It has become a trend in Bollywood to keep the titles of movies in English now a day. Even the songs will have some English lines here and there. But do you know, as far back as 1960, Sunil Dutt starrer Hindi film ‘Ek phool char kante’ had a full fledged English song by Iqbal Singh-‘Beautiful Baby Broadway’ .
Subsequently, music director Shankar Jaikishan made singer Vivin Lobo (voice similar to Mahendra kapoor) to sing an English-German song ‘ Ich Liebe dich, I love you’ for Raj Kapoor’s film ‘Sangam’ in 1964.
Many of the films made by students from Film Institute, Pune were tagged as ‘Art Movie’ or ‘Experimental Movie’ during 70s.But long before this; Sunil Dutt had made an out & out experimental film in 60s called ‘Yadein’ featuring himself all alone. Yes, no other artists or extras featured in the film. Only the voices of Nargis dutt and children were used to depict conversation. Unfortunately, no mention of this film is made by any film writer, critic or artist while discussing trend setting movies. B.R.Chopra was another director who made a full fledged court room drama in a song less movie some time in 60s called ‘Kanoon’. The film had only a ballet dance sequence.
If you think animation is new to Bollywood and is still in its primitive stage as compared to Hollywood, here is some good news. In 1957 came a children film called ‘Aab Dilli door nahi ‘ which had a song ‘Chun Chun karti Aayi chidia’ sung by Mohammad Rafi and in this song, animal characters were show in animation!
Never herd of these films or songs? Well, check out at YouTube and search for these songs/videos to enjoy the once upon a time songs!
I remember my old friend Late G.K.Gokhale who made the first animation film after studying under the legendary Walt Disney. He went on to become the Producer of all animation films in Films Division.The FTII has such an excellent repertoire of great feature and other films that the public has no idea about. Wish they give out a few of them to this hungry film crazy world.
ReplyDeletevery inspiring
ReplyDeletewas clueless on all, especially want to see the sunil dutt movie. why can't the movie channels promote them instead of the same silly stuff.
ReplyDeletethe title shld have been TRIVIA......i knew nothing about it......all things you mentioned is brand new information to me.......and i'm going to boast about this to my friends.......
ReplyDeletethanks for sharing all the information....
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Thanks for sharing those.. really an interesting piece..
ReplyDeleteI think that the trend towards English titles, lyrics and conversations is because they want to appeal to a wider audience.
ReplyDeleteDD played Yaadein as a late night movie during my teenage years. The movie is a monologue! It was a bold and brilliant idea. I wonder why this never gets mentioned anywhere as one of the good cinemas from India!
ReplyDeleteAs for BR Chopra, I feel he was way ahead of the times he lived in! His movies always had a message and stood out from the rest of the pack!
Cool never heard that there was elvis-presely aka Iqbal Singh in india toooo! nice videos thanks for sharing
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ReplyDelete"Music, when soft voices die, vibrate in the memory." (Shelley)
ReplyDelete... Music has its own power to journey from country to country. What else can we do but acclimatize with this sort of cross-border musical terror?
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