Chapter Four the Talkies: a New Dimension of Visual Image 4.1
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Chapter Four The Talkies: A New Dimension of Visual Image 4.1. Sound as a component of image The emergence of talkies brought in changes in the entire film world. Jatindra Nath Mitra records his opinions on the emergence of talkies in the weekly journal Film Land. Jatindra Nath Mitra urges the Indian enterprisers to take up the responsibility of building up studios to produce talkies. He senses an opportunity to produce indigenous films as the element of sound had stalled Hollywood’s claim of universal film language: In pre-talkie days, Hollywood pictures were in universal demand, because the whole world with all its diversities and short-comings were very ably epitomized in them. Her representations were broad abstractions, humanity in toto, and hence appeared to human beings from San Francisco to Tokie, that is, all over the two worlds. Thus Hollywood built up a reputation for universal characterization. Her ‘movies’ have had a tremendous vogue. The accidental appearance of ‘talkies’ has, of course, turned a table against her. (Filmland Vol. IV, Issue No. 159 5-6) In this article one comes across the practice of division between ‘movies’ (silent cinema) and ‘talkies’ (cinema with sound). Most of the advertisements of talkie films in Indian cine journals emphasize the element of song and dance. For example Varieties Weekly a cine journal advertises the screen debut of Alaknanda as “A famous singer and Dancer from U.P. makes her screen debut in ‘Surya Kumari’ ” (Varieties No pagination). Alam Ara (1931) was advertised as, “all talking, singing, dancing” (Barnouw, Indian Film 60). The implications of sound were serious in general for cinema but for Indian cinema they were different from those of the European cinema. The market of Indian cinema got divided based on the language. The economics of Indian cinema immediately got affected for the simple reason that the regions inhabiting specific languages would demand films in those particular languages. The other change that Indian cinema confronted was the introduction of 167 song and dance sequence in the film. Let us first take into account what, Deleuze suggests, coming of sound did to the visual image. Deleuze in Cinema 2 claims that the break between the silent and talkie films met with a resistance from certain strata of film makers but the silent cinema was hinting towards the talkie: But it has been shown with as much justification how the silent film called for the talkie, already implied it: the silent film was not silent, but only ‘noiseless’, as Mitry says, or only ‘deaf’, as Michael Chion says. What the talkie seemed to lose was the universal language, and the omnipotence of montage; what it seemed to gain, according to Mitry, was a continuity in the passage from one place to another, from one moment to another. (216) The basic difference that Deleuze points towards, between silent cinema and the talkie is the readability of image. The images of silent cinema are seen and the intertitles are read with the second function of eye” (Cinema 2 216). The image in silent cinema reaches the naturalness of society and uses intertitle to string a relation between the seen image and read image. According to Deleuze the intertitle can “…make us see the lamentations of the poor or the cry of the rebels. It shows the condition of speech- act, its immediate consequences and even its phonation” (Cinema 2 217). With talkies Deleuze states the second function of the eye that is of reading image, is taken away. The speech act that was read in silent cinema is now heard directly. The talkie, “recovers the distinct features of ‘discourse’ which were altered in the silent or written film” (Cinema 2 217). The heard images become the new dimension, new component of visual image. Thus talkie modifies the visual image by making visible some aspect of image that was not there in the silent cinema. Deleuze states that it is the, “human interaction”, (Cinema 2 218) that becomes visible in talkies. Visual image in this way becomes de-naturalized, as Deleuze states, because of the sociology of communication is a, “correlate of speech act and silences stripping the social of its naturalness, forming systems which are far from being in equilibrium or invent their own equilibrium” (Cinema 2 218). The most important feature of talkie according to Deleuze is the feature of situation as structuring and conditioning of interaction the way it used to with action and reaction in silent cinema. While comparing some important scenes from silent 168 cinema to the talkies Deleuze explicates more on how the sound fills up the space in talkies. Deleuze argues “But it was the space covered which allowed the silent speech-act to be re constituted in this way. Whilst it is now the heard voice which spreads in visual space, or fill it, trying to reach its addressee across obstacles and diversions” (Cinema 2 224). With heard voices acquiring new status in the talkies and becoming one more dimension of visual image the analysis of talkies selected for study should yield some interesting observations. 4.2. Achhut Kanya Achhut Kanya was released in 1936 and was a huge success. Joyojeet Pal, Niranjan Pal’s grand son, while talking about Achhut Kanya, describes the film as: His most famous work with Bombay Talkies though was the controversial blockbuster, Achhut Kanya (1936), still a household name in India. The film deals with an ill-fated romance between a boy from a Brahmin family and a girl from an ‘untouchable’ family. In the film, both conformity and non- conformity are equally impossible options, underlining important social questions that the soon to be free nation would face. The exploration of mob mentalities towards preventing cross-caste relationships are eerily relevant three quarters of a century later, as Indian filmmakers of the day grapple with ways of examining honour killings on screen. (Niranjan Pal 17) Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen describe Achhut Kanya as: A circular story, told in flashback, in which eternal repetition is only interrupted by death in the form of a relentlessly linear railway engine. The film opens at a railway crossing where a man is about to kill his wife when the narrative spins into the past via a song. The central story is of the unhappy love affair between Kasturi (Devika Rani), the Harijan (Untouchable) daughter of the railway level crossing guard Dukhia (Prasad), and Pratap (Kumar), the Brahmin son of the grocer Mohan (Pithawala). At first, the rumour and mob violence are deployed to lethal effect in order to maintain a ‘traditional’, oppressive morality. Later, when the main protagonists are about to conform and marry selected partners, rumour and maliciousness again intervene to 169 trigger renewed violence until the on-rushing train of fate stops the strife. (Encyclopedia 265) The film begins with the background music and a small temple in close-up showing a carved statue of the face of a woman. The camera slowly tilts down to show the writing at the base of the temple. The writing is read as, “She sacrificed her life to save others’ lives” (Figure 4.1). The image fades in on to the close-up of the written words emphasizing them. This close-up is followed by a mid-long shot framing the entire temple. One more fade in is used for the visual transition and a half lit house, supposedly railway station, is shown with a pan from the left of the frame to the right showing the temple across a small road. With one more fade in the frame now has a railway signal on the left and a railway guard closing the railway gate. From the opposite side of the frame a car approaches to the gate. These are two movements from opposite directions meeting at one point, where the gate closes (Figure 4.2). The man in the car, in a high angle camera frame, asks the guard to open the gate but the guard refuses despite the fact that there still is time for the train to come. The man in the car tries to bribe the guard but the guard refuses to accept the money and explains, in a low angle camera frame, that he will not open the gate because a ghost appears in between 12 to 1 at night. The use of light and shadow in this scene creates the atmosphere of mystery (Figures 4.3-4.4). The man gets down from the car as the guard leaves the frame. While getting down from the car he drops his gun on the seat. His wife gives the gun back to him. The significance of the gun is revealed later at the end of the film. However it is easy to guess that he had the gun with him to kill his wife. The man starts walking towards the temple and a song is heard in the background. The source of the song cannot be traced. His wife observes the atmosphere around. And her gaze is followed by the camera recording the trees and the full moon in low angle pan that stops at the end on the temple followed by a cut and her gaze going in the same direction. After a cut, in a mid-long shot the man is seen looking at the temple with his back to the camera and his wife gets off the car and walks towards the temple. 170 Figure 4. 1. The temple of Kasturi with Figure 4. 2. The guard closing the the words written at the bottom.