Films are an integral part of the Indian psyche. Most Indians grow up singing ‘filmi’ songs or mouthing ‘filmi’
dialogues.
Dialogues like Gabbar Singh’s ‘kitne admi the?’or Shashi Kapoor’s ‘mere paas ma hai’, have been recorded in the annals of Bollywood history. Jha’s ‘The Essential Guide to Bollywood’ taps the Indian love for
cinema and cine stars. A ‘Foreword’ by Amitabh Bachchan adds the necessary starry glitter to this ‘filmi’ glossy. The gloss and starry glitter notwithstanding, Jha’s book is a wonderful collection of 200 films spanning almost seven decades of Indian cinema. The best of films from genres as varied as comedy, Romance, thrillers, war movies, historicals et al find place in this compilation. We may quibble with Jha’s genre-categorization but no one would have any quarrel with his selection of films. The best of old films like Sujata, Bandini, Pyasa, the best of old-age Directors like Asit Sen, Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt brush shoulders with modern day films like Black, Dil Chahata Hai and film makers like Aditya Chopra, Bhansali etc. Films from parallel cinema like Mirch Masala, Paar, Ankur are also featured and give an overview of the multi-dimensional nature of Indian cinema. The glossy photographs and the crisp film abstracts are a pleasure to read. The chronological rendering of films on a timeline clues the reader to the period as also the social statement made by the film. Small nuggets of information, like Mother India’s Oscar nomination, add an element of interest to the book. . Jha’s book, is not an academic oeuvre of Bollywood cinema and yet it has all the makings of the ‘yellow pages’ on cinema. A must read for all cinephiles.
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