Bengali Cinema
Article adopted from Wikipidea - a free encyclopedia (click here for full story)The history of cinema in Bengal dates back to the 1890s, when the first “bioscopes” were shown in theatres in Calcutta. Within a decade, the first seeds of the industry was sown by Hiralal Sen, considered a stalwart of Victorian era cinema when he set up the Royal Bioscope Company, producing scenes from the stage productions of a number of popular shows at the Star Theatre,Minerva Theatre , Classic Theatre. Following a long gap after Sen’s works, Dhirendra Nath Ganguly (Known as D.G) established Indo British Film Co, the first Bengali owned production company, in 1918. However, the first Bengali Feature film, Billwamangal, was produced in 1919, under the banner of Madan Theatre. Bilat Ferat was the IBFC’s first production in 1921. The New Theatre production of Dena Paona was the first Bengali talkie. A long history has been traversed since then, with stalwarts such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak and others having earned international acclaim and securing their place in the movie history. Today, there are two Bengali film industries, one in Dhaka, Bangladesh (called Dhallywood), and one in Kolkata, India. The film industry based in Kolkata is sometimes referred to as Tollywood, a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge, the area of South Kolkata where this industry is based.
Early history
Hiralal Sen is credited as one of Bengal’s, and India’s first directors. However, these were all silent films. Hiralal Sen is also credited as one of the pioneers of advertisement films in India. The first Bengali-language movie was the silent feature Billwamangal, produced by the Madan Theatre Company of Calcutta and released on November 8, 1919, only six years after the first full-length Indian feature film, Raja Harish Chandra, was released.
The early beginnings of the “talking film” industry go back to the early 1930’s, when it came to British India, and to Calcutta. The movies were originally made in Urdu or Persian as to accommodate a specific elite market. One of the earliest known studios was the East India Film Company. The first Bengali film to be made as a talkie was an adaptation of Tagore’s short story, Dena Paona, released in 1931. It was at this time that the early heroes of the Bengali film industry like Pramathesh Barua and Debaki Bose were at the peak of their popularity. Barua also directed a number of movies, exploring new dimension in Indian cinema. Debaki Bose directed Chandidas in 1932; this film is noted for its breakthrough in recording sound. Sound recordist Mukul Bose found out solution to the problem of spacing out dialogue and frequency modulation.
The contribution of Bengali film industry to Indian film is quite significant. Based in Tollygunge, an area of South Kolkata, West Bengal and is more elite and artistically-inclined than the usual musical cinema fare in India. In the past, it enjoyed a large, even disproportionate, representation in Indian cinema, and produced film directors like Satyajit Ray, who was an Academy Honorary Award winner, and the recipient of India and France’s greatest civilian honours, the Bharat Ratna and Legion of Honor respectively, and Mrinal Sen, who is the recipient of the French distinction of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and the Russian Order of Friendship.
Other prominent film makers in the Bengali film industry are Bimal Roy, the late Ritwik Ghatak, and Aparna Sen. The Bengali film industry has produced classics like ‘Pather Panchali’, ‘Devi’, ‘Jalsaghar’, ‘Devdas’, ‘Neel Akasher Neechey’, ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’ etc.
The most well known Bengali filmstar to date has been Uttam Kumar; he and co-star Suchitra Sen were known as The Eternal Pair.
The pioneers in Bengali film music include Raichand Boral, Pankaj Mullick and K.C. Dey, all associated with New Theatres Calcutta [4]. Other famous playback singers in Bengali film music were Hemanta Mukherjee,Manna Dey, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay and Kishore Kumar.
In the 1980s, however, the Bengal film industry went through a period of turmoil, with a shift from its traditional artistic and emotional inclinations to an approach more imitating the increasingly more popular Hindi films, along with a decline in the audience and critical appreciation, with notable exceptions of the works of directors like Gautam Ghose. However, even at this time, a number of actors and actresses enjoyed popularity, including Tapas Pal, Proshenjit, Chironjeet, Rituparna Sengupta and others. However, toward the end of the 90s, with the a number of directors coming increasingly into prominence, including Rituparno Ghosh, Gautam Ghose, Aparna Sen, Sandip Ray among others, a number of popular and critically acclaimed movies have come out of the Bengali film industry in recent years. These include, Unishe April, Titli, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer,etc and signal a resurgence of the Bengali film industry.
