Today as one woefully
moans the demise of sensible quality entertainment
in Indian Cinema, it might make sense to travel
down memory lane. To a period when the Indian
Film Industry was perhaps at its most organized
- a golden and nostalgic period from the late
1920s till the late 1950s. A period that showed
that business and art could indeed go hand in
hand, a period when the effort was to make not
just commercially successful films but those with
artistic merit as well; this period was the heyday
of the Studio System.
The Studio System
 After
the efforts of earlier pioneers like Dadasaheb
Phalke and Baburao
Painter, the Indian film Industry reached
its creative pinnacle with the advent of the Indigenous
Studio System. Based on the Studio System of Hollywood
(MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, RKO,
Paramount etc.), it was a time of
great movie making companies- New Theatres
Ltd, Bombay Talkies, Prabhat Film Company, Vahuni
Pictures; great filmmakers: Himansu
Rai, P.C. Barua,
Nitin Bose, Sohrab
Modi, V. Shantaram,
Ellis R
Duncan; the days when scripting, laboratory
work, distribution, exhibition and every other
film related activity was controlled by a well
equipped management. Each studio had its own actors
and technicians, its own laboratory, its own studio
premises and preview theatre and a tie up with
a chain of theatres to screen its films. This
was a period when actors, directors, writers,
music directors, cameramen, recordists, editors,
light-boys and spot-boys lived under one common
roof like large Indian joint families. The studios
also had their own infrastructure to take care
of their employees. Bombay Talkies for
example maintained a school for children of staff
members, which also became a school for child
actors. It also had its own physician and supervised
the sanitary practices of the canteen. What’s
more, it was a self-sufficient organized studio
which had public issues, it declared dividends
and bonuses and had an independent financial standing
in the stock exchange. In addition Devika
Rani and Himansu Rai also initiated a trainee
program. Each year Rai interviewed scores of job
candidates, many sent by Indian Universities.
Assignment of staff workers to a variety of duties
that would broaden their conception of the film
medium was a policy he personally implemented.
Ashok Kumar, their
leading man began as a laboratory assistant! To
quote him,
"In Bombay Talkies we were like students,
learning. The teacher teaches and you listen."
Prabhat had its own zoo and swimming
pool for recreation as well as production purposes.
Although some performers were 'stars' in that
they were widely known and featured in publicity,
no real star system had developed. The star was
just an employee; The Producer and Director were
the dominant figures that were involved in decision-making.
Further, the studio system required that its staff
members be on hand every day during working hours,
whether or not there was an assignment. When not
acting, an actor might be put to fencing or riding
lessons. Or he might even be given temporary technical
duties. So although a person specialized in a
certain aspect of filmmaking, he was always in
touch with other aspects of filmmaking too. The
studios thus acted as a training school for many
young aspirants.
By the end nineteen thirties, the one-big-family
studio seemed a secure well-established institution.
The major studios in business were Bombay
Talkies, New Theatres Ltd., Prabhat Film Company,
Minerva Movietone, Wadia Movietone, Ranjit Movietone,
Filmistan Pvt. Ltd. and The Southern
studios. Studios had even spread its tentacles
to smaller regional centres like Salem in interior
Tamil Nadu and Kolhapur in interior Maharashtra.
 Each
studio had evolved its own distinct style of filmmaking
but with a common goal towards quality filmmaking.
If the Bombay Talkies films were known
for their high technical standards and glossy
look reminiscent of the films of MGM, Prabhat
were known for their mythological and social
films whose highlights were its rich art direction
and music influenced heavily from Marathi theatre
while New Theatres Ltd. at Calcutta were
best known for their literary adaptations such
as Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s Devdas
or Tagore’s Natir Puja as the studio
aimed for a cinematic equivalence of literature.
In fact it is no surprise that some of the major
classics of Indian Cinema like Vidyapati,
Achut Kanya and Sant
Tukaram were products of the Studio System.
These films are an inspiration to many a filmmaker
even today!
Even the ‘playback’ system that Indian
Cinema follows till date was a development of
the Studio age in 1935 with the New Theatres film
Dhoop Chaon. The Studio System was in
fact the grounding period for the growth of the
most important element of Indian Cinema –
its music, songs and dance - something that Indian
Cinema follows till date. Yet sadly even as the
Studio System reached its peak by the late 1930s,
the elements that were to destroy the system were
already starting to take root.
The Sad Decline
The film business by 1940 was prosperous enough
to attract new entrepreneurs, new capital. The
result was an influx of new producers. They had
no studio but studios could be rented, they had
no laboratory but such services could be purchased,
they had no acting staff but this too could be
purchased with sufficient funds. These new independent
producers, seeing the crowded theatres, guessed
that the idolized stars were the key to financial
triumph, and began to make the stars offers on
a per-picture basis. A star suddenly found he
could earn more in a one-picture contract than
he had been accustomed to earn in a year of employment.
Stars began to leave the big companies. The institution
of freelancing grew rapidly. Similarly, Directors
and other technicians too were lured into a freelance
life.
To add to the woes of the studio, the government
had imparted regulations over the raw stock, which
was to be given to them during the world war time
and raw stock was hard to come by. Therefore the
production in these studios reduced drastically
forcing employees to sit idle. They began to get
lured by flight producers who had the money to
buy the stock in black, leaving the studios helpless.
The big studios began to find their self-sufficiency
ebbing. They also had to bargain competitively
for stars and then wait their turn as the star
was working on three to four films simultaneously.
As a result production schedules slowed. Under
these circumstances the old companies could not
afford to maintain large full time staffs. They
began to divest themselves of overhead. The studio
system found itself crumbling…Some studios
like Filmistan and Gemini did
continue into the 1950s but they survived in name
only and had substantially changed their structure
in order to survive. By the end of the 50s the
studio System in whatever shape had more or less
died with freelance Production Companies taking
over.
Today while Indian Cinema is trying to gather
itself and corporatize itself and get more organized
with Production Houses like Yashraj films, Adlab
Films, Percept Picture Company and the like becoming
one stop film production houses, the continuing
dictates of the star system, the high emphasis
on marketing a film rather then concentrating
on its content ensures that qualitatively Indian
Cinema still has a long way to go. One still cannot
help but rue the end of the Studio System, which
proved that good organization, social commitment,
commercial viability and a high level of creativity
could indeed go hand in hand.
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