Seeing is Believing: Selected Writings on Cinema
by Chidananda Das Gupta.
Penguin. Pages 295. Rs 499.
AS a student of cinema, I would wade through large amounts of research material on cinema and film studies. I found that books on cinematic greats like Eisenstein, Truffaunt, etc. were available in plenty and easily outnumbered books on Indian greats like Satyajit Ray or Shyam Benegal. Also, the idiom of books on Indian films was completely foreign. Words like alienation, Brechtian, catharsis were bandied around to explain not only parallel cinema but also Indian commercial films. Not surprising really, considering that most books were written by foreigners. So, Das Gupta’s book Seeing Is Believing comes like a breath of fresh air in the putrid environs of Indian film studies. Here is a book that examines the Indian tradition of theatre and folklore and attempts to link Indian cinema with Bharata’s Natyshastra and Sarangdeva’s Sangeeta Ratnakara. It attempts to straddle the divide between the fast-paced rhythm of mainstream cinema and the meandering pace of parallel cinema. In fact, the book begins with an enunciation of this traditional divide in Of Margi and Desi.
Das Gupta’s writings are surprisingly self-sufficient in that every article is an exhaustive enumeration of one or the other aspect of cinema and emerges as an independent treatise on the subject. Precursors of Unpopular Cinema, for instance, traces the growth curve of realistic films.
Das Gupta analyses the cinematic verities of Himanshu Rai’s Achut Kanya (1936) and V. Shantaram’s Dr Kotnis ki Amar Kahani. Satyajit Ray’s cinema, he feels, has a distinctive realism such that even today "not a day passes when Pather Panchali is not shown somewhere or the other in the world". This Ray film was a precursor to cinema that was not only "artistically valid but also socially relevant".
Influenced by Ray, Ritwik Ghatak focused on the refugee triology with Meghe Dhaka Tara, Komal Gandhar and Subarnarekha while Shyam Benegal’s Ankur, Nishant and Bhumika dealt with oppression of women in Indian society. Bimal Roy’s Do bigha Zamin and Sujata on the other hand were influenced by Italian neo-realism.
Some filmmakers like Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt attempted a symbiosis of ‘art and box-office considerations’ but this blending was a rarity. Efforts like Aamir Khan’s Lagaan or Kamal Hasan’s Hey Ram are few-and-far-between. But as Das Gupta points out, these films hold out a hope that "one day Bollywood will be able to range more freely like Hollywood, from one end to the other of cinema’s spectrum". For cynics, films like Mani Ratnam’s Bombay hold out a promise of cinema no longer "intimidated by the traditional need to endorse the prejudices of the majority".
The interface of politics and cinema, as seen in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the evolution of the cinematic character of Indian women, the necessity of awards—all these issues are examined at length in the Indian context. Das Gupta’s book is a first step towards redefining Indian film studies as an indigenous network of traditional discourses blended with just the right touch of global cinematic patterns.
Seeing is Believing: Selected Writings on Cinema
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