V. Shantaram,
V. Shantaram
Ayodhya ka Raja, the first sound film made by Prabhat in 1932, in Hindi and Marathi, was another version of the Harishchandra story, there would be a total of eight in five different languages. But Prabhat pulled a coup in successfully roping in a startlingly beautiful, upper crust Brahmin woman - the first for those times - Durga Khote to play the female lead. The film was a big success, and ironically this ws so despite Shantaram's initial scepticism about sound" My first reaction to talkies was rather one of diffidence. For, after seeing a couple of talkies on the Indian screen, I felt that they were just stage plays without a semblance of action or motion which we had come to associate with motion pictures in the days of silent films"After two more successful films Shantaram tried to make perhaps the first colour film in India, Sairandhari, which had been earlier filmed by Painter, and took the prints to Germany for processing. Unfortunately the results weren't satisfactory, but his German trip greatly influenced Shantaram. Dazzled by Nazi organisation and propaganda, Shantaram also got a chance to observe some of the leading German directors, Pabst, Lang and others and learnt much from them.On his return the company acquired land in Poona and built a modern, spacious studio there - complete with mountain scenery, marshland, soundproof recording, editing and shooting studios. Amrit Manthan, the first film made there was set in the Buddhist period and dealt with the battle against orthodoxy which the new movement faced. Flush with new techniques he had picked up in Europe Shantaram brought in new innovations in the use of the camera, for instance using an extreme close up of the eyes of the priest in once scene, and alternating such extreme lose ups with large panoramic shots to play with perspective.But the audience interest in period films was already on the wane, and New Theatres films' must take the credit for this diversification of tastes. This combined with Shantaram's own concern with the ills of Indian society, especially the status of women, turned Prabhat towards contemporary themes. Amar Jyoti, Duniya Na Mane and Aadmi, were three films, almost as a trilogy, which concentrated on the oppression against women. Duniya na Mane had been published as a novel by Apte in the 1920s and had caused a great stir because of the boldness with which it questioned the institution of arranged marriages. Shantaram decided to film it despite all opposition. A bubbly young teenager is tricked into a marriage with an elderly widower. While she transforms herself into a steely individual in the course of the film, refusing to consummate the marriage, the widower too passes from frustration, to understanding and then to tormenting guilt. In the end he commits suicide. There is hardly any background music in the film, the grandfather clock and everyday noises constitute the sound effects, and the former is well-used as a powerful symbol of age, life and death.There were other flourishes too. In one scene the old widower, Gets enraged when he is dying his hair in front of a mirror, and after he has smashed it into bits, each of those broken pieces staring back with his grey hair mocking him. The film proved to be an outstanding success and emboldened Shantaram into making another venture titled Aadmi., the english title of which, 'Life is for Living' was a direct rebuttal of the ethos which Shantaram perceived in New Theatres films. He said he was appalled by "the pessimism of Barua's Devdas and other such films...which affected the audience so strongly."Aadmi dealt with the chance encounter of a policeman Moti with a prostitute Kesar during a police raid. Deciding on an impulse to save her from arrest, Moti is subsequently greatly drawn to Kesar and the two begin to fall in love. It is when he takes her to meet her mother, and Kesar spends the night there with his mother that she realises that their world views are totally different. There is little moralising involved, Kesar's character, much the stronger of the two, is also drawn with great sensitivity and imbued with a rare dignity.
V Shantaram and the growth of a new aesthetic
"In our profession, an artistic failure is nothing; a commercial failure is a sentence. The secret is to make films that please the public and that allow the director to reveal his personality. "
- John Ford
Rajaram Vankudre, better known as V Shantaram, was born in the princely state of Kolhapur in present day Maharashtra. As a teenager he worked on the railways, which after their initial spurt in the 1850s were undergoing the second major phase of expansion in the wake of the world war. Kolhapur was brimming with pioneering theatrical productions, and the young Shantaram, bitten by the bug, joined the company of legendary dancer and singer Bal Gandharva, which was known as the Gandharva Natak Mandali, in 1914-15. While working there he was trained by eminent musicologist Govind Rao Tembe and Tabla master Tirakhwan, whom he would later employ in his own company. Thereafter like so many of the other early pioneers of cinema, he became attached to a cinema hall as an odd job man. He also simultaneously became an assistant photographer in a local studio. While working there he became aware of the film company which the famous painter Babu Rao Mistry had launched and he decide to throw his lot with him. Shantaram's first initiation into cinema was through the Kolhapur film company of Babu Rao painter, one of the three great pioneers of Indian cinema. Artistically probably the most important director in the early period of Indian cinema Baburao had little formal education. It was while watching the films which he showed that Baburao learnt his cinema, studying each frame for its composition, lighting, decor and dramatic technique. A training which stood handy when he launched his own film company, the Maharashtra Film Company in Kolhapur in 1919. Raising finances through the patrons of his art, Babu Rao invited and trained many of his old associates, Sheikh Fatehlal, Vishnu Govind Damle and N D Sarpotdar all of whom became giants of silent cinema, fabricated a camera and started his first film. Sairandhari (1920)--another Mahabharata tale-- the first film made by him was based on a popular Marathi play Keechak Vadh. It was there that a young Shantaram joined him to start work. Initially a mere studio hand, Shantaram found his stock rising after Babu Rao had cast him to play the lead role of Krishna in a film on the Lord. As particular about his casting as he was about other aspects of his film making, Babu Rao was always on the look out for the right person, and anybody even a carpenter, or a technician could be called upon to play the lead role if Babu Rao thought that person fitted the role. Surekha Haran, the biopic on Krishna which Babu Rao made in 1921 found Shantaram catapulted into the lead role, and thus he began his long and fruitful association with cinema. As the actors were always around Babu Rao had the liberty to conduct meticulous and sometimes exhausting rehearsals. One of his actors, a contemporary of Shantaram recalled, " He wrote his own screen-plays with shot-divisions in a very systematic manner. HE would take umpteen rehearsals before actual shooting, study each character in minor detail...explain to the actor his role in situation and allow the artist sufficient leeway for interpretation. However he was very slow, and we sometimes get annoyed with him"
