RESEARCH INDIA PRESSNew Delhi (INDIA)

Edited bySIMRAN CHADHA

Author

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Acknowledgement viiIntroduction ixNotes of Contributors xvii

ADAPTATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY HINDI CINEMA1. Refraction or Parallel Narrative? The Imaging of 3

R.S Bedis Ek Chadar Maili SeJasbir Jain

2. Madame Bovary and Maya Memsaab: Narrative and 17Image Vis--vis Form

Anand Prakash3. Fiction into Film: InterSemiotic Translation as 29

Interpretation and Adaptation in JunoonAnuradha Ghosh

4. Rudali: From Mahashweta Devi to Kalpana Lajmi 46Pragya Gupta

5. Adapting Jane Austen to Hindi Cinema 62Smita Mitra

6. Screening the Novel: Umrao Jaan 81Kathakoli Das Gupta

7. Consider the Source, But How Much? Ruskin 96Bond & Vishal Bhardwaj, The Blue Umbrella

Prem Shristava & Shweta Teiwari8. From Devdas to DevD 117

Amitava Nag9. Usne Kaha Tha: When the Camera saw too much 132

Nirmal Kumar10. The other Side of Nationalism in 146

Rabindranath TagoresNovy Kapadia

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS11. Hindi Cinemas Adaptation of the Hitchcockian Idiom 173

Priyadarshini Shanker12. The Colonial Discourse of British Heritage Cinema 196

Vijaya SinghPARTITION: TEXT AND FILM

13. Celluloid Representations of the Partition of Punjab 213Somdatta Mandal

14. Cracking Earth: Deepa Mehtas adaptation of 242Bapsi Sidwhas Cracking India

Donna Coates15. Pinjar: Amrita Pritam to C.P Dwivedi 270

ADAPTING SHAKESPEARE16. Tough Love: Reading the Politics of Violence and 287

Desire in OmkaraSonali Pattnaik

17. Dissidence and subversion within Power Structures: 319Maqbool and Macbeth

Shilpi MalhotraConclusion 327

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For this anthology, I am grateful, first and foremost, to thecontributors - for their conviction and unstinting supportregarding this venture - a testimony of their passion for twoextremely powerful mediums of social expression.I feel humbledby the faith they reposed in me and theirgraciousness in theinterim period between their submissions, my other academicforays and the final version.

I am grateful to the following institutions and persons,without whose help this manuscript would perhaps still bemeditating on my bookshelf:

The Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla:for ensuring an environment conduciveforuninterrupted work.Mr Prem Chand, for the generous supply of books on Indiancinema.

I simply do not know how to thank my teachers at the University,particularly Professor Manju Jain for introducing us to FilmStudies; ProfessorIra Bhaskar, Professor Richard Allen andProfessor Robert Stamwho in myriad ways beeninspirational.Professor I.S Bakshi, Principal, Dyal Singh College, for beingan unfailing source of encouragement and advice; my colleagues

and students at Dyal Singh College for the charged discussionsregarding cinema; Mr Suman, at Research India Press, for hispatience with my handwriting. My friend Nirmal Kumar whosevoracious laughter at my early-morning mail suggested self-publishing followed by his dissertation regarding what hethought of such-type books!

Above all, my father, Maj Gen M. S. Chadha and my mother,Mrs Kanwal Chadha for stepping in as surrogate parents formy daughters, Meher and Piya.

Simran Chadha

viii BOLLYWOODISING LITERATURE FORGING CINEMA

The pre-eminent Russian director, Sergi Eisenstein, oncedeclared rather exasperatedly at a press conference that cinemadidnt just come out of thin air. With this enunciation,Eisenstein had in mind more than the technological evolutionthat had facilitated the then fledging art of cinematography orfor that matter, the indelible influences of the performative arts- vaudeville, mime and commediadelle arte - on earlycinematography. Eisenstein statement, as recorded in his essayDickens, Griffith and Ourself, refers to the narrative art of story-telling with its antecedents in myth, epic and folklore.

The bond between cinema and literature established duringthis embryonic stage was forged, though arguably, in terms ofan anxiety of influence.1 This was perhaps because the new artof cinema as opposed to the established one of literature wasperceived as churning out commercially-viable, escapistentertainment meant for the working class. In a bid to establishthe credentials for cinema, Eisenstein, as recorded in his essayDickens, Griffith and Ourself, resorted to stressing the literaryantecedents of this new art. For instance, attempting to explainadvanced cinematic techniques such as the dissolve or the fade-out, Eisenstein drew attention to the intrinsic cinematic and

x BOLLYWOODISING LITERATURE FORGING CINEMA

visual quality inherent in the narratives of canonical Britishauthors such as Charles Dickens and Gustav Flaubert. Likewise,Charles Chaplin in his autobiography entitled My Autobiographyrecalls the manner in which scenes would be detailed beforebeing shot at the sets. Chaplin iterates how instructions wouldbe effectively imparted to actors by referring to well-knownliterary personages. For instance, a phrase such as this isFalstaffian or this is the modern Madame Bovary helpedestablish the tenor of the scene to be shot and doing away withendless rounds of takes and re-takes before the camera startedto roll. For that matter, as Chaplin insists, even the word shot,which is such an normative part of cinematic vocabulary,was instituted by the clap boys on the sets as they referred tothe scene being enacted in terms of a shot (Chaplin, MyAutobiography).

Griffith too relied on citing literary examples when he firstintroduced shot-composition and rapid-intercutting in his films.While this raised the bar regarding effects of dramatic intensity,the novelty of the experiment did not go quite well with theteam of The American Biograph. The conversation between thedirector and his team is recorded thus:

How can you tell a story jumping about like that the peoplewouldnt know

what its about,followed by Griffiths quick retort:

Well, dosent Dickens write that way?to be met with

yes, but that Dickens, that novel writing, thats different,leading to Griffiths clinching of the argument with the iconicsentence:

oh, not so much, these are picture stories, not so different.

INTRODUCTION xi

It is on Griffiths not so different that the weight of adaptationhistory rests and it is those ramifications that we need to unpackhere.

While cinema, with its life-like images and soundtrack wasclearly a new frontier as far as realist modes of representationwere concerned, the role of the Victorian novel, particularly itsadept deployment of the contraries of realism and melodrama,cannot be discounted. Early modes of film-making whichimitated tableaux-like performances where characters madeconspicuous entrances and exits before the camera soon gaveway to the dramatisation of the narrative sequences and finallythe mode that continue to be in vogue scriptwriting. At thesame time, the likes of Edwin Stanley Porter, E. W Griffithand Mark Sennet were exploring the malleable possibilitiesavailable with this new medium and this brought into thereckoning techniques such as continuity-editing, parallel-action,sharp-focus, inter-cut, fade-out and so forth.

With novels provided the raw matter for script writers,societies such as the Societe Film d Arte were founded with thesole purpose of figuring out how best a literary classic may beadapted for the silver screen. The films produced by the Societehowever didnt do much towards extending the potential ofthe new medium as they were concerned more with theproblematic of adapting literary modes such as ambiguity forinstance. However, since literary texts deemed canonical werebeing transformed into movies, soon murmurs in literary circlesregarding the fidelity of the adapted work became increasinglyaudible and this may well be regarded as the beginning of theidea of adaptation.

Early adaptation theorists show the influence of westernepistemologies of influence when they accord to the literarytext the status of the Ur or original text. This methodology

xii BOLLYWOODISING LITERATURE FORGING CINEMA

focussed on ferreting deviations made by the adapted work. Atthe same time there was the realisation that an adaptation mustnot be a pictorialization of the novel, for indeed the best formfor such as work would be the voice-over. Moreover, if a filmwas too close to the novel, it was dismissed as displaying a slavish,lack-lustre mentality on part of the auteur. The controversy maybe better illustrated by example. In his adaptation of CharlesDickens novel Great Expectations, the director David Lean workson a narrative which focuses on the vagaries of love betweenEstella and Pip (Pip here being metonymic of the social mobilitytypified by the Victorian age). Integral to Dickens social critique Magwitch - the escaped convict is treated by Lean as no betterthan melodramatically tangential to the Pip-Estella plot andaccorded a few shots that define him as a semi-civilized barbarianhabituating the marshes. Leans adept use of close-focusphotography in the scene on the marshes is instrumental inkeeping the attention on Pip and the effect this sensationalistcreature has on a sensibility such as Pips the Victorian lad onhis way to becoming a gentleman. If Leans narrative even asmuch as attempts to capture the fears, fetishes and changingpower valences of this society being fast transformed byindustrialisation, it is through the emotional turbulence causedby the presence and/or absence of Estella on the Pip character.The strength of the Dickensian classic however lay in itscapturing the effect of the power of this emergent class onestablished social hierarchies.

So, while the book may have been germane for the film,the end product clearly needs to be evaluated on its own terms- and these had better not be hierarchical. So, to access the filmpurely on grounds of its difference from the written text is afallacy of the old school, as the essays in this volume testify.Ranging from adaptations of canonical British and European

INTRODUCTION xiii

texts to Shakespearean tragedy, short stories from the Hindiand Urdu and activist fiction - the idea spurring a collection aseclectic as this is to show the methodology as enabling self-reflexivity and even subversion since what is laid bare in thismovement across spatio-temporal contexts are the powervalences of the society for which the adaptation is being made.

IIWith mainstream Hindi cinema as the focus of this volume,one needs to acknowledge the influences affecting the genre.Firstly, it was with the influx of migrant population, particularlyfrom the Frontier provinces following Partition that Hindicinema assumed the proportions of an industry. The metropolisof Bombay became the meeting ground for performers, writersand lyricists and soon production houses were set up by theKapoors, the Sippys, the Chopras, the Anand brothers amongother migrant families. Popular indigenous traditions of Parsitheatre, such as the (in) famous love-triangles were instantlytaken-up by screen writers, as were the mythological micro-narratives comprising the epics, the Ramayana and theMahabharata. The spirit of nationalism on the rise at this pointin time found space in the narratives of this cinema. Thisdiversity of influence was also due to its rather heterogeneousaudience body. For instance, the production house of the WadiaBrothers scripted narratives from the Arabian Nights with fearlessNadia performing as the inimitable Hunterwali. They even heldscreenings exclusively for children and young adults. The DadaSahib Phalke group on the other hand specialised in scriptingmythological tales. Phalkes Raja Harishchandra, screened at TheCoronation Cinematograph has been cited as Indian cinemas officialdebut. Babu Rao Painters Savkari Pash, adapted from a novelabout social reform has likewise been considered a forerunner

xiv BOLLYWOODISING LITERATURE FORGING CINEMA

in the genre of adaptation.2 The prime factors governing anadaptation have been classified as: audience response;commercial viability, technical aspects and the direction impartedby the auteur. This book has been divided into three sections.The section entitled The Novel and Bollywood, discussesadaptations of Mahashweta Devis short story Rudali by directorKalpana Lajmi; Mirza Hadi Ruswas Umrao Jaan Ada adaptedand directed by Muzaffar Ali; Gustav Flauberts Madam Bovarydirected by Chetan Anand; two adaptations of Jane AustensPride and Prejudice Bride and Prejudice by Gurinder Chadha andAiyesha by Rajshri Ojha; the multiple cinematic renderings ofSarat Chandra Chattopadhyay classic text Devdas, ChandradharSharma Guleri Usne Kaha Thai directed by Mani Kaul; R.S BedisEK Chadar Maili Se directed by Sukhwant Dhadda; RuskinBonds A Flight of Pigeons adapted and directed by Shyam Benegalas Junoon and Ruskin Bonds short story The Blue Umbrella adaptedand directed by Vishal Bhardwaj.

The section Theoretical Perspectives chalks out determiningthough lesser-known influences on Hindi cinema such as therepertoire of Raj fiction that lent itself to popular adaptationand categorisation as British Heritage Cinema and the enduringinfluence of Alfred Hitchcock on Hindi cinema. For Raj fictionwe look at the following films: E.M Fosters Passage to Indiadirected by David Lean; Paul Scots Raj quartet Jewel in the Crowndirected by Jim O Brien and Christopher Morahan and M.MKayes Far Pavilions directed by Peter Duffel. The Hitchcockinfluence on hindi cinema will be considered through the films:Woh Kaun Thi directed by Raj Khosla; Khamosh and Parindadirected by Vidhu vinod Chopra and Samay directed by BobbyGrewal.

In the section Filming Shakespeare, filmmaker VishalBhardwajs adaptations of Macbeth and Othello as Omkaara

INTRODUCTION xv

and Maqbool will be discussed. In the section Filming Partition,the following adaptations will be discussed: an unpublished shortstory by Ismat Chughtai directed by M.S Satyu as Garam Hawa,Bhisham Sahnis Tamas directed by Govind Nihalani, BapsiSidhwas Ice-candy Man directed by Deepa Mehta as Earth 1947,Saadat Hasan Mantos short story Toba TekSingh, KhushwantSinghs Train to Pakistan directed by Pamela Rooks and AmritaPritams Pinjar directed by C. P Dwivedi.

Finally, as history bears witness, the most enduring of artforms have developed through constant cross-fertilizationbetween the arts. Hindi cinema, in this regard then, as asymbiosis of cultural practices, influences and adaptations, istruly a post colonial hybrid.Simran ChadhaNote: A condensed version of the article Amrita Pritam, Pinjar andRight Wing Ideology, was printed with the All India WomensConference journal issue under the title Of Women Born: Author toAuteur.A condensed version of the article From Devdas to Dev D:Reconstructing Sexuality above Chastity was printed in Himalmagand may be accessed at http://himalmag.com/devdas-dev/

Notes1. The term was coined by the literary critic Harold Bloom to denote

the (subconscious0 influence that an established writer/artist mayin all probability exert, over a younger even if radical writer/artist.As used here, the term anxiety serves to express the relationshipbetween the two mediums, particularly in the west.

2. Although a well documented fact, it nonetheless bears mention thatthe introduction and rapid dissemination of the novel form on thesubcontinent provides ample testimony to the popular receptionand adaptation of colonial influences onto a culture so different.

Anand Prakash: Marxist, Activist, Writer & Critical Thinker;former Associate Professor, Department of English,Hansraj College, University of Delhi.

Anuradha Ghosh: Film Scholar & Associate Professor,Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, NewDelhi.

Amitav Nag: Published extensively on contemporary IndianCinema; is a Freelance Writer & Journalist based atShantiniketan.

Donna Coates: Pre-eminent scholar and Professor EmeritusUniversity of Calgary.

Jasbir Jain: Pre-eminent postcolonial scholar and formerProfessor Emeritus, University of Rajasthan.

Kathakoli DasGupta: Editor with Prevention & Healthmagazine; formerly associated with the Department ofEnglish Miranda House, University of Delhi.

Novy Kapadia: Journalist, Sports Critic & Commentator;Associate Professor, Department of English, KhalsaCollege, University of Delhi.

Nirmal Kumar: Visiting Professor Universities of Aarhus andVienna; Associate Professor, Department of History,Venkateshwara College, University of Delhi.

Pragya Gupta: Associate Professor, Department of English,Gargi College, University of Delhi.

Prem Shiristav: Preeminent scholar, American Studies;Associate Professor, Department of English, MaharajaAgarasen College, University of Delhi.

Priya Darshini Shanker: PhD candidate, NYU; MediaPractitioner & Critic.

Shilpi Malhotra: Scholar,Victorian Studies; associated with theDepartment of English, Motilal Nehru College, Universityof Delhi.

Smita Mitra: Film-Scholar associated with the Department ofArt and Aesthetics JNU; Associate Professor, Delhi Collegeof Arts and Commerce, University of Delhi.

Shweta Teiwari: Freelance editor and writer with researchdegrees in Film & Literature.

Somdatta Mandal: Professor, Department of English,Shantiniketan.

Sonali Pattnaik: PhD candidate, University of Mumbai;formely Assistant Professor, Department of English,KiroriMal college, University of Delhi.

Simran Chadha: Visiting Faculty, Valparaiso University,Indiana; Associate Professor, Department of English, DyalSingh College, University of Delhi.

Vijaya Singh: film Scholar; Fullbright Scholar, Researcher withIndian institute of Advanced Study; Associate Professor,Institute of English Teaching, Chandigarh, PunjabUniversity.

xviii BOLLYWOODISING LITERATURE FORGING CINEMA