History of Bollywood Tips
Read these 10 History of Bollywood Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Bollywood tips and hundreds of other topics.
I Love You, Now (Don't ) Kiss Me
Until the late 1980s, India's Film Censor Board enforced a strict ban on kissing in film. So many of the popular films of the day were love stories, so filmmakers had to find clever ways around the ban. Most often, audiences were treated to seeing the hero and heroine melt together, their lips moving within a millimeter of each other before the heroine would turn coyly away or the hero would simply pull his lady into a romantic embrace. Sometimes the pair ducked behind a tree or door and audiences were left to imagine what was going on behind. Today, kissing scenes are much more common in Hindi films, although many actresses still refuse to kiss their leading men on screen!
A Little Song and Dance
Ardeshir Irani's 1931 film, "Alam Ara" brought sound to Indian cinema. But it also brought something more important to the nature of "Bollywood" as we know it today: song and dance as part of the storytelling. Grand musical numbers with colorful costumes began to be incorporated into films, and became a way to underscore the plot of the film. The song-and-dance routines serve another purpose as well. In order to appease the film censor boards, oftentimes the only "sex scenes" in Indian films are the seductive and symbolic dances between hero and heroine!
Crossing Over
Bollywood films are getting a makeover. In fact, there is a new movement away from the standard masala musicals to stories that speak to the lives of NRIs (Non-resident Indians) living abroad. Here in the States, the UK, and Europe, these "crossovers" include wide-release, potential international box office smash hits like "The Guru," "Bend it Like Beckham," and "Bride & Prejudice." Some are small independent films like, like "Flavors" and "Indian Fish in American Waters" from the US, and the UK's recent "Chicken Tikka Masala."
Meet the Khans
No, not Genghis and Kubla. Meet Aamir, Shah Rukh, and Salman. These three men are all Khans, all unrelated, and are the top actors in Bollywood. Aamir Khan is known as the perfectionist, the "real" actor, as he is reknowned for throwing himself into preparations for each role he takes on. In fact, in a booming industry where many actors work on several films at once, Aamir Khan only works on one at a time! Shah Rukh Khan, or "King Khan," as he's known among fans, is perhaps the most loved star. Handsome and charming, he's the ultimate crowd-pleaser. Salman Khan is the braun of the trio. His pumped up sex appeal has garnered him a bit of a rough boy reputation, but it's kept him a top-grossing star for decades!
Playback Singers
In the 1940s and 1950s the phenomenon of the "playback singer" came into being. Since many of the actors and actresses looked fantastic on screen but did not have musical talent, professional singers were hired to record the songs to which the stars would lipsynch. Lata Mangeshkar and her sister Asha Bhosle dominated most of the roles with their distinct and lovely voices. Mohammad Rafi and Kishore Kumar reigned supreme as well. Today, however, Udit Narayan is perhaps the most popular playback singer for men, providing the musical voice for most of the major Bollywood heroes.
Got Three Hours? Watch a Bollywood Film!
A typical Bollywood film is three hours long. In terms of the film itself, this is usually due to the four or five musical numbers that are nestled between the dialogue scenes. But why does each film have to be that long? From an Indian perspective, going to the cinema has historically been a big event. Fourteen million Indians go to the movies on a daily basis. That's about 1.4% of the population of 1 billion. And they shell out the equivalent to the average Indian's day's wages (US $1-3) to see them. Not surprisingly, they want their money's worth!
Women Wooed by the West
There are two types of women in classic Bollywood films: the Good Girl and the Bad Girl. The Good Girl is virtuous, chaste, and possesses traditional Indian values. In the end, Good Girl is happily married off to Handsome Hero. On the other hand, the Bad Girl is outspoken, often smokes and drinks and dances like her hips are on fire. You can be sure that at the end of the film Bad Girl will either a) die, b) develop cirrhosis of the liver (or some other vampish disease) and die, or c) bleed to death in some way, alone and unloved. What is interesting is that over the last few decades, film critics have drawn the parallel between good/bad and east/west. The bad girls were often depicted as having been corrupted by the allegedly loose morals of western society. Therefore, early Bollywood film served to warn women of the dangers of getting wooed by the wicked western ways!
Masala Magic
The formula Bollywood -- or "Masala" -- film always involves a few major components. Music, dancing, archtypical characters and plot lines, and stars in the lead roles. Story lines typically revolve around good versus evil in some form, whether it is a political drama or a love story. The former often deals with strained India-Pakistan relations as a result of Partition in 1947 and/or internal governmental corruption. The latter archtpical theme is conveyed as a boy-meets-girl story with a twist: Many times, the boy falls in love with a girl of elevated social class and the two must band together to rebel against her family (and society in general) by proving how pure their love is. And it seems the formula is magic; the Indian film industry is the largest in the world, producing over 800 films a year.
So, Why "Bollywood"?
"Bollywood" actually got its name because the Hindi-language film industry in Bombay functioned similarly to the Hollywood studio system in the 1930s. (Bombay + Hollywood = Bollywood) Studios employed the same directors, actors, musical directors, etc. As sound became more popular in film, the studio system becan to fail. Independent producers became more and more sucessful in wooing talent away from their studio contracts, often with money that was not entirely legitimate.
The Dawning of Indian Cinema
The history of Bollywood actually begins with the dawning of the larger phenomenon of Indian cinema, which began at the end of the ninteenth century. On July 7, 1896 the Lumiere Brothers' Chinematographe screened six soundless short films at the Watson Hotel, Esplanade Mansion in Bombay. The first actual films made and screened by an Indian took place in 1899, when Harishchandra Bhatvadekar (also known as Save Dada) shot two short films and exhibited them under Edison's projecting kinetoscope.
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