The real pioneer of Indian
cinema was D. G. Phalke, popularily known as Dada Saheb Phalke. He is considered the father of Indian cinema as he made India’s first feature film (Raja Harishchandra), based on a mythological story, in 1913. During the silent era, more than a thousand film were
produced in India. Unfortunately, most of these
films have since been lost.
The first sound film was produced in 1931, and talking movies rapidly replaced the silent cinema. The production of sound films gave a major impetus to regional culture, as films came to be produced in many regional languages – especially in Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malyalam. (The market for many other languages is so small that there is little coverage in the press, and they cannot compete with Hindi cinema.) Social injustice was a
popular theme for many of the films produced during this
period.
It was only after independence, in the fifties, that Hindi cinema evolved a typical “formula” consisting of romantic musicals and family melodramas, that has remained unchanged over the decades. The introduction of colour lead to escapist forms of entertainment, and a greater reliance on stars. The use of playback singers (such as Mukesh and Kishore Kumar) became the norm. This period saw the infusion of black money for the purpose of financing films. Indian films also began to be distributed in the overseas market.
In the seventies, the “new
wave” cinema emerged as a reaction to the popular / mainstream cinema. It was a cinema which placed greater emphasis on social relevance and artistic realism. The best known name in the “new wave” was that of Shyam Benegal. Other names associated with this form of cinema include those of Mani Kaul, Govind Nihalani, Sai Paranjpe, Ketan Mehta and Mira Nair. The “new wave” cinema continued well into the eighties.
Meanwhile, the mainstream (or big-budget) cinema continued to turn out action-packed movies where the hero was often portrayed as the “angry young man”; romantic fantasies also made a comeback.
More summaries about the Article: The Story of Indian Cinema