Reel to real: Reliving the blockbuster days
Very few of us remember that during the 1940s the publicity for a movie used to be done using hand-held brass bells and a megaphone. The team of walkers, holding hand-painted ads in Urdu, would stop at vantage points and sing popular songs from the movie. Framed and hand-painted posters on canvas would be put up on city street corners and the house owners obliged with a free pass in the matinee show of the last Thursday of the film. Interestingly, the matinee show on Wednesday was exclusive for women. In Amritsar, there were only three or four cinema halls then whose number swelled to almost 20, all except Chitra having now been demolished.
I remember with nostalgia the romance associated with going to the cinema where the hall for say 500 was classified into upper class ₹1/4 (equivalent of ₹1/25), 10 annas for the middle class and the lowest 5 annas (30 paise). I watched about 10 movies on the 5-anna ticket before I got employed. Sometimes, we would watch the film in parts, selling the gate pass issued at interval to a friend who would cleverly watch the second part first and reverse the plan after a few days, if we could. The arrangement worked perfectly well.
During a blockbuster like Anarkali or Nagin, which remained on the screens of Amritsar for more than 100 weeks, there would be a shower of coins from the galleries in appreciation of some song, to the obvious advantage of the five anna crowd. No wonder, in 1954, Anarkali attracted people from Lahore who thronged the Nishaat cinema hall in Amritsar on the pretext of watching the Indo-Pak cricket match.
The interval would burst out with the shouts of vendors selling snacks and eight-page booklets carrying songs of the movie, only in Urdu. They were called ‘plots’. You could go out to pee or take water from a pump using the cup of your hand, and rush back. Songs from box office hits would be played from a loudspeaker till the actual commencement of the matinee show at 4pm, a veritable time signal for the neighbourhood.
My father, who had never watched a talkie, once agreed to accompany us to watch Stree (Woman). It was a brilliant colour production from V Shantaram (1961), telling the story of Kalidas’ classic play Shakuntala. The close up of a lion scared my old man, then about 70, so much that he ran out of the hall and had to be brought back and reassured that it was only an image.
Radio was the prominent catalyst which brought royalties to singers and boosted the sale of 78 RPM (revolutions per minute) records, and the extended play discs (EP) run on 45 RPM machines before the long playing (LPs) pushed out all other forms from the music market. In fact, the LP period itself was short-lived. Spool type tape recorders had a brief existence and vacated the market for cassette recorders, which are still seen in some households, but the VCRs changed the scene and families would hire a movie of their choice and watch it in comfort. Soon, even video cassette recorders started gathering dust in the loft and you don’t have the courage to scrap it.
Now, at 87, I only marvel at the vast multiplexes screening different movies at the same time, where ticketing needs no queuing, no black market, no publicity of yore or the entertainment columns of the English newspapers. Films are comparatively short and songless, made for the small screen and usually thematic and easier to shoot, courtesy laptops and modern technology. No darkroom tricks. I think film piracy has also not lagged behind. Lilting melodies left Bollywood long ago but their remixes on modern orchestras and new voices more than make you relive the past. Melody is still the queen, provided you still have the ear for it.
NOW, AT 87, I ONLY MARVEL AT THE VAST MULTIPLEXES SCREENING DIFFERENT MOVIES AT THE SAME TIME, WHERE TICKETING NEEDS NO QUEUING AND NO PUBLICITY OF YORE. FILMS ARE COMPARATIVELY SHORT AND SONGLESS