The evolution of Bollywood cinema from silent films to international prominence

Bollywood

It is believed that the word Bollywood has been inspired from Hollywood, meanwhile the B. comes from the initial of the city Bombay that is now known as Mumbai, which is the center of the film world in India. It has been known that the India cinema was initiated in the year 1913 with the silent film that was known as Raja Harischandra, which has been labeled as the very first Indian feature film. The producer of this film, DadasahebPhalke was also the producer of 23 feature films in India over the years 1913 through 1918. Needless to say, Bollywood had to struggle in the beginning (Grant, 2013).

In the beginning of 1920s, there was a rise in the Indian cinema as many production companies were formed. The movies of this time were historical or mythological in nature. Moreover, imports of the Hollywood plots were also made and were well received by the audience in India.

In the light of social and political changes, movements were seen in the Bollywood industry during the 1960s. The dominating directors of this time were MrinalSen, Ray and RitwikGhatak. They were inspired to offer the Indian audience with an increased sense of realism and tried to base films on the lives of the common man, something that was not done previously. Before the 1960s, most of the movies were commercial production and was more or less a mixture of different genres that included comedy, action with a punctuation of melodrama by means of almost six songs. This is the model that is still being used in most of the Bollywood movies today.

One of the most successful directors of Bollywood during the 1970s, Manmohan Desai is considered to be the father of what is referred to as the Masala film. He believes that he wants people to let go of the misery in which they live for some time and enter into a world of dreams where there are no social problems like poverty and there are no beggars on the street and everyone is well taken care of by God. Therefore, the combination of action, comedy is romance is the kind of template that is still more popular in the Bollywood industry. However, many people have now started to pay attention to the plot, the development of character and the dramatic tension that is there in the feature film. Yet, in most cases start power is considered the sole determinant of the success of the film.

Recently, Bollywood has produced films that attained international fame like Slumdog Millionaire that caused a lot of foreign capital into the industry and opened in a new chapter in the history. The world has now started to pay more attention to the films that are being produced in the Bollywood industry. The main question here is that whether or not Bollywood will be successful with the mainstream audience in America.

Bollywood vs. Hollywood

Hollywood is the film industry that dominates the world, as of now. However, in the recent past, Bollywood has been making a good name for itself by producing films with a solid plot. These films have not only done well in India, but have also been able to gain a great deal of International fame.

There is no denial in the fact that the Bollywood industry is huge. According to some reports, it is the largest film making industry in the world pertaining to the number of films released and tickets sold out. Some statistics have revealed that on average four billion tickets are sold every year in Bollywood. However, the industry has not been able to earn as much as the Hollywood industry does, probably because of the difference in the price of the ticket and the cost that comes to produce and record these films (Hoad, 2012).

There was a time when the Bollywood films were thought to be of lower production quality than the ones that were being produced in Hollywood. Since the western television and Hollywood movies have become popular throughout India, Bollywood is trying really hard to keep up with the Hollywood quality. Even though most of the films that are produced in India have a much lower budget that ones that are produced in Hollywood, the difference has become quite less.

Regulations in the Film Industry

The government of India has been working hard with Bollywood to make sure that the industry performs well within the country as well as internationally. However, the government also has to make sure that the content that is being shown in the films that are produced in Bollywood is appropriate for the Indian audience. There is a censor board in the industry that makes sure that no such scene is on aired that has some content that might be controversial for some people. Many scenes are cut in the movie that goes to the censor board. The main concern of the members of the censor board is to remove any such scenes that show sex or nudity. However, as the country is becoming modern, the censor board has also relaxed its censorship rules (Kapoor, 2012).

Another issue that the government needs to address at a much larger scale and more enthusiastically is that of piracy. The reason why Bollywood is not able to make as much profit as it should keeping in view the number of tickets that are sold and the number of films that are produced is that the movies are pirated and the people do not pay the actual cost of the film. Many steps have been taken by the government to prevent piracy from becoming prevalent but there has only been little success in the matter.

National and International Fame

Bollywood movies are loved by the Indian audience and that is what makes this industry so successful. The Indian cinema has come a long way, as a business project, as it had to face a great deal of competition at the hands of Western Media and Hollywood movies. However, with the passage of time, the industry has become a transnational one as it has depicted many different cultures in its movies. It has made joint ventures with Hollywood that have done quite well at the box office. The Indian movies are not only seen in India, but the industry has also made arrangements for showcasing their productions at International platforms, as these movies are dubbed and on aired in many other languages all over the world. In the past, most of the movies that were produced in India were Masala movies with no solid plot and mere glitz and glamor. However, now since these movies are sold all over the world and shown in cinemas throughout the world, the approach of the producers and directors is now changing. Keeping in view the demand of realism from the audience, the directors and producers now try to come up with a plot that is close to reality and something that the people can actually relate to. For example, the film called Slumdog Millionaire earned billions of dollars because it was so close to the reality of many people in India who live below the poverty line. This is the reason why it was also nominated for the Oscar Award. For any industry to do well in the local market, it is important for it to adapt to the culture of that market. This is exactly what Bollywood is trying to do and therefore it is gaining a good business in the national as well as international market.

Problems and Ethical Issues in the Industry

The biggest problem of Bollywood is that of piracy. People in India have the tendency to copy the films that are released at the box office. The copied films are then either sold to the public at a much cheaper rate or are shown to the public without any cost. As of now, there have been many films that have the potential to make billions of dollars but are even unable to cover for its own cost because of this piracy issue.

Analysts agree of the fact that if all the people paid the right amount of money to watch the film, then the industry could make much more money than it does now. Currently, the producers of the Bollywood films are trying to figure out a way through which piracy could be controlled. On the other hand, there are also some ethical issues pertaining to the content that is showed in these movies. When nudity and sex scenes are shown in the movies, people think it is not appropriate to take their families to the cinema because of such content. Not all the movies are accepted by all the Indian audience and this is because there are various groups in the country. Some conservatives do not approve of even the lightest of the kissing scenes. Moreover, any movie that revolves around the issues of religion, Kashmir and Pakistan tend to gain a lot of negative attention and controversies.

Another problem that Bollywood is being faced with is that the young generation thinks that the plot of the movies is a bit too predictable and they get tired of the same story line in every movie. Since youngsters are the main audience of these movies, the producers have to make sure that they come up with unique story lines so that these people do not lose their interest in these movies. Since most of the students from India go abroad for their higher education, these students expect the kind of movies that are produced in Hollywood (What is Bollywood, 2010).

Future of Bollywood

The future of Bollywood seems bright as the producers, directors and the Indian government is working hard to make the movies nationally and internationally successful. For the industry to become even more successful, it needs to do more joint ventures with Hollywood and local film industries of other countries as well. The viewership of Indian cinema in many parts of the world has increased by an incredible rate, especially since writers are now creating movies with unique plots and touching areas of the society that were always avoided before.

It is also important for the industry to come up with story lines that are not completely predictable and repetitive but attention should be given to projects that go beyond the melodrama and romance that is more or less the main topic for most of the movies produced in the Indian cinema; movies that are more realistic and relatable by the general population always tend to do better in the cinemas. On the other hand, the Bollywood industry should also take steps to reduce, if not completely eliminate, the practice of piracy since it causes a great amount of monetary loss to the industry.

Although it is true that most of the Bollywood viewers are young people who are more open and less easily fazed by explicit sexuality or violence depicted in movies, the industry should also urge film producers to make movies with consideration to family viewers and to keep explicit content which is not vital to the plot of the movie at a minimum, in order to gain a larger audience and to not offend such viewers who believe sex and nudity to be taboo and vulgar.

Since Bollywood is one of the major contributors in the economy of India, the previously outlined steps should be taken to make sure that this industry's profit is sustained.