, perhaps no one has been more enthusiastic
in his praise of The Bicycle Thieves than Andre Bazin, the intellectual and
ideological guru of the Cahiers group which, in the Sixties, produced the
French nouvelle vague and took the film world by storm. Calling the film an
exalted specimen of pure cinema, Bazin underlined the absence of professional
artists, the absence of sets and the bare presence of a storyline. He wrote more
than one long essay justifying why he thought The Bicycle Thieves to be the
only valid Communist film of the whole past decade, meaning the Forties. De
Sica rounded off his celebrated trilogy with the story of Umberto Domenico
Ferrari, an oldage pensioner who finds it a devastating experience to make two
ends meet on a miserable government dole. As Umberto D. (1952) wanders the
city with just his pet dog for company, he has no choice but to confront the
utter moral and material destitution to which he has been reduced by forces
beyond his comprehension. This masterpiece, which was easily recognised as
such by Bazin and stoutly defended by him in the face of severe opposition
from rightwing newspapers in both Rome and Paris, was especially close to De
Sicas heart. For one thing, it was made with his own money.
More importantly, the film reflected beliefs and commitments that De Sica held
dear. The director refused to leaven the starkness of the old mans life in the
Search for News, Stock Quotes & NAV's 5/18/2019 The Bicycle Thieves: Film
with profound influence - The Economic Times
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/culture-cauldron/the-bicycle-thieves-
film-with-profound-influence/printarticle/3067502.cms 2/2 midst of an
unrelenting society by taking recourse to any emotional concession. Great as
The Bicycle Thieves is as both art and politics, its chances of popular
acceptance were enhanced by the innocent sufferings of the child Bruno and his
sad yet loving relationship with his father. There was no such element of relief,
if that is the right word to use, in the saga of the old man who, swallowing his
pride and dignity, is compelled to fall back on varied tricks to save himself
from going under. In between The Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D., De Sica
made what he called a fable (where) my only intention is to attempt telling a
twentiethcentury fairy tale. In the amazingly lyrical Miracle in Milan (1950),
De Sica renounced for a while his preoccupation with neorealism. His hitherto
quiet but moving struggle with the nittygritty of life as faced by the lowest
common denominator is replaced here by a fantasy so fantastic as never to have
been equalled by anyone attempting anything similar. Recently, I was amazed
to find a film from Israel called The New Land, paying tribute to Miracle in
Milan in many unmistakable ways. Verily, masters die, but their works stay
on... Miracle in Milan is populated by an assortment of characters who are
often as crazy and colourful as they are desolate and deprived. They are
residents of a shanty town who try to resist their expulsion by a group of
powerful landowners who want to clear the place and put up buildings and
factories. Chased away from their homes, the vagrants search for a welcoming
place causes them to climb skywards. In a visually stunning denouement, these
mythical characters escape poverty by flying over the city of Milan on magic
broomsticks. A work of heightened imagination, the film can be read as a paean
to the magic and miracle of cinema which allows free admittance to even the
poor and powerless to the realm of gorgeous wishfulfilment. At the same time,
it can be taken as an oblique condemnation of the philistinism and bourgeois
greed with which commercial centres like Milan were and are associated. Neo-
realism never really deserted De Sica, or it could be put the other way round.
Like a refrain, it would surface again and again in his films, sometimes even
when he dealt with less distressful subjects. The theme of young couples in
trouble, fleeting reflections of which are to be seen in the opening passages of
The Bicycle Thieves, was repeatedly tackled by De Sica. Into stories of
conjugal difficulties, frequently stemming from unemployment or poverty, De
Sica deftly wove those aspects of his political and intellectual credo that
viewers had first observed in his films of the late Forties and the early Fifties. Il
Tetto (1956), the story of a young homeless couples desperate dream to build a
house in a single night, carried perceptions dating back to the more obvious
neorealist period. The first half of the Sixties was a prolific period in De Sicas
career when he made no less than half a dozen films. These were varied in
subject, style, mood and texture. One poked fun at human vulnerability in the
face of religious insistence; another was plain naughty with erotic storytelling
as its principal prop. But it was with Il Boom (1963) that the maestro caused a
round of renewed interest in his films. A victim of financial difficulties, a once-
wealthy contractor is on the verge of bankruptcy and scandal. Despairing, he
contemplates suicide. However, when he learns that an industrialist who has
lost an eye is offering an astronomical sum to whoever will give him his, he is
gripped by euphoria. He hopes in this manner not to lose his social position, but
he has not given any thought to the possibility that his dream might go up in
smoke. Il Boom was neorealism with a twist in that it examined the privileged
class from a new angle, giving a view of the psychology of someone who had
been rich but had been reduced to dire straits by circumstances. Vittorio de Sica
did not live long into the seventh decade of the last century, but he was restive
and creative till the very end. In fact, he made a film even in the year he died in
the French town of Neuilly sur Seine at age 73. In a film career spanning
almost 35 years, De Sica eminently succeeded in adding many fresh
dimensions to the seventh art. But, for The Bicycle Thieves alone he is assured
of immortality.

“I know nothing of life except through cinema”, said Jean-Luc Godard, the
iconic French-Swiss film director from the 1960s.
True, cinema often becomes a reflection of our daily lives. It is much more than
a source of entertainment, and the emergence of parallel cinema only proves the
point further. With movies like The Lunchbox, Margarita with a straw, Masaan
etc making it to the larger audience share, people have started acknowledging
parallel cinema. For those who are unaware, parallel cinema deals with issues
and depiction different from its mainstream counterpart. There is bare realism
associated with these movies, often ditching the glamour of traditional Indian
cinema. Consequently, you will hardly ever find item songs or Rohit Shetty like
fight sequences in these films.
The history of parallel cinema
The earlier era of Indian cinema was dominated heavily by adaptations of epics
like Ramayana, Mahabharata etc. However, post-1920s, there was an arrival of
the kind of cinema that began to challenge norms. Savkari Pash (1925), for
example, was a silent film by Baburao Painter that revolved around a poor
farmer and his woes. Raithu Bidda (1939) by Gudavalli Ramabrahmam
criticised zamindars, the ones who had turned into tax collectors for the British
government. The movie was subsequently banned by the colonizers.
From the late 1940s to1960s, India witnessed the emergence of parallel cinema
on a larger scale, also referred to as the Golden Age of Indian Cinema. It was
inspired by Italian Neorealism (a film movement that focused on the poor and
working classes). Bengali cinema is credited with giving light to parallel
cinema, with major directors like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha,
Ritwik Ghatak etc holding the beacon. However, contrary to the popular
opinion, Bengali cinema wasn’t the only one putting the idea forward. Adoor
Gopalakrishnan (Malayalam cinema), Girish Kasaravalli (Kannada cinema),
K.N.T. Sastry (Telugu cinema) etc also worked in a similar direction and hence
can be called the pioneers of Indian parallel cinema.
In those days, movies were heavily inspired by Indian literature. Till date, they
are extensively studied by scholars to make inferences about the demographics,
socio-economical as well as political environment of that era. Because of their
unique perspective, they are also referred to as art movies and were frequently
funded by state governments to promote an authentic Indian art genre.
With the increasing cost of movie production in the 1990s, parallel cinema
started witnessing a decline. As the industry became commercialised, it became
risky to create art movies, since there was no assured return on them. Hence,
Bollywood once again started reeling towards the mainstream cinema.

Parallel cinema and our society

The emergence of parallel cinema had one simple aim: to give movie-goers
something more than meaningless entertainment. It won’t be too wrong to call
it a “rebellious” branch of our otherwise conforming cinema. Mandi (1983), by
Shyam Benegal is one such movie dealing with issues that the society talks
about in dulled whispers, if at all. The story revolves around a brothel and its
prostitutes, who ultimately fight for their place of residence, when under threat
by politicians who are themselves frequent visitors. Not many people know
this, but Gulzar, besides being an impeccable lyricist was also a film director.
In 1982, he came out with Namkeen, a movie that uncovered oppression of
women in rural India.
Cinema is a very powerful weapon that works both ways. While cinema
influences people, people influence it right back. That is why, parallel cinema
plays a very cruical role- mirroring our society, as well as affecting it.
However, there are a few hurdles in the way. While art movies continue to
make a presence at film festivals like Cannes, Venice, Berlin etc, and get
praises from critics, they fail to reach the audience who needs them the most.
Movies that talk about social stigma and plight do not make it to the big
theatres and if they do, often stay confined to single screenings. The viewers
there are largely privileged elites who already understand and support parallel
cinema. But who will take it to the other segment of the society, the one that
actually goes through whatever our art movies talk about?
How often would you come across a lesser privileged person sitting inside a
luxurious auditorium and watching a film screening? Their access to cinema
still largely remains limited to conformist movie theatres, the ones that show
movies like Race 3, Mastizaade etc. Thankfully, Bollywood has taken to itself
to produce movies like English Vinglish, Lipstick under my burkha, A
wednesday, Gangs of Wasseypur etc that try to bring mainstream entertainment
infused with parallel cinema. So, while we work to bring parallel cinema in all
its rawness to the society, movies like these keep our hopes and sanity alive.

The Nouvelle Vague: A Beginner's Guide

The directors associated with the Nouvelle Vague, including Francois

Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jacques
Rivette, Louis Malle, Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy have
made, between them, films numbering in the many hundreds. (For reference,
you can see the New Wave Encyclopedia for films we consider to be a part of
the French New Wave.) If you were to add to this the works of those various
filmmakers of the era who have been labelled as New Wave at one time or
another, as well as those influenced by the movement, both in France and
abroad, then the number of potential films would run into the thousands.

Getting to grips with the New Wave might understandably therefore seem a
daunting prospect for somebody wanting to explore the movement for the first
time. With that in mind, this introduction will provide some general context and
a brief overview of some of the characteristics associated with the French New
Wave. It will also offer some suggestions about where to start your
investigations, as well as an overview of the seminal "must see" films which
best define the movement. If you’ve already seen many of the best known New
Wave films, or are looking for a more specific approach, you might try our Top
10 New Wave Film Lists, which drill down by director, sub-genre, performance
and various other categories.
Fifty years on: Why the New Wave Still Matters
It has now been more than half a century since the directors of the New Wave
(in French, "Nouvelle Vague") electrified the international film scene with their
revolutionary new way of telling stories on film. The New Wave itself may no
longer be "new", but the directors and their films are still important. They are
the progenitors of what we have come to think of as alternative cinema today,
and they had, and continue to have, a profound influence on cinema and
popular culture throughout the world. Without the Nouvelle Vague there may
not have been any Scorsese, Soderbergh, or Tarantino (or Forman, or Wenders,
or Bertolucci), and music, fashion and advertising would be without a major
point of reference.

The directors of the Nouvelle Vague, and those of their like-minded

contemporaries in other countries, created a new cinematic style, using
breakthrough techniques and a fresh approach to storytelling that could express
complex ideas while still being both direct and emotionally engaging.
Crucially, these filmmakers also proved that they didn't need the mainstream
studios to produce successful films on their own terms. By emphasizing the
personal and artistic vision of film over its worth as a commercial product, the
Nouvelle Vague set an example that inspired others across the world. In every
sense they were the true founders of modern independent film and to watch
them for the first time is to rediscover cinema.

MEGHE DHAKA TARA

India’s moment of liberation from the British was also a moment of rupture:
with independence came partition on August 15, 1947. Partition did not mean
quite the same thing for Punjab and Bengal – the two provinces that got divided
on the eastern and western borders of India – but there was one aspect that was
common to both: most ordinary citizens found it difficult to accept the fact of
partition and their lives changed beyond recognition once they became
refugees.

And yet, as far as Bengal was concerned, Partition hardly had any immediate
thematic impact on film or literature. The first Bengali novel to deal with
partition came out only in 1955 – Narayan Sanyal’s Bakultala P.L.Camp. But it
was highlighted on celluloid much earlier, in the 1950 classic, Chinnamul (The
Uprooted), by Nemai Ghosh. This landmark film, which ushered in Bengali
cinematic realism, relates the story of a group of farmers from East Bengal who
are forced to migrate to Calcutta because of Partition. Ghosh used actual
refugees as characters and extras in the film, but there were some seasoned
theatre actors in the cast as well. One of them was Ritwik Ghatak – who would
soon turn director himself and make the partition theme his own.
Ghatak’s films are one of the most powerful artistic articulations of the trauma
of displacement after the Partition. The cultural unity of the two Bengals was
an article of faith with him. He never accepted the Partition and it became an
obsessive theme with him.

Ritwik Ghatak (1925-1976).

In a cinematic career that spanned over 25 years until his death in 1976 at the
age of 50, Ghatak left behind him eight feature films, 10 documentaries and a
handful of unfinished fragments. But he is remembered mostly for his feature
films. Recognition came his way very late, as he had the misfortune of being
largely ignored by the Bengali film public in his own lifetime. This was
particularly unfortunate; as Ghatak was one of the most innovative of Indian
filmmakers, developing an epic style that uniquely combined realism, myth and
melodrama in his films.

Before he came to films, however, Ghatak had been involved with the Indian
People’s Theatre Association, the cultural wing of the Communist Party of
India, which, since 1943, led a highly creative movement of politically engaged
art and literature, bringing into its fold the foremost artists of the time. IPTA
had a profound influence on Ghatak. True to its credentials, he strongly
believed in the social commitment of the artist; hence, even when he left theatre
for cinema, he always made films for a social cause.

Cinema, to him, was a form of protest; and more than any other artist of his
time, he used this medium to highlight the biggest contemporary issue in India
– the Partition and its aftermath. As he once said: “Cinema, to me, is a means of
expressing my anger at the sorrows and sufferings of my people. Being a
Bengali from East Bengal, I have seen untold miseries inflicted on my people
in the name of independence – which is fake and a sham. I have reacted
violently to this – and I have tried to portray different aspects of this in my
films.”

Ghatak was, however, averse to the term “refugee problem”. In one of his
interviews, he said, “I have tackled the refugee problem, as you have used the
term, not as a ‘refugee’ problem. To me it was the division of a culture and I
was shocked”. This shock would give birth to a trilogy on the Partition –
Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-capped Star), 1960; Komal Gandhar (E Flat),
1961; and Subarnarekha (The Golden Thread), 1962. In them, he highlighted
the insecurity and anxiety engendered by the homelessness of the refugees of
Bengal; tried to convey how Partition struck at the roots of Bengali culture; and
sought to express the nostalgia and yearning that many Bengalis felt for their
pre-Partition way of life.‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’.

Meghe Dhaka Tara, based on Shaktipada Rajguru’s Bengali novel of the same
name, is one of Ghatak’s best-known films on this theme. It also has the
distinction of being the only film by him that had been well received by the
audience on its release. The narrative centers round Nita (Supriya Chowdhury),
a refugee in a colony in Calcutta, who struggles to maintain her impoverished
family – at first, giving private tuitions to school children; and then, as the
financial situation worsens at home, by working full-time in an office, giving
up on her own graduate studies. She is the exploited daughter, taken-for-
granted sister, and betrayed lover – and ends up being just a source of income
for the family. She is the victim not just of the Partition, but of familial
pressures, and her life ends tragically fighting tuberculosis – though not before
she cries out her desire to live to her brother (Anil Chatterjee) in a hill
sanatorium and admitting that she had wronged in accepting injustice, that she
should have protested for her rights.

‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’.

Komal Gandhar revolves round the progressive theatre movement in Bengal in

the early 1950s, set against the memories of Partition. The protagonists, Bhrigu
and Anasuya (Supriya Chaudhuri and Abanish Banerjee), belong to two rival
theatre groups; but they come close because of their shared passion for the
theatre and their shared longing for the homes they had to leave behind in East
Bengal. This film was one of Ghatak’s own favourites because of the challenge
of operating at different levels: in it, he drew simultaneously on the divided
heart of Anasuya (who is torn between Bhrigu and Samar, the man she was
betrothed to years ago, now living in France), the divided leadership of the
theatre movement, and the pain of divided Bengal. But his audience was not
prepared for such a complex film and rejected it out of hand.

‘Komal Gandhar’.

Subarnarekha, once again, is about refugees from East Bengal and centres
around a brother and sister pair (played by Abhi Bhattacharya and Madhabi
Mukherjee). In search of a better living and a secured future for his sister,
Seeta, Ishwar (who is more of a father than a brother to the little girl), leaves
their refugee colony in Calcutta and takes up a job in an iron foundry in the
remote, rocky district of Chhatimpur, in neighbouring Bihar. But his sister
ironically faces the same grinding poverty that he wanted her to avoid when she
elopes with and marries a penniless writer, Abhiram (Satindra Bhattacharya),
her childhood playmate and a low-caste boy whom Ishwar had adopted while
leaving Calcutta.

‘Subarnarekha’.

Brother and sister meet again in exceptional circumstances: she is the prostitute
he comes to after a night of mad abandon with his friend in Calcutta; and he is
her first client, when Abhiram’s sudden death in an accident leaves her with no
other option but to turn to this trade. Ishwar is devastated by the encounter and
Seeta kills herself, watched by her son. At the end of the film, an aged Ishwar
leads Seeta’s child to the promised ‘new house’ in Chhatimpur by the river,
which forms the leitmotif throughout the film.

Nita, Sita, and Anasuya, the three heroines of Ghatak’s Partition trilogy, are
flesh and blood women of his times, but Ghatak gives their contemporary tales
of suffering a timeless appeal by giving them a mythic dimension. In their own
unique ways, they represent the travails of Durga, Sita and Sakuntala
respectively – parallels that has been brilliantly analysed byAshish
Rajadhyaksha in his book, Ritwik Ghatak: A Return to the Epic (1982).

No other Bengali filmmaker had the kind of deep engagement with the theme
of Partition as Ghatak had. In fact, in all the four decades since his death,
partition seems to have been significantly absent from the very imagination of
directors. However, in the last few years there has been a slight change: 2013
saw the release of Meghe Dhaka Tara, a theatrical biopic of Ghatak directed by
Kamleswar Mukherjee, with Saswata Chatterjee in the lead role.

FILMS DIVISION - The outpouring of affection for the Films Division caps a
lovefest that began when Kundu took over on May 28, 2012. He stepped into
the shoes of Kuldeep Sinha, who was not very popular among independent
filmmakers. The government-run producer has a sizable staff of directors and
technicians with the capacity to churn out close to 60 documentaries, newsreels,
shorts, and animation every year. The Films Division has had its glory years,
mainly between the 1950s and the '70s, and its fallow phases. It has always had
a tentative relationship with outside as well as in-house filmmakers on the
question of creative control. Depending on who you talk to, FD is a behemoth
that produces yawn-inducing propaganda; a halfway house that has some rotten
eggs but many dedicated officials; and a vital producer and festival organiser.

The battleground where competing ideas about the balance between aesthetics
and politics were fought was often Mumbai International Film Festival. Matters
reached a head in 2004. Outraged that MIFF selectors were rejecting one
politically sensitive documentary after another, several filmmakers pulled out
of the event and set up a parallel festival, Vikalp Films for Freedom.

Yet, some among the same documentary network are clamouring for a
government official to stay rather than leave. Some of this has to do with a
anxiety that MIFF will get a saffron tint (a repeat of 2004, essentially), and
some to do with a general concern of the future of the many forward-looking
initiatives that Kundu has introduced.

Saving today for tomorrow

For instance, the re-modelling of the two FD buildings, which is taking place
even as construction of the National Museum of Indian Cinema continues on
the same premises, is part of a modernisation plan that could potentially create
a documentary studio set-up, says Kundu. “The buildings had been planned for
celluloid-based workflows ‒there were huge rooms for checking film, for
instance,” he said. “A lot of space had not been properly utilised, so we decided
to optimise and put modern workflows into place.”

Once the remodelling has finished, FD should have “industry-standard

infrastructure” for filmmakers that is primarily for its staffers but can also
benefit independent filmmakers. “The renovation has been planned to allow in-
house and outside directors to use the services efficiently,” Kundu said.
“Budget accommodation rest-houses are being planned on the premises, for
instance. We will be pitched slightly below the market rate, and there will be a
discount for documentary filmmakers who register with us. The facilities can
even be made available to feature films.”

Another important project started by Kundu, and which will require oversight
to be maintained as per its original vision of access to all, is the Archival
Research Centre. It was set up in September 2013, and makes available the
library of FD’s output of over 8,000 titles in its 67-year history to researchers
keen on studying the reflection of the nation’s progress in the films that were
meant to record this forward march.

“Thousands of FD titles have been digitised from their celluloid-based formats,

but most of them were still available only on DVD,” Kundu said. “There was
no platform to quickly compare films, so we have put the entire library on a
server and have installed software that that allows researchers to annotate,
categorise and create meta-data.” The celluloid-based films, meanwhile, are
being converted into digital files and stores on linear tape open formats, which
have a longer shelf life than digibeta tapes.
Several FD classics have also been released as DVDs that are affordable and
more attractively packaged than they used to be.

Another aspect to the FD’s efforts to preserve its rich history is its inclusion in
the Media Ecology Project, which is being executed by several universities and
archives in the US, including the Library of Congress and UCLA Film and
Television Archive. “If you want to look at any particular aspects of the state’s
involvement with cinema, it will be there on the server,” Kundu said. “You can
look at data across time and conduct your research.”

The Films Division’s emphasis on recording the present for the sake of the
future includes collecting rushes of commissioned shoots, doing a rough edit of
these rushes, and storing them for people to look at later. The organisation’s
staffers (around 400 in Mumbai and around 450 more in the rest of the country)
have also been recording interviews and opinion monologues of eminent people
about their life and times.

“If you don’t get an opportunity to make a film, at least the opinion has been
recorded,” Kundu said. For instance, FD staffers recorded a conversation with
Chris McDonald, president of the board that organise the Hot Docs
documentary festival in Toronto every year, when he dropped by the FD office,
and it has been included in the archive. “Much of this footage won’t be made
into a film, but these assets acquire tremendous meaning over a period of time,
and all of them will be in the public domain.”

Building a foundation

Kundu is a classic foundation builder, a bureaucrat with a reputation for

directness and efficiency that has been earned over 28 years of experience in
the fields of finance, education, science and technology, information
technology and rural development. He was Principal Secretary for industrial
training and vocational education in Haryana before being posted to Mumbai.
Kundu had never worked for the I&B Ministry in any capacity, but cinema was
a private passion ‒ he was part of a small film club operating in Chandigarh.

“I had seen very few documentaries before I came to FD,” Kundu said. “FD has
converted me.”

One of the reasons filmmakers love to hate FD is because of the “tremendous

goodwill” that they actually have for the government-run organisation, he
claimed. “Their frustration came because a disconnect has developed between
the organisation and filmmakers,” Kundu said. They lost faith and they resented
the organisation, and many didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Their
resentment is as great as their love.”

One of the first things Kundu did after moving to Mumbai FD was to get a
lowdown on its operations from the staff. He then set up FD Zone, a series of
weekly screenings in Mumbai and other cities that is curated by independent
filmmakers and showcases titles from FD’s vault and outside productions. The
club’s name was suggested by Kundu as a tribute to Russian master Andrei
Tarkovsky’s Stalker, in which the “Zone” is a place of wish fulfillment.

“FD Zone was started for two reasons: we had infrastructure tremendously
suited to screening documentaries, and we wanted to start interactions with
filmmakers on the outside,” he explained. “It was an easy enough thing to do,
but it was significant in terms of its outcome. It helped filmmakers reconnect
with the Films Division.”

Another step taken towards bridging the gap with the outside world without
compromising FD’s role in the equation is to tweak the manner in which films
are commissioned. Typically, the Films Division funds non-staffers and owns
the copyright. Some of the films that were sanctioned recently, such as Kamal
Swaroop’s Rangbhoomi, have been made on a so-called ad hoc basis ‒ the
organisation didn’t commission the idea of retracing Dhundhiraj Govind
Phalke’s years in Varanasi in the early 1920s, but loaned technicians for the
shoot and extended post-production facilities to the filmmaker. “This process
transfers current technology and aesthetics to the technical teams at FD,”
Kundu explained.

The Films Division is also adding the number of screens it has on its premises
in Mumbai, and by the time MIFF will be held next year at the FD
headquarters, there will be at least five fully functional screens, Kundu says.

This is among the promises he won’t be around to see to its logical end, but he
does pledge to attend MIFF. “One of the fallouts of this assignment is that I am
desperately in love with documentary filmmakers,” he said. “They are an
impossible group of people, very difficult and extremely opinionated and
stubborn, but what passion they have for what they do! It is amazing.”

HIRALAL SEN –

Bengali filmmaker
The son of a lawyer, Sen was running a successful photography business when
in 1898 he saw a film presentation by one Professor Stevenson that featured
alongside the stage show The Flower of Persia at Calcutta's Star Theatre. With
Stevenson's encouragement and camera Sen made his first film, of scenes
from The Flower of Persia which then featured in the Star Theatre programme.
After Stevenson had moved on Sen purchased an Urban Bioscope from the
Warwick Trading Company in London and in 1899 with his brother Motilal
Sen formed the Royal Bioscope company. Sen was initially dependent on
imported film, generally exhibited at the Classic Theatre, Calcutta, where the
films featured in the intervals in the stage shows. When he began producing his
own films regularly they chiefly were, as with Stevenson, scenes from stage
productions at the Classic, such as Bhramar, Hariraj and Buddhadev, all
between 1901 and 1904. This phase of his career culminated with his longest
film, Alibaba and the Forty Thieves (1903), again based on an original Classic
Theatre staging. He also made many local views and newsfilms, took
commissions, made advertising films and put on private shows for members of
high society. As newer film ventures entered the market place Royal Bioscope's
fortunes declined, and production ceased in 1913. Shortly afterwards all of
Sen's films were accidentally destroyed by fire.

In 1913 Dadasaheb Phalke created history by directing Raja Harishchandra, the

country’s first feature film. However, he was not the first Indian to make
movies.

That credit belongs to Hiralal Sen (1866-1917), who worked out of Calcutta (as
Kolkata was then known). Son of a lawyer, Sen was a pioneer who made
movies – documentaries and product commercials – but has remained unknown
to most even in his own state.

Born in Bogjuri (now in Bangladesh), Sen not only experimented with the new
medium, but also made fundamental contributions to it.

“In 1904 he captured on film a public rally opposing Lord Curzon’s plan to
divide Bengal. To record the immensity of the rally, he placed the camera on
top of the treasury building so that he could film the speakers including
Surendranath Banerjee against the backdrop of a huge crowd that extended
almost two miles,” said Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay, film historian and former
professor of film studies of Jadavpur University. The camera placement was
novel in those days.

Many consider the film on proposed Bengal partition to be the first political
documentary in the country.

Sen also shot two product commercials that were way ahead of his time. There
was no concept of creating sets in those years, and he chose lavish villas beside
the Hooghly river to use as locations for the commercials. The products were
Jabakusum hair oil and Edward’s anti-malaria drug.

“The high point of Hiralal Sen’s career was the movie he made when George V
came to India. The other was the film on the Bengal partition,” said
Mukhopadhyay.

“… ailing from cancer of the throat and standing on the verge of insolvency, he
stood in competition with no less than four of the best cameramen from
England working for the Government of India and beat them in their own game
by being the first to release the ‘Visit Film’ of Delhi Durbar with a wider
coverage” Kaushik Majumdar, a researcher on silent films wrote last year in
The Silent Film Quarterly, a magazine published from Hollywood.
Hiralal Sen’s body of work was destroyed in a fire at a godown in Kolkata in
1917 where he had stored his films.
To highlight his contribution, critics point out to the time when Sen worked. On
December 28, 1895 the world’s first movie was shown in Paris. In India, the
first show was held at Watson Hotel in Bombay on July 7, 1896. Hiralal Sen’s
challenges were far more than merely those any medium faces in its nascent
stages. He lived in a colony that was far removed from Europe (where the
action was taking place) and had no access to either technology or
infrastructure. When he showed his films, the city had electric supply in only
two areas (Howrah Bridge and the Maidans), and he had to make elaborate
arrangements to screen movies.

“Bioscopes needed electric arc lamps, or in their absence, lime light. Sen had to
procure elaborate apparatus to produce lime light. He burnt lime in a bath with
oxygen that was stored in a bladder. It produced a bright light that would light
up the screen. The process was fraught with risks and could have involved
minor explosions,” said Debiprasad Ghosh, Kolkata-based film researcher who
has edited a book on Hiralal Sen that is awaiting publication.

“They were beholden to Father E J Laffont, a teacher of St Xavier’s College in

Calcutta. He fixed the light generating apparatus and continuously offered them
advice on how to handle the machines,” said Majumdar. Laffont used magic
lantern and phonograph in his lectures on public science.

Unfortunately, Sen only lives in a few books and notes of researchers and
academics. There is not even a proper biography on him. A careless, if not
reckless man, he made little effort to preserve his work. On October 24, 1917, a
fire in a godown in north Kolkata where all his films were stored destroyed his
complete works. Sen died two days later at the age of 51.

“Sen is indeed the pioneer of movies. Nothing can be more unfortunate that he
did not get the recognition,” said Anjan Bose, whose grandfather Anadi Nath
Bose purchased two cameras used by Sen.

In 1898, Star Theatre in Kolkata began screening movies and Sen and his
brother Motilal were captivated by a show. The brothers realised that movies
are going to be a medium of the future.

Sen’s biggest drawback was he lacked business acumen that could have helped
him to find commercial success with the medium he was passionate about.
Towards the closing years, he fell on such hard times that he had to sell off his
favourite camera to a usurer.

His father Chandranath Sen, a successful lawyer, funded his dreams. Sen spent
a princely sum of Rs 5,000 to buy a cinematograph machine. The entire
apparatus including projection equipment had to be purchased from England.
Along with his brother Motilal, Sen set up The Royal Bioscope Company in
1898, which was India’s first movie company. In the beginning, they used to
purchase films made by companies in England and showed them at parties and
weddings of the rich. These were mainly films shot by Englishmen on the daily
life on streets of Calcutta and India.

Sen also purchased films from Pathe Frere company and held shows at parties
and weddings of rich families such as the one of Raja Rajendra Mullick (1818-
1897) who built the famous Marble Palace at Jorasanko. He started travelling
movie shows in Bengal, but did not hold bioscope shows at Calcutta Maidans
like Jamshedji Framji Madan, who moved from Karachi to Calcutta in 1883.
His company attracted the attention of the Britishers when he hired Dalhousie
Institute and held shows at the turn of the 20th century.

But he was not satisfied by just making money showing films made by others.
He wanted to shoot them too. In 1903 he filmed the popular Alibaba and Forty
Thieves.

Sen had a fruitful association with Amarendranath Dutta and Kusum Kumari,
stars who used to act in theatres at Start Theatre. Sen collaborated with him and
filmed some of his plays that were produced by Classic Theatre. Initially, these
were shown during intervals of the stage shows.

However, he fell out with Dutta and the association ended before it could spin
big money for the Royal Bioscope Company. Poor at managing relations, his
ties with brother Motilal, his partner in Royal Bioscope Company, also snapped
towards the end. In 1913, he quit the company he set up with his brother and
joined London Bioscope owned by Kumarshankar Gupta, ironically, a former
employee of Royal Bioscope Company.
Sen did not marry. Movies were a natural progression for him.

“He was a pioneer. If a fire destroyed his works, we are guilty of almost erasing
his contribution and memory,” rued Dipankar Bhattacharya, secretary of
Uttarpara Cine Club.

“If his films were not destroyed, he would have got as much prominence as
Dadasaheb Phalke,” remarked Shyamal Karmakar, head of editing at Satyajit
Ray Film and Television Institute.

That’s not an exaggerated lament. There is not even an alley in his name, forget
an award. He is hardly known outside his state. A visit to Blacquire Square in
north Kolkata where the fire in the godown destroyed his entire films reveals
that Sen is largely unknown.

“I have never heard of Hiralal Sen, or that a godown here caught fire,” said
Haradhan Ghosh, 81, who was born 19 years after the fire and lives a few
buildings away from 18 Blacquire Square.

In 2012, the year after Trinamool Congress government assumed power, an

open platform was set up by the Kolkata International Film Festival authorities
to screen silent era films in the way they were screened at the turn of the 20th
century. They called the platform Hiralal Sen mancha. That was the biggest
recognition the pioneer got.

The land of his birth was more generous. On October 26, the Federation of
Film Societies of Bangladesh in association with Bangladesh Shilpakala
Academy organised a programme in Dhaka to commemorate the death
centenary of the “first filmmaker of the sub-continent”. They also published a
book on him.
BENGALI FILM INDUSTRY - As Indian cinema celebrates its 100 years,
attention, for a large part, has been centred on Bombay, where Dadasaheb
Phalke’s mythological Raja Harishchandra- the ‘first’ full-length ‘Indian’ film-
released in 1913. However, Calcutta, till 1911, the capital of British India,
already had a nascent film industry in the 1910s, and was almost at par with
Bombay in silent and first talkie eras– a history that is often forgotten. Over the
years, Bengali cinema has had its own presence, producing some of India’s best
regarded filmmakers and the best of Indian cinema.

The first cinema shows in Bengal have been dated to 1896-7, a few months
after the first Indian showing of the Lumiere Brothers’ Cinematographe in
Bombay on 7 July 1896. An early pioneer was Hiralal Sen, who started the
Royal Bioscope Company, and was making short films from around 1900. The
early Bengal film Bilwamangal (1919), based on the play of the same name by
Urdu playwright Agha Hashr Kashmiri, was produced by Madan Theatres Ltd.,
Calcutta’s giant film corporation, which controlled silent film distribution and a
chain of cinema theatres across the subcontinent. Madan Theatres remade
Bilwamangal as one of their early talkies in 1932 with the famous duo of
Master Nissar and Jahanara Kajjan, and silent star Patience Cooper. The film
was a Madan super-hit, and showed in Calcutta and Bombay to full houses.

With the coming of the talkies in the early ‘30s, new studios became prominent
in Bengal- most famous being Birendranath Sircar’s New Theatres Ltd.,
established in 1930. New Theatres’ landmark films were Debaki Bose’s
Chandidas (1932), Pramathes Barua’s Debdas (1935) and Mukti (1937) and
Nitin Bose’s President (1937). Pankaj Kumar Mallick, music director at New
Theatres, first made use of Rabindra Sangeet in Barua’s Mukti. The studio
created singing stars like Umasashi, Kananbala and K.L. Saigal. Other stars
were Pahari Sanyal and Chandrabati who became recognized character actors
of the 1950s. New Theatres also made double versions of its films, in Bengali
and Hindi-Urdu, a practice followed by other Bengal studios such as B.L.
Khemka’s East India Films. The Hindi Devdas made with Saigal was one of
the highest grossers of the time, and is perhaps the most iconic of Indian films,
which has been remade by different directors. Their Hindi-Urdu productions
gave Bengal studios a larger ‘all-India’ market and kept them afloat into the
early ‘50s.

A New Theatres product was Bimal Roy, who had worked as cinematographer
on Barua’s Devdas, and went on to become one of Indian cinema’s most
celebrated directors in the ‘50s. Roy’s debut film Udayer Pathe (1944) made for
New Theatres was a milestone for realist cinema, and was made in Hindi as
Humrahi.
In the ‘50s, Bengali cinema also produced its most iconic star duo, Uttam
Kumar and Suchitra Sen. Uttam Kumar remained Bengali cinema’s top hero for
over two decades, and his death on 24 July 1980 almost brought the Bengali
industry to a standstill. The best-known ‘event’ of the ‘50s Bengali cinema is
nonetheless Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali which released in 1955 and won
“Best Human Document” at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. Pather Panchali
was appreciated by filmgoers and critics alike, as was Apur Sansar, the third
film of Ray’s Apu trilogy, which had a ‘silver jubilee’ in Calcutta. Apur Sansar
introduced Soumitra Chatterjee, who along with Uttam Kumar became Bengali
cinema’s top male star, and also worked Ray’s classics like Charulata (1964).
Ray worked with Uttam Kumar in Nayak (1966), a film supposedly inspired by
Uttam’s iconic stardom.

Ray’s contemporary Ritwik Ghatak was an influential member of the IPTA,

and spearheaded the more political avant-garde cinema. In the ‘70s, Mrinal
Sen’s films depicted the contemporary social unrest and the rise of a radical
politics in West Bengal. Sen’s Akaler Sandhane-a film within a film- where a
film crew recreates the 1943 Bengal famine, won the Silver Bear at Berlin in
1981. In the same year, Aparna Sen made her first film 36 Chowringhee Lane,
becoming best known as a feminist filmmaker with Paroma (1985).

Satyajit Ray received an Oscar for his lifetime’s work days before his death on
23 April 1992. It marked the end of an era, but the ‘90s also saw the rise of a
young director in the Ray mould- Rituparno Ghosh, whose films returned urban
middle-class audiences to Bengali cinema. Ghosh, already a National Award
winning director, made a splash nationally with Chokher Bali (2003) where he
cast Aishwarya Rai as Tagore’s Binodini.

This collage of Bengali films, actors and directors rightfully finds a pride of
place in the 100th year of Indian cinema.
André Bazin (b. 1918–d. 1958) may well be the most influential critic ever to
have written about cinema. He contributed daily reviews to Paris’s largest-
circulation newspaper, Le Parisien libéré, and he wrote hundreds of essays for
weeklies (Le nouvel observateur, Télérama) and such esteemed monthly
journals as Esprit and Cahiers du cinéma (which he cofounded). A social
activist, he directed cine-clubs and, from 1945 to 1950, worked for the
Communist outreach organization Travail et Culture. He befriended Jean
Renoir, Roberto Rossellini, Orson Welles, and Luis Buñuel and was a father
figure to the critics at Cahiers who would create the New Wave just after he
died. He adopted the delinquent François Truffaut, who dedicated The 400
Blows to him. Bazin’s influence spread to critics and filmmakers in Latin
America, eastern Europe, and Asia, where today, for instance, Jia Zhangke
salutes Bazin as formative to his approach. One of Bazin’s first essays, “The
Ontology of the Photographic Image” (“Ontology” essay; 1945), anchors much
of what he would produce. It legitimates his taste for documentaries, for
neorealism, and for directors who don’t use images rhetorically but to explore
reality. Criticized by communists for writing “The Stalin Myth in the Soviet
Cinema,” he would be posthumously satirized by Marxist academics for his
presumed naïve faith in cinema’s ability to deliver true appearances
transparently. These attacks now seem parochial. He was influenced by
Bergson, Malraux, and Sartre. He specialized in literature as a brilliant student
at the École normale supérieure, where he also studied geology, geography,
and psychology. Metaphors from the sciences frequently appear in his articles.
While many of his acolytes are “humanists,” particularly devotees of the
“auteur policy,” it is increasingly clear that Bazin attends equally to systems
within which films are made and viewed, including technology, economics, and
censorship. Of more than 2,600 articles he wrote, fewer than 300 have been
accessible in anthologies. He personally collected fifty-two of his most
significant pieces in Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? Other collections then appeared
thanks to Truffaut, and other devotees. Only in 2018 has the entire oeuvre at
last become available in French. Obviously, those who have written about
Bazin to this point have done so knowing only a fraction of his work. Even so
what they have found is consistent, rich, and consequential. Bazin’s impact will
undoubtedly grow with the publication of his complete Écrits.

Film Theory and Approaches to Criticism, or, What did that movie mean?

Movies are entertainment. Movies are documents of their time and place.
Movies are artistic forms of self-expression. Movies we see at theatres, on
television, or home video are typically narrative films. They tell stories about
characters going through experiences. But what are they really about? What is
the content of a film?

DIGGING DEEPER: FOUR LEVELS OF MEANING

Recounting the plot of a movie, telling what happens, is the simplest way to
explain it to someone else. But this is neither a film review nor a film analysis.
It’s merely a synopsis that anyone else who sees or has seen the movie will
likely agree with. This level of content may be called the referential content,
since it refers directly to things that happen in the plot and possibly to some
aspects of the story that are merely implied by the plot. In John Boorman’s
Deliverance (1972), four men from the city go on a weekend canoe trip that
unexpectedly becomes a life or death struggle for survival of man against man
and man against nature. Some characters survive, others don’t. Most films can
be analyzed more thoroughly to reveal deeper levels of meaning.
A review (perhaps 400-1200 words) typically includes personal impressions
and evaluations of a movie’s content and techniques. A good review may be
subjective, yet still touch superficially on topics that might be explored in more
detail in a longer formal analysis. An analysis (perhaps 1200- 12,000 words)
attempts to determine how the film actually uses various cinematic techniques
and elements of film or narrative form to make a viewer react in a certain way
and why it makes viewers come away with certain opinions about it. Serious
film criticism, whether essays written for magazines, journals, books, or class
assignments, attempts to analyze films, rather than merely review them or
provide simple descriptions of what happens. An analysis requires some
reflective thought about the film, and usually benefits from multiple viewings
and outside research.

Most films include lines of dialogue and depict obvious developments of

character that explicitly communicate meaning to the viewers. Explicit content
is perhaps some sort of “moral of the story” or socio-political attitude that the
filmmaker is expressing directly through the mouths and actions of the
characters. Some reasons the men in Deliverance give for taking the canoe trip
include friendship and camaraderie, proving their manhood, and experiencing
nature before it is destroyed by industrial development. As the plot develops,
they also express personal attitudes about life and law and survival, which the
writer and director obviously want the audience to think about. We also
seeexplicitly how construction of a new dam is affecting the wilderness as well
as human settlements.

A slightly deeper level of interpretation is implicit content, which may be less

obvious but can still be inferred by seeing how the characters change, grow,
and develop throughout the course of the film. Issues and ideas dealing with
general human relations (rather than those specific to individual characters)
may be fairly easy to recognize but are not explicitly stated by the characters.
Sometimes implicit meanings are less obvious, and different viewers might
interpret the same thing in different ways, depending upon their own
experiences and expectations. In Deliverance we see implicitly the change in
one character from being a passive follower after he is accidentally thrust into a
leadership position. We see another character’s casual attitude about casual sex
change drastically after a traumatic experience in the woods. We see all four
men force to contend with unexpected dangers in ways that imply how
differently individuals can deal with the same events and suggest that
certaincompromises in one’s ideals may need to be made in order to survive. It
could even be possible to infer that the four central characters are separate
personifications of conflicting values that might exist within a single
individual. Such a literary technique allows an author (and viewer/reader) in
effect to argue with himself over what the best or most practical course of
action would be under comparable circumstances, and what different decisions
might lead to. One could also identify instances of dramatic irony and argue
whether certain events are meant to be considered “poetic justice” for the
characters involved.

Implicit, explicit, and referential interpretations are based entirely on the film as
a self-containedwork, on “internal evidence.” It is also possible to find richer
meaning in a film, meaning deduced by knowing something about its creators
and the time and place it was created, meaning from “external evidence” that is
not possible to identify exclusively from the film itself. Sometimes this type
ofmeaning is intentional on the part of the filmmakers, and other times it may
be unconsciously incorporated into the story. Analyzing a film on this level is
treating the film as a symptom of a much greater influence than simple
dramatic concerns for the characters and their actions. A symptomatic
interpretation looks at the film as part of the broad context of society, reflecting
and illustrating themes prevalent in the culture, in the time and place it was
made, and possibly in the creator’s personal life experience. This level of
interpretation tries to recognize symbolic content, identifying characters and
situations as metaphors for something else, or possibly seeing the entire story
as an allegory about something else. Deliverance is an outdoor adventure and
journey story set in the American south, but many critics looked at it as an
allegory for the disastrous American experience in Vietnam, which was still
going on when the film was made. Men conditioned by modern urban
civilization believe they’re more or less invincible as they travel into a rural
environment inhabited by a less technologically advanced culture of backwoods
people they look down upon. However,they soon discover the more primitive
people can be more dangerous than they expected, they must do things they
were not prepared to do to survive, not everyone gets out alive, and those that
do are forever haunted by the experience. The movie District 9 (2009) is a
science fiction action-thriller, but this Oscar-nominated and internationally
popular South African production by Neill Blomkamp is also symptomatic of
late 20th and early 21st century attitudes towards immigration, minorities,
government and corporate policies, the news media, and documentary
filmmaking.