Silent film genre, exhibition and audiences in south India

Silent film genre, exhibition, audiences in south India / 31

House full: Silent film genre, exhibitionand audiences in south India

Stephen Hughes

School of Oriental and African StudiesUniversity of London

This article explores how genre matters for the history of cinema audiences in south India.I focus on the development of silent film genre categories in south India during the 1920s asthey were used according to the local conditions to help imagine, define and cultivate cinemaaudiences. I argue that from the late- 1910s, film genre classifications helped exhibitors andfilm critics to conceive of, calculate and socially differentiate the steadily growing audiencesfor cinema. Using material from archival sources and newspapers�advertisements, reviewsand film criticism�this article documents how the emergence of film genre categories andtheir subsequent refinement through the 1920s addressed and articulated a stereotyped soci-ology of local film audiences in Madras. At the beginning of the 1920s there were three mainclassifications of films recognised in the local cinema market of Madras�serials, short dramasand Indian films. For almost a decade these three categories broadly covered the range offilms available in Madras. Local exhibitors and film critics saw each type of film as part of achanging system of complementary and contrasting entertainment alternatives correspondingto definitive kinds of local audiences. As there are few sources and little scholarship whichcan help deal with early film audiences, the history of film genres offers unique insight intohow those in Madras imagined the always indeterminant social reality of film audiences.

The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 43, 1 (2006)SAGE New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/LondonDOI: 10.1177/001946460504300102

Acknowledgements: This article has benefited greatly from generous comments and suggestionsfrom too many people for me to properly thank here. However, I would like to single out ProfessorBirgit Meyer and her research associates at the Pioneer Project: Modern Mass Media, Religionand Imagination of Communities, Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, University ofAmsterdam, for their help during 2003�04. Also, I have to thank the organisers, Barney Bates andRama Mantena, as well as the many participants of the conference, Language, Genre and HistoricalImagination, held at Yale University during February 2004 for giving this article the chance to seethe light of day. Further, Dillip Menon also played a crucial part in guiding me safely to IESHR.And finally, this article owes much to the patience and sage advice of Sarah Hodges, withoutwhom I may never have finished.

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 11, 2016ier.sagepub.comDownloaded from

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This article explores how genre matters for the history of cinema audiences insouth India. In particular, I focus on the development of silent film genre categoriesin south India during the 1920s as they were used according to local conditions tohelp imagine, define and cultivate cinema audiences. I argue that from the late-1910s, film genre classifications helped exhibitors and film critics to conceive,calculate and socially differentiate the steadily growing audiences for cinema insouth India. Using material from archival sources and newspapers�advertisements,reviews and film criticism�this article documents how the emergence of filmgenre categories and their subsequent refinement through the 1920s addressedand articulated a stereotyped sociology of local film audiences in Madras. Insofaras film genre categories helped to classify audiences, their use in the local contextsof exhibition offers a useful entry point to the difficult historiographical problemof audience composition for silent cinema in India. As there are few sources andlittle scholarship that can help deal with early film audiences, the history of filmgenres offers unique insight into how those in Madras imagined the always inde-terminant social reality of film audiences.

As an object of inquiry, film audiences will always be circumscribed by inde-terminacy. As Robert Allen and Douglas Gomery point out, �The �audiences� formovies in any sociological or historical sense are really only an abstraction gen-erated by the researcher, since the unstructured group that we refer to as the movieaudience is constantly being constituted, dissolved, and reconstituted with eachfilm-going experience.�1 Film audiences are never present as a totality, but onlyin geographically dispersed, unique and fleeting social events. Thus, when speakingabout film audiences, I refer to abstract and constructed social categories thatmust not be confused with the empirical reality of those who actually attendedfilms. In this article I consider film audiences as a many-sided discursive categoryconstructed by the Madras film trade and film critics.

The indeterminacy of the film audience as a social totality rendered film genrecategories as an important means through which exhibitors in south India wereable to imagine the social reality of their audiences. The focus of this article isprimarily upon the 1920s, because this is the period in which genre classificationsfirst emerged as an important means used to understand cinema audiences in southIndia. At the beginning of the 1920s there were three main classifications of filmsrecognised in the local cinema market of Madras�serials, short dramas and Indianfilms. For a relatively brief period of less than a decade these three categoriesbroadly covered the range of films available in Madras. Local exhibitors and filmcritics saw each type of film as part of a changing system of complementary andcontrasting entertainment alternatives that corresponded to definitive kinds oflocal audiences. Throughout the 1920s these main genre categories were con-tinually refined and eventually replaced by the general proliferation of other filmgenre categories to match both foreign and Indian film productions. With the

1 Allen and Gomery, Film History: Theory and Practice, p. 156. See also Ang, Desperately Seekingthe Audience, for a similar argument in relation to television audiences.




introduction of Indian sound cinema from 1931, an understanding of the wholeproblem of genre quickly moved in new directions. However, what is importantfor my argument here is not so much how and why genre classifications changeover time, but how contemporary discussions of film classifications in the 1920ssuggest a local sociology of genre.

I introduce the article with a discussion of how I came to the topic of genre.The main body of the article covers the main genres�serials, short drama andIndian films�in relation to local exhibition histories and audiences. In the finalsection, I show how film genre categories were not only part of the social imaginaryof audiences, but also helped to define and distinguish the reputations of Madrascinema halls through the 1920s.

Genre as Part of the Historiography of Audiences

Silent film viewing in colonial Madras cut across all language groups, whichconsisted mainly of Tamil and Telugu, as well as Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Kannada,Gujarati and English. As a new form of cultural production, the cinema had toconstruct its own public around film viewing via the practices, institutions andspaces of exhibition. The cinema was, in most cases, open to all who purchasedtickets. Even though the vast majority of films screened in Madras were inter-titled with captions in English, silent cinema did not demand any primary linguisticidentification from its public. Exhibitors opened their cinema hall space and filledit with the paying members of a new social phenomenon. Karthigesu Sivathambihas famously commented on the social novelty of cinema audiences:

The Cinema Hall was the first performance centre in which all the Tamils satunder the same roof. The basis of seating is, not on the hierarchic position ofthe patron but essentially on his purchasing power. If he cannot afford payingthe higher rate, he has either to keep away from the performance or be with �alland sundry�. Thus in the history of Tamilian arts, the film has been the firstsocial equaliser.2

Due to the strong linguistic identification with Tamil in this passage, Sivathambicould only have been writing about post-1931 sound cinema, and after the linguisticdivision of Indian cinemas had created a distinctly Tamil cinema. Yet Sivathambi�scomments relating to the social and performance space of the cinema are also po-tentially relevant for understanding pre-sound era film exhibition. In the passageabove, the seemingly utopian equation of the cinema with a �socially equalised�audience is tempered with the reference to the hierarchy of ticket purchasing. Thecinema upholds the seemingly democratic promise of all sitting together underthe same roof, but at the same time imposes a new hierarchy of seating classes

2 Sivathambi, The Tamil Film as Medium of Political Communication, pp. 18�19. at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 11, 2016ier.sagepub.comDownloaded from


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and ticket prices.3 As exhibitors spatially ordered film audiences within a filmshow according to ticket classes, they created their own performance of socialhierarchy as part of the film show while creating new film-going publics at thesame time. Rather than as a medium of some already existing linguistic group,the silent cinema innovated its own language of address. Compared to other culturalforms of music, literature, drama, the emerging public institution of the cinema insouth India worked to allow castes, classes and communities as well as women,children and families to participate and mix in new public ways within a newkind of social space. Genre was, as I argue in this article, an important and specificform of cinematic address, which helped to identify, put together and hierarchiseits public.

What do I mean when I speak of genre? I approach the issue of genre with aspecific agenda: to use it as part of the historiography of cinema audiences incolonial Madras city. The focus is on understanding how those in south Indiaused film genre to classify a social hierarchy of film audiences. Following thework of Volosinov, Medvedev and Bakhtin, my approach to genre in this articleasks sociological questions of film genres.4 As an analytic concept, genre com-monly refers to the classification of conventionalised forms of language, literatureor, as in the case of this article, films. According to a formalist reading, genresvariously limit, define, order or unify a diverse range of film texts through a rela-tively stable set of rules, which can be ascertained from the accumulated analysesof individual film texts. In this sense we can understand genre as oriented fromwithin as a unity of thematic determinations. However, as Bakhtin and Medvedevclaim, genre is two-sided and is also oriented outward and socially towards anaddressee, a listener and perceiver.5 So the analysis of film genre cannot only beabout how its rules and limits impose order on a group of films. An analysis ofgenre should also include the way genre classifications articulate a sociologicalrelationship between exhibitors and audiences, and a social hierarchy amongstaudiences. On this account, each film screening of genre is like an utterance, aperformative act that presupposes a particular audience at a definitive time andplace, under definitive historical conditions.6 Film performances are constructedthrough the socially organised and reciprocal relationships between the promotingexhibitors and the paying audiences.7 This is why Bakhtin and Medvedev claim,�A genuine poetics of genre can only be a sociology of genre.�8

3 For another take on Sivathambi�s analysis see Srinivas, �Gandhian Nationalism and Melodramain the 30�s Telugu Cinema�.

4 The following account of a sociological approach to genre is roughly drawn from Bakhtin andMedvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship; Bakhtin, �The Problem of Speech Genres�;and Titunik, �The Formal Method and the Sociological Method�.

5 Bakhtin and Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, p. 131.6 I have developed this argument in more detail in Hughes, �Pride of Place�.7 See Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, pp. 85�86.8 Bakhtin and Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, p. 135.




Though genre has had a long and important place within film studies in general,there has been comparatively little such work done on the case of cinema in India.9

For example, in their comprehensive overview of Indian cinema, Rajadhyakshaand Willemen complain that the study of film genre for Indian cinema has beenleft relatively undeveloped.10 There are probably good reasons for this absence(for example the fact that from the 1930s leading film stars emerged as the moreimportant audience address) and I am sure that other scholars have already begunto address this problem. However, addressing the problematic of genre is notmerely a matter of filling in a gap in the scholarship. The approach to film genreoutlined above could mark a major reorientation for the history of cinema inIndia. If genre is understood in part as a social relation, we have to move the his-tory of films to their sites of exhibition where films and audiences came together.This move transfers the analysis of film texts onto the historically contingent andculturally specific locations, institutions and practices of exhibition. Thus a soci-ology of genre poses the issue of how films and audiences relate in such a way asto open the possibility of understanding the way film genres classified local audi-ences. A sociological approach to genre will also counter widely-held assumptionsabout the history of Indian film audiences, with the audiences thought to be anundifferentiated category conceived variously as either the masses, working classesor a public sphere. Once genre is understood as a mode of address, film classifica-tions can be seen as a kind of social imaginary based on a presumed hierarchy offilm tastes. According to the use and user, genre categories were part of variousdiscursive constructions of film audiences. The task of this article is to see howthe notion of film genre classification helps us understand the history of filmaudiences in urban Madras.

From Variety to Featured Attraction

This section discusses how film genre categories began to take on a new importanceas the variety exhibition format gave way to the practice of headlining a mainfilm title as the featured attraction. The cinema started in south India around 1900as a European form of itinerant variety entertainment, with films from Europeshown by Europeans for predominantly European audiences. The first touringcinema exhibitors in India were part of a world market in variety entertainment,which circulated throughout the colonial outposts of Africa and Asia. At firstfilms were introduced as part of a mixed programme, which included live musichall or vaudeville performances. The performers were predominantly British,though some were also from continental Europe, Australia and the United States.

9 Within film studies, I have found two general accounts of genre particularly helpful. See Altman,Film/Genre, and Neale, Genre and Hollywood. The other important film studies contribution to genre,which most closely corresponds to my project in this article, is Maltby, �Sticks, Hicks and Flaps�.

10 Rajadhyaksha and Willemen, Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, p. 13. at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 11, 2016ier.sagepub.comDownloaded from


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Each show came with its own unique combination of specialty acts, which couldinclude dance, drama, singing, comedy, magic, hypnotism, electro-magnetic tricks,tumbling or feats of physical strength. Though the European variety entertainmentwould eventually be undermined by the success of the cinema, both forms ofpopular entertainment operated together within the same social and cultural circuitduring the first decades of this century.

From about 1905, touring exhibitors increasingly began specialising in showsdedicated exclusively to film screenings. They did so using the same venues,formats and standards as had already been used for variety performances. Beyondthe musical accompaniment of piano, percussion or gramophone recordings, theseearly shows consisted of a series of unrelated and widely varied short films. News-paper advertisements for film shows promised a balanced programme which in-cluded coloured, comic, historic, dramatic, tragic, travel, trick, scenic, sport andanimated gazettes.11 Within this variety format every cinema show was itself acomposite of all film genres, usually only one reel in length. Once a film wascompleted, there was a short break while the reel was changed in the projector,and then the show moved on to something completely different. The very formatof variety was a celebration of film genres. The discontinuous succession of diverse,short films addressed Madras audiences through a wide variety of appeals basedon what Gunning has identified as an early cinema of attractions. Distinct fromwhat eventually emerged as the dominant narrative form of classical Hollywoodcinema, which called upon its spectators� sustained attention and absorption in aself-contained diegetic world constructed by the film, the cinema of attractionsconstructed different relationships with its viewers based on astonishment, stimu-lation, distraction, diversion, shock tactics and spectacular visual effects.12

The changing trends in world film production during the 1910s and 1920s alsoset constraints on what Madras exhibitors offered their local audiences. BeforeIndian films reached the cinema halls of Madras Presidency around 1920, southIndian audiences were fed an exclusive diet of films from abroad. Exhibitors hadlittle or no choice but to use the supply and range of films which was made availableto them through the global traffic in films. The films screened at Madras cinemahalls during this period generally followed the changing trends of film productionin Europe and the United States. As world cinema production shifted away fromthe variety format of short attractions, multi-reel narrative feature films emergedas a new standard for cinema entertainment in India as well. Gunning dates thetransition from the cinema of attractions to that of narrative films in the UnitedStates between 1907 and 1913.13 In Madras this shift, sometimes also referred toas that from primitive to classic cinema, occurred somewhat later, roughly betweenthe years 1912�15, presumably because of the extra time it took for films to travelthrough the global distribution circuits to the cinema halls of south India.

11 Madras Times (hereafter MT ), 2 Sept. 1911. Also MT, 19 Apr. 1911.12 Gunning, �The Cinema of Attraction�. Also see Hansen, Babel & Babylon, pp. 30�34.13 See Gunning, �The Cinema of Attraction�, p. 66.




The general transition from variety to a featured attraction format in the late1910s can easily be discerned in the changes that occurred in local cinema advertise-ments over the period. Instead of listing seven or eight different kinds of films,one film title and maybe some descriptive label became the norm for newspaperfilm advertisements. Even though particular films became headline acts, exhibitorscontinued to offer a variety of shorts, such as comics and topicals, as part of everyfilm programme. For the most part these other film attractions that filled out therest of the programme were never included in the newspaper advertisements. Asindividual film offerings assumed greater prominence, the issue of genre classifica-tion also gained a new kind of importance as a means of distinguishing one cinemaoffering from another. Once singular film titles were used to form the main attrac-tion at cinema shows, generic classifications came to be used in new ways. Designa-tions of genre were no longer confined to describing the variety within a filmprogramme, but came to be used to identify and distinguish the particular appealof one programme in relation to others.

Silent Film Serials

The first kind of film to be recognised as a featured genre that made it big inMadras was that of the action serial. Serials consisted of a succession of filmswith a continuous story usually screened over the course of a few weeks or months.They relied on an entertainment formula of fast-paced action and melodramaticscenarios to build up a climax of suspense and anticipation, which could bringaudiences back for the next instalment. Citing a letter sent to the Madras Mail,their film correspondent quoted this description of a typical serial:

A �thriller� of the ultra thrilling kind�it is the sort that comes in instalmentsweek by week. Unscrupulous men heavily masked, slink about by-ways andkidnap girls and carry them off to mountain fortresses in the wilds. Every instal-ment has a motor smash, a fight, a robbery and at least one murder. The bedroomscene is favourite and frequent. And dynamite and pistols are used quite as amatter of course.14

Stunt serials were a relentless and improbable series of thrills and excitementpacked into episodic segments ending with cliffhangers. Film scholarship fromEurope and the United States has routinely ignored or discounted the significanceof silent film serials as a low budget, unsophisticated passing fad, which lostpopularity as film-goers� tastes matured.15 In the west the heyday of serial filmsonly lasted about one decade, and even then these films were always marginalised

14 Madras Mail, (hereafter MM ), 9 Apr. 1921.15 Singer makes this point in �Female Power in the Serial-Queen Melodrama�. For what little

scholarship there is on this largely ignored part of film history, see Lahue, Bound and Gagged;Barbour, Days of Thrills and Adventure; and Singer, �Serials�, in The Oxford History of World Cinema.



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by the more high-brow and successful feature film format (which set the basicstandard for the classical Hollywood cinema from the 1920s to the present).16

However, in south India action serials were comparably more important. It isarguable that, along with Indian films, serials were the most consistently profitable,reliably popular and dominant film category to be screened throughout the 1920s.

The emergence of the serial as an important film genre in Madras correspondedwith the rise of Hollywood as the global centre for film production. The periodfrom 1914 onwards, when World War I disrupted European film productionand film companies in the United States attained a very strong position in theworld cinema trade, is precisely the point when serials established a dominantposition for exhibitors in India. The success of serials undoubtedly played an im-portant part in helping film companies from the United States accomplish a rapidand comprehensive takeover of the Indian cinema market. While in 1913 the esti-mated share of US film imports in India was a mere 3.8 per cent, by 1919 Americanfilms constituted 95 per cent of India�s film imports.17 During this early period ofAmerican ascendancy in the world film trade, serialised action films emerged asan important and persistent trend in film production.

The first serial film was screened in Madras during 1914. After a gap of twoyears since its release in the US, the first film serial, What Ever Happened toMary? (in 12 parts, Edison Company, 1912), was successful enough to be playedtwice within eight months of the same year.18 This serial was quickly followed upin 1915 by the Pathé film serials, the Perils of Pauline (1914) and the Exploits ofElaine (1914�15), both starring Pearl White (see Figure 1). While these filmshelped Pathé gain an early lead in the supply of film serials, it was the UniversalFilm Company that came to dominate the Indian market by the late 1910s. Univer-sal took the lead amongst US film companies by opening their first distributionoffices in Bombay in 1916, Calcutta in 1917 and Madras in 1922.19 From 1917Universal not only supplied the majority of all the serials screened in south Indiathroughout the 1920s, it also created a loyal following amongst local film audiencesfor Universal serials and their stars.

Looking back from the perspective of 10 years hence, one Madras film enthusiastsingled out Universal serials as constituting a turning point in the history of film

16 For a comprehensive discussion of the historical ascendancy of the narrative feature film, seeBordwell, et al., The Classical Hollywood Cinema.

17 These figures are based on statistics published in the Government of India publication, IndianCinematograph Committee Report, 1927�28 (hereafter ICC Report).

18 This serial started as a commercial tie-in with an already running series of adventure stories ina popular newspaper, McClure�s Ladies World, in the United States. See Barbour, Cliffhanger, p. 15.In Madras the serial was first screened at the Electric Theatre on Mount Road in April, and again atthe Elphinstone Picture in December. See The Hindu, 15 Apr. 1914 and MT, 12 Dec. 1914.

19 Thompson, Exporting Entertainment, pp. 43, 48, 72 and 144. Also see the �Madras List ofTrades�, Asylum Press Almanac, 1923.




Figure 1Pearl White

Source: Postcard, Pathé Frères Cinema Ltd Series, Printed in England, n.d.(Author�s personal collection).

exhibition in south India. On this account Universal films were the first serials tocatch the imagination of Indian audiences in Madras and demonstrate to filmexhibitors how,

... a feverish interest could be aroused and sustained in the desire of the peoplefor seeing a story continued on the screen for a number of weeks. [Serial films]visualizing all sorts of life, domestic, social, official and savage human emotions



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such as fear, jealousy, love, tenderness for women ... full of quick action, quickthinking and thrilling deeds ... came to be the order of the day.20

In particular, Universal serials like Broken Coin (1915) starring Francis Ford, TheLure of the Circus (1918) with Eddie Polo and Elmo, the Mighty (1919) starringElmo Lincoln were singled out as some of the most popular early serials screenedin Madras. This success helped establish Universal�s reputation in the south asthe leading producer/distributor of serial films.21

Two of the biggest star attractions in the 1920s in south India were Universalserial actors Elmo Lincoln and Eddie Polo. These serial stars were the first filmpersonalities to be widely recognised by name and created a loyal fan followingin south India. Of the two, Eddie Polo, who starred in a series of loosely autobiog-raphical serials about life in the circus, probably achieved the most enduring localpopularity (see Figure 2). In the words of a newspaper film journalist, �Eddie Polois a name to conjure with in Madras. One has only to mention his name to hisdevotees to hear him acclaimed as their idol.�22 At a time when there was virtuallyno Tamil-language film journalism, there were a series of numerous and widelypublished pamphlets about Eddie Polo and his serials in Tamil from about 1919until about 1930.23 Likewise, Elmo Lincoln, who originally established himselfas a star in the title role of the first film version of Tarzan of the Apes (1919), wasa great attraction in south India. A newspaper film correspondent described thelocal reception for Lincoln�s film Elmo, the Fearless (Universal, 1920):

Hundreds flock to see him perform wondrous feats of strength in rescuing theheroine from danger and cheer themselves hoarse whenever he comes off ontop. The size and enthusiasm of the audience serve to prove what a great holdthe serial film has obtained in Madras and also what a popular actor ElmoLincoln is.24

Polo and Lincoln�s star status inspired committed devotion amongst someof their fans. A well-known Tamil dramatist, T.K. Canmukam, recalled how hisyoung actor friends would divide themselves into two opposing camps while

20 S. Devasankar Aiyar, a self-described amateur cinematographer who worked as a clerk for theMaharastra and Southern Railways, as cited in ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 338.

21 �Flash� Devaraj, Indian Talkies Era: Silver Jubilee, p. 11.22 This is from a newspaper film review for The Vanishing Dagger (Universal, 1920) playing at the

Wellington. See MM, 21 May 1921.23 See the Fort St. George Gazette Supplement, Catalogue of Books, Madras, between the years

1919�30 for details on the various Eddie Polo publications in Tamil, which ranged from serial storysynopses and biographical sketches to folk songs in praise of his strength. During the silent period,these materials were some of the very few published items in Tamil about the cinema.

24 MM, 22 Jan. 1921. at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 11, 2016ier.sagepub.comDownloaded from



25 Canmukam, Enatu Nataka Vazhkkai, pp. 180�81.

arguing over which star was the better actor, who was the strongest, and the like.They had ongoing debates, which sometimes resulted in fights and hard feelingsbetween the friends.25

Figure 2Eddie Polo

Source: Postcard, �Famous Cinema Star� Series, Universal Stars, printed in England. (Author�spersonal collection).Note: On the back of the card a handwritten note dated from Surat on 25 May 1928 reads: �To mybest friend Dadiba from yours sincerhly Ashok J. Pathakji�.



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Notably, women also featured as some of the earliest and most popular of serialfilm stars. Pearl White was the first star of the film serials and helped to establisha new kind of action role for women, which was frequently revisited in numerousother serial productions. Even as late as 1928, a decade after film serials made itbig in Madras, one Madras film distributor claimed that Pearl White (and EddiePolo) was still the most popular film star in the south.26 Pathé also produced aseries of successful hits starring Ruth Roland, who was locally advertised as the�Queen of the Thriller Serials.�27 The other prominent Pathé action serial heroinein Madras cinema halls was Helen Holmes, who had established herself in a longrunning railway theme series in the 1910s. Holmes was branded �The InvincibleQueen of the Serial Screen� and starred in numerous independent productionsthroughout the 1920s. The presentation of leading action heroines was one of themain features which helped to distinguish the serial genre from other film offerings.

From a survey of the advertisements in the leading Madras newspapers throughthis period, it seems that there was always at least one silent serial playing at oneof the local cinema halls at any given time. However, more often than not, therewere several serials running. And sometimes, when all cinema halls simultaneouslyscreened serials, there was no other show in town.28 For a period in the early1920s all of the Madras cinema halls screened serials. In addition to this high fre-quency, local exhibitors also screened serial films according to a more condensedpattern of more episodes per show than was the habit in western countries. In theUS and Britain, one episode of a film serial was exhibited per week along withother featured films, so that one serial would continue over the course of severalmonths, sometimes even up to six months. In contrast, exhibitors in south Indiatended to screen serial films as the featured attraction, with as many as six episodesshown during every film show. In this way serial films in India were relativelycondensed into much shorter engagements at each cinema hall than was the casein United States or Britain. The usual period over which a serial was screened inMadras was between four and six weeks, depending upon the total number ofepisodes and how many were screened at one show. By exhibiting serials in thisfashion exhibitors in India offered a faster pacing of an already fast action genre,which undoubtedly helped to concentrate and intensify the experience of watchingthese films. This exhibition pattern also points to the relative importance accordedto film serials by local exhibitors.

Another factor working in favour of film serials was that they were more readilyavailable and less expensive when it came to either outright purchase or rentalthan other films. As action serials fell out of favour in the west and at the higher-class cinema halls of India, they became increasingly more affordable and availablefor Indian exhibitors when compared to the relatively small number of Indian

26 Thomas H. Huffton, film distributor and sole proprietor of the Peninsula Film Service, as citedin the ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 357.

27 MM, 21 June 1921.28 For example, for the week starting 17 Sept. 1921, see MM and the Swadesamitran.




silent films (to be discussed below), which enjoyed great demand and commandedhigh prices. The smaller, poorer and touring exhibitors especially could not com-pete with their competitors at large and successful cinema halls for the relativelyfew Indian silent films in circulation. The silent serials were by all accounts themost consistently popular film attraction offered by small-time and remote exhib-itors into the 1930s.

Amongst Madras cinema halls, R. Venkiah�s Gaiety Theatre (seating 885) grad-ually gained a reputation for screening serials. Located in the prestigious Europeanshopping district of Mount Road in close proximity to south India�s most up-scale cinema venues, the Elphinstone Picture Palace and the Wellington Theatre,the Gaiety showed the first run of all the Universal serials. The other Mount Roadcinema halls also screened serials, but did so to a lesser extent and without earningthe same kind of notoriety for serials as the Gaiety. Once established, the Gaiety�sreputation for showing serials was difficult to break. After Venkiah went bankruptin 1924, the new management at the Gaiety tried, unsuccessfully, to change theestablished film programming policy at the cinema hall from Hollywood serialsto Indian films.29 These attempted changes seem to have disrupted the venue�sregular clientele. Attendance dropped off to such a point that the Gaiety lost revenuewhen screening Indian produced films because their box office take could notmatch the generally higher rental rates of Indian films.30 Eventually the manage-ment shifted their programme back to a policy of exhibiting imported westernfilms, both features and serials. When the Gaiety was leased out and sold to Madan�sexhibition circuit chain in 1926, the stable film programme switched back withgreat success to the older standard of action serials. Despite changing ownershipseveral times, the serial film genre helped define the Gaiety�s distinctive reputationfrom the late 1910s into the early 1920s.

According to exhibitors, serials constituted a film genre that was most suitedfor the majority of south Indians. In particular, exhibitors considered serials toespecially appeal to poor, uneducated and young audiences, known as �the 2 annacrowd.� Serials had a pronounced plot and fast-paced actions, which did not requirereading complicated intertitles in a foreign language that most Indians did notunderstand. Action serials were the one imported film category most likely totranscend the linguistic and graphical limitations of English intertitles and becomprehensible to non-English speaking audiences. In describing his own earlyexperience with the cinema, T.K. Canmukam claimed that the general public(potumakkal) avidly followed film serials every week for a month and were ableto fully understand the entire story.31 For exhibitors in south India, the visual

29 See the oral statement of F.H. Wilson, official assignee in charge of liquidating R. Venkiah�sholdings after bankruptcy. He took over the Gaiety along with the Crown and the Globe in November1924. ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, pp. 150�58.

30 A.A. Hayles, Representative, European Association, Madras, as cited in the ICC Evidence, Vol. 3,p. 274.

31 Canmukam, Enatu Nataka Vazhkkai, p. 179. at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 11, 2016ier.sagepub.comDownloaded from


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immediacy of serial film stories made this genre, more than any other, importantfor cultivating new low-class and illiterate Indian audiences in both urban andrural areas.

Even though south Indian exhibitors generally associated serial films with whatthey called �low class� audiences, the attendance at serial films was never limitedto poorer and uneducated Indians. In 1928, one Madras exhibitor (who was soon tobecome a film director as well), A. Narayanan, explained with remarkable con-fidence that in Madras the crowd for serials comprised of 70 per cent wage earners,20 per cent middle-class and semi-literate and 10 per cent rich and literate.32 It isreasonable to expect that Narayanan�s statistical breakdown of audience com-position for serials was, at best, a well-informed estimate. However, more thananything else, what is most remarkable about Narayanan�s sociology of genre ishis confidence in reporting the exact percentage calculations of how serials andfilm audiences related.

Short Drama

In south India serials dominated film markets during the 1920s. They set the initialstandard against which the other types of film categories were defined. However,seen from the historical perspective of mainstream Hollywood, serial films wereamong the last to hold out against the emergence of the commercially dominantfeature film format. From the early 1910s feature films were part of the industry�sefforts to improve their cultural status by adopting forms of high-brow entertain-ment such as literary and stage adaptations.33 From this early period multiple reelnarrative feature films have been the dominant form of commercial production,which definitively relegated earlier variety formats to the past. In current usagethe category �feature film� primarily refers to a kind of film form and is not initself equated with being a kind of film genre. We tend to think of the feature filmas a highly successful format that is shared across a wide range of genres. Yet,during the 1920s in south India, feature films were considered to be a distinctcategory marked not only by its format, but also by its unique narrative conventionsand class-based audience appeal. In this early period feature films were used andunderstood as a kind of genre locally referred to as the �short drama�. The term�short drama� was defined in relation to serial films and used to denote a filmwhich could be seen in its entirety over the course of one show.

From the perspective of local exhibition patterns and film criticism, short dramaemerged most forcefully as a distinct film category in the early 1920s in relationto the dominance of serial films. The contrast between the two categories wasmade both as a matter of film convention and in terms of class appeal within thesociology of film audiences in Madras. The exhibition pattern for short dramasand serials also differed greatly. Serials generally ran from four to six weeks and

32 ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 284.33 See Cook, A History of Narrative Film and Uricchio and Pearson, Reframing Culture.




were often immediately recycled to other local cinemas. In contrast, short dramasusually had only a brief screen life of about half a week in only one of the Madrascinema halls.

Most of the major feature films produced during the 1920s made their way tothe screens of south India sooner or later. Exhibitors often had difficulties in obtain-ing their pick of the films available in the print markets of the world, but eventuallymanaged to acquire many of the most acclaimed feature films during the silentperiod. For example, D.W. Griffith�s Intolerance played in Madras in March 1921.The Kid by Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan was screened in October 1922.And Cecil De Mille�s first version of the Ten Commandments came out in April1924. However, before we get carried away with recounting a list of silent filmclassics, it should be mentioned that such notable films as those listed above werecomparatively rare. Perhaps a more typical short drama exhibition would be theperformance of a �fine British play� entitled Darby and Joan, based on Hall Caine�spopular English novel. The advertisement in the Madras Mail claimed that, �ThisBeautiful British photo-play stars the beautiful British star, Ivy Close and DerwentHall Caine, the author�s son playing the leading parts. In addition to the leadingfeatures, the Topical Budget, a most amusing comic and the screen magazine willbe shown at each performance�.34

A small number of imported feature films, especially those of the most famousstars, routinely drew full houses from all classes and at all cinemas. �Some of theforeign film stars have established a name in the world of cinema and their filmsare attended by all classes alike�.35 For example, the most popular silent film everscreened in India was Douglas Fairbanks� Thief of Bagdad (1924), which wassaid to have �universal appeal� to both educated and illiterate, Indian and European,urban and rural audiences36 (see Figure 3). In a series of films during the early1920s, Douglas Fairbanks created a new combination of an action and romantichero put together in large-budget, lavish productions that never failed to fill cinemahalls in south India.37 When the Thief of Bagdad played in Madras during 1925,it generated a great deal of enthusiasm and attracted many who would not otherwisego to the cinema. For example, the Principal at Queens Mary�s College for womenremarked that �even students of this college who rarely go out at all went to thisfilm�.38 This kind of blockbuster was an exception. Most imported feature filmsof the 1920s had a much more limited run and played at select cinema halls with

34 MM, 15 Jan. 1921.35 N.R. Balakrishna Mudaliar, acting Superintendent, School of Arts and Crafts, Madras, as cited

in the ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 230.36 See Joseph A. David, Cinematographer, Madras, in the ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 320, and

U.B. Romesh Rao, Manager of the Radha Picture Palace, Calicut, as cited in the ICC Evidence, Vol. 3,p. 442.

37 This style of film production was later used by the actor/politician, M.G. Ramachandran, as anexplicit model in a series of successful Tamil films of adventure, athletic stunts and romance fromthe late 1940s onward.

38 Miss D. de la Hay (M.A.), as cited in the ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 124. at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 11, 2016ier.sagepub.comDownloaded from


46 / STEPHEN HUGHES

a more specific niche market consisting of Europeans and Indians from the eliteand educated classes.

Figure 3Douglas Fairbanks in the Thief of Bagdad

Source: Postcard, �Famous Cinema Star� Series, printed in England, no date.(Author�s personal collection).

Among cinema halls in Madras, the Wellington Cinema and Elphinstone PicturePalace specialised in screening high-class imported silent feature films from themid-1910s through the 1920s. Along with the more down-market Gaiety Theatre,the Wellington (seating, 1800) and the Elphinstone (seating, 1200) were located




within one block of each other in the prestigious European shopping district inthe northeast corner of Mount Road.39 These two cinema halls were the grandestand most luxurious in south India. They constructed their reputation as high-classentertainment venues with a combination of architectural opulence, elaborate décorand quality film programming. Even though other film genres were screened atboth the Wellington and the Elphinstone during the 1920s, these cinema hallsexclusively offered the first runs of the high-class feature films, including thebest and the most popular that both the United States and Europe had to offer.

Sambandam Mudaliar claimed that �Shakespearean productions for collegestudents and educated classes�, along with films based on �well-known novelsof the West�, were particularly well suited for educated Indian audiences.40 In additionto their European and elite clientele, exhibitors targeted the Indian students fromthe nearby university and colleges. Along the Marina just to the east of the MountRoad cinema halls were two of the most important institutions of higher educationin south India, Presidency College and Queen Mary�s College. The film exhibitorson Mount Road made efforts to cultivate these young, relatively affluent and edu-cated Indians by offering occasional concessions on ticket rates and special show-ings of feature films with historical, literary or dramatic interest. For example,the Elphinstone advertised that �at the Special Request of the Student populationof the city Preparing for the University Examinations� they would hold a secondshowing of a film version of �Hamlet�.41

Madras exhibitors generalised that American and European short dramasappealed to the more limited elite and educated audiences, and that they only didwell when exhibited in more European oriented cinema halls. Multi-reel dramasbased on literary adaptations and complicated romances were too difficult formost Indians without prior knowledge of the story to follow. However, this general-isation needs to be further qualified. It was not that high-class foreign short dramasexclusively attracted more elite audiences, but that these films attracted a higherproportion of the wealthy and educated classes. One Madras exhibitor, A. Narayanan,gave another exact estimate�that �a western film of a famous literary work or ahigh-class feature film� would attract 50 per cent wage earners, 35 per cent middle-class people and students, and 15 per cent of the rich and educated.42 Even whenthe films were supposed to attract elite audiences especially, these targeted patronsnever constituted a majority of film-goers. However, the audiences associated withhigh-class features were a relatively more attractive market segment, which conveyedboth prestige and greater box office returns from the more expensive ticket classes.Short dramas in Madras, though, had difficulties in consistently attracting enoughaudiences from all classes to make their exhibition a profitable venture.

39 The seating capacity figures are based on a government survey. See Tamil Nadu Archives, Law(Gen) G.O. no. 1545, dated 29 Sept. 1921.

40 Sambandam Mudaliar was a lower court judge, an important amateur dramatist, playwright,and eventually a Tamil cinema actor and director. ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 238.

41 MT, 9 Dec. 1914.42 ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 284.



48 / STEPHEN HUGHES

Serial or Drama?

In a weekly feature of the Madras Mail entitled �Stage and Screen�, the first andat the time only film columnist in Madras lobbied on behalf of short dramas.43 Tosupport the cause, the columnist launched a campaign against the dominance ofserials in local cinema halls (see Figure 4). After an entire (first) year of writingfilm reviews consisting solely of descriptive and uncritical information aboutleading actors and plot synopses, the film correspondent finally chose the issue ofserials as the first target of film criticism. Starting from 1921 and continuing overseveral years, the Madras Mail published a series of attacks on serials. Therewere two main complaints about serials. The first was that they were all too predict-able and boring: �These always follow a common plan ... we have the same situ-ations with a different atmosphere, different artistes, different accessories as toscenery and location�.44 The second was that serials attracted the wrong kind ofaudiences. The success of serials was repeatedly attributed to lower-class patronswho also took the blame for preventing quality short drama films from playing inlocal cinema halls. The critic likened the hold serials had over the Madras film-going public to the case of the drug taker: �Once having acquired a taste for theserial the masses find that they cannot shake it off�. The tone was condescendingto �the poor folk who are content with serial fare�.45 While this critic was probablyoverstating the case to add some journalistic sensation, the generic affiliation ofcinema and social classes is clearly articulated.

Figure 4Stage and Screen

Source: Madras Mail, Saturday Evening edition, 24 September 1921.Note: This illustration appeared as the banner for the weekly entertainment page.

43 During the early 1920s there was very little in the way of film journalism in south India.The MM was the only local newspaper to regularly cover cinema related news until the late 1920s.The other main dailies, The Hindu and Swadesamitran (in Tamil), started weekly cinema columnsonly in the late 1920s.

44 5 Mar. 1921.45 23 Apr. 1921.




Six months later the Mail published a column headed �Serial or Drama?�, attrib-uted to the pseudonym �Aah Fan�. The critical tone of the article against serialswas familiar, but this author went further by claiming that the serial craze was adirect consequence of the contemporary political agitations of colonial Madras.

The present craving for serials is, I think, a reflex of the unsettled state of thenational mind. Men and women and youths are all seething with excitementsas a result of the political and other movements now being sedulously pro-pagated. They want adventure, movement life of at ninety miles an hour andsince they cannot get it in their daily round, they seek for it in their amusementsand especially on the screen.46

Though Aah Fan was not explicit, the contemporary �political and other move-ments� in 1921 were numerous�the nationalist Non-Cooperation movement, theagitation for a pan-Islamic Khilafat, a four-month industrial labour strike in thetextile mills of Madras, the picketing of liquor shops in the south, the Moplahrevolt on the west coast, left-wing militants in the Punjab, and the constant threatof Bolshevism.47 This equation of serial film audiences with political seditionwas undoubtedly an extreme position only possible for the most loyalist of Britishcolonial residents. However dubious the assertion about the �unsettled state ofthe national mind� may have been, this quote articulated a notion of cinema audi-ences as part of the ongoing social and political movements of the day.

More than criticising serials the Madras Mail did its best to promote the causeof short dramas as a superior choice of films. The following quote, written as partof a favourable review of a short drama programme at the two leading local cinemahalls, is a good example of how film criticism paired the serial and the short dramaas part of an opposition of high and low culture.

It is good to know that the Wellington and Elphinstone managements are revert-ing to short drama programmes for the coming week. I confess frankly thatI am not a friend of the serial. The sameness of the average serial appals me.But short dramas do not have such an inevitable character. I hope that patronsof all classes will give the short dramas at the Elphinstone and Wellingtongood support. I would like to see the patrons of the dearer seats turn up in greatforce for these films are such as they are more likely to please them than themasses who throng the cheaper seats. The short drama appeals more to one�ssense of beauty and dramatic effect than the serial and the masses are, at present,mainly interested in the fighting and thrilling stunts, which the serial contains.48

46 1 Oct. 1921.47 See V. Geetha and Rajadurai, Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium, pp. 206�08. Also see Sarkar,

Modern India, pp. 204�26.48 2 Apr. 1921.



50 / STEPHEN HUGHES

Writing as part of the ongoing campaign to encourage more short drama films forMadras cinemas, the address in this passage is to the �patrons of the dearer seats�.By advocating greater attendance in the higher priced seats as the best way to proveto local exhibitors that short dramas were worth booking, the film correspondentappealed to the readers� sense of social hierarchy and cultural superiority in contrastto the �masses who throng [to] the cheaper seats�. The thematic contrast of genresin terms of beauty and dramatic effect versus thrilling action articulated a distinc-tion of the classes from the masses.

The relentless criticism of the serial in the newspaper did not seem to have hadany impact in slowing down the parade of serials through Madras cinema halls.However, if we are to believe the film correspondent for the Madras Mail, at leastsome Madras exhibitors responded to the campaign for short dramas. During theearly 1920s the management at both the Wellington and the Elphinstone occasion-ally attempted to run a double programme with serials comprising the early eveningshow at 6:30 PM and a short drama for the later show at 9:30 PM. In this way, theytried to cater to both audience segments or, in the words of the Madras Mail filmcorrespondent, �a serial for serial patrons and a drama for those who liked betterstuff�. This experiment, however, quickly failed, and the Madras Mail film criticadopted a more resigned and philosophical tone:

That experiment failed because people would not patronise the drama in numberssufficiently large to make them profitable. Now I quite recognize that cinemasare business concerns and also that the argument of the box office is an all-powerful one. They cannot live without money and good plays do not bringthem in enough to enable them to live. So they fall back on the blood-curdlingserial, which assures them a steady and handsome return. As with governments,so with cinemas, the people get that which they deserve and Madras cinema-goers demand serials.49

Even though the sense of exasperation remained and his dislike of serials wentunchanged, this film critic slowly gave up the cause of reforming film tastes.After capitulating to the inevitability of serials, the Madras Mail�s cinema coveragebecame generally less critical. There was less written about local cinema, serialsor otherwise. More of the cinema page was devoted to articles lifted from theLondon theatre columns and Hollywood news. Reporting on local cinema usuallyconsisted of a short and selective round-up of the local cinema halls.50

Serials won their battle with the Madras Mail, and continued as a paying pro-position in the districts and touring cinemas until the 1930s as the basic fare at

49 28 May 1921.50 The top-end Wellington and Elphinstone cinemas were always featured along with a few other

cinemas�Gaiety, Crown and Globe, which periodically rotated in and out of the newspaper, mostlikely in relation to advertising revenue.




most cinema shows outside of the first and second-run cinema halls. They alsowent on to contribute a very significant action element to early Indian cinema.Along the way elite and educated film audiences, especially in urban areas, lostinterest in the genre.51 And during the 1930s serialised formats dropped out al-together in favour of the dominant feature film format, and action sequences devel-oped into one of the most common generic elements of Indian film production.

The question of the serial versus the short drama stands out as the leading issueof the Madras Mail�s film criticism in the early 1920s. As the first and only pub-lished film critic in Madras, the Madras Mail critic�s campaign would have been akey player in defining a public recognition of how film genre categories mappeda social hierarchy of the masses and the classes. Yet the characterisation of genericaffiliation based on a notion of high and low class was only one of many waysthat film genre was being articulated as a kind of social relation.

Mythological Cinema

Along with serials and short dramas, Indian silent films comprised the third of themain genres. Unlike serials and short dramas with their low and high-class appeals,Indian silent cinema was constructed on a Hindu religious address. This was mostobviously typified in the films of Dadasaheb Phalke, a Maharastrian Brahminwho, starting in 1913, established Hindu mythological film as the first indigenouscinema genre. In a now famous quote, Phalke created his own filmmaking mythof origin based on his viewing of a motion picture entitled The Life of Christ.He wrote, �while witnessing Christ on the screen, I was mentally visualizing in itsplace the gods Sri Krishna, Sri Ramachandra, their Gokul and Ayohdya ... Couldwe, the sons of India, ever be able to see Indian images on the screen?�52 Whatdistinguished Indian mythological films from their foreign counterparts was thefact that they were based on stories taken from the Hindu puranas and epics, orwere about religious saints and devotees. Phalke�s filmmaking project, thoughincorporating foreign film technology, was self-consciously nationalist �in thesense that the capital, ownership, emphasis and stories were swadeshi�.53 We knowfrom his extensive writings that his explicit purpose was to create an Indian nationalcinema by adapting Hindu mythological stories for the screen.

Mythological subjects were an obvious choice for creating a cinema since theyhad a distinctive appeal for Indian audiences already familiar with the stories.Apart from Phalke, other early Indian filmmakers and exhibitors also clearly real-ised that mythological subjects had a wide enough appeal and familiarity to securea very wide Indian market for their films. Mythological films created the first

51 K.V. Acharya, film producer and owner of the Mysore Pictures Corporation and the TheatreMajestic, Bangalore, as cited in the ICC Evidence, vol. 3, p. 383.

52 See Phalke Centenary Celebrations Committee.53 Ibid.



52 / STEPHEN HUGHES

Indian cinematic formula for commercial success based on a presumed all-Indiaappeal of Hindu religious stories. This was particularly exploited in the years upto 1923 when about 70 per cent of all Indian silent films produced were based onmythological stories.54 The historical importance of mythological films in creatinga steady Indian cinema clientele in south India can only be understood in relationto the conditions within which these first Indian films circulated and engagedlocal audiences. Hindu mythological cinema did not radically transform the filmbusiness instantaneously, nor did it evenly affect all parts and peoples of India.If we are to understand the significance of Indian film productions and their rolein the cultivation of film audiences, we must consider the local exhibition spacesand practices which preceded their introduction and allowed for their success.

Even though several silent mythological films had already been produced inMadras by R. Nataraja Mudaliar from 1917,55 no one mentioned them 10 yearslater when interviewed by the Government-appointed Cinematograph Committeein 1927�28. Instead, everyone only remembered Phalke�s Sri Krishna Janma asthe first �completely Indian film� and �true Indian representation� to be screenedin south India.56 Phalke�s first five feature films were screened to enthusiasticIndian audiences throughout western and north India from 1913, but they do notseem to have been exhibited much, if at all, in the south. It was Phalke�s sixthfilm, Sri Krishna Janma or The Birth of Shri Krishna (1918), which was the firstto attract a great deal of attention. It was first screened in Madras in January 1919and subsequently repeated throughout south India during the course of the follow-ing decade. The film consisted of a series of well-known episodes from youngKrishna�s life, which began with his birth and ended with his final destruction ofthe demon Kamsa.57 The stories were familiar to all, including most non-Hindus,which meant that most viewers could follow the films even without being able toread the captions, which were in Hindi and English.

This film was the first product of Phalke�s new partnership in the HindustanCinema Films Company, and was produced and distributed on a larger and moreefficient scale than his previous efforts. Further, Phalke himself came on a promo-tional tour to south India this time with portable projection equipment in order togive private screenings to prospective investors. One such screening was given atthe court of the Maharaja of Pudukkottai, where Phalke gave a short introductoryspeech and ran the projector himself while assistants supplied sound effects frombehind the screen.58 Taken together, these factors help explain why Sri Krishna

54 Dharap, �The Mythological or Taking Fatalism for Granted�, p. 79.55 See Ramachandra, �R. Nataraja Mudaliar�, pp. 54�59.56 G. Narayanswamy, President of the Corporation of Madras, ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 388.57 For a detailed description of the surviving portions (about 500 feet out of 5,500 feet) of this film

see Nair, �Those Illuminating Aspects�.58 According to someone who attended the event as a child, this film was the first Indian film ever

screened in Pudukkottai, albeit to a very small and select audience. G.T. Sastri, interviewed by theauthor, Kodaikkanal, 4 Sept. 1992.




Janma was Phalke�s first film to be widely recognised in south India, even thoughit is now considered to be one of his �lesser-known� films by some Indian filmscholars.59

Sri Krishna Janma�s first run in Madras at the Wellington Cinema for two weeksduring January 1919 created something of a cinematic sensation in south India.The film was screened as a special event to coincide with the Tamil festive seasonof Pongal and the Hindu holiday of Vaikunta Ekadesi. The coinciding of this firstIndian film event with a popular Hindu festival helped to assert a religious signifi-cance for the film screenings. An editorial in Annie Besant�s newspaper, NewIndia, singled out the film�s religious address for special comment:

The thousands that flocked to see The Birth of Shri Krishna filmed at theWellington Cinema yesterday and the day before testify to the very deep reli-gious feeling that underlies Hindu life. The cinema is specially a happy mediumto express the mysteries that underlie the life of Shri Krishna and it was awonderful stroke of imagination that inspired Mr. Phalke to produce this film.The deep love for Shri Krishna that abides in the South is evinced in the atmos-phere surcharged with emotion at the Wellington, where thousands that gatherare intensely moved by the show.60

The demand was such that the Wellington management held extra shows runningfrom 10 AM to 3 AM on weekends by special permission of the Madras police. Thefilm was said to have drawn 2,00,000 in attendance at the Wellington over a periodof one month. The Wellington�s owner, Rustom Dorabji (a Parsi businessmanbased in Bombay), who purchased the south Indian exhibition rights for only Rs3,000 or 4,000, was said to have made a fortune on this one film alone.61 By oneestimate Wellington and Company made about Rs 60,000, and by another they�made up the whole capital of their concern�.62

After a successful run at the Wellington, R. Venkiah secured Phalke�s films forthe Crown Theatre on Mint Street in George Town during December�January1919�20. A local newspaper claimed that even in this second run, �This theatredid record business throughout the past three weeks when the Indian production�Birth of Sri Krishna� and �Kaliya Mardan� were shown. Hundreds of peopledaily could not obtain admission and the police had much to do to maintain order�.63

Almost one decade after its debut in south India, Sri Krishna Janma was stilldrawing large crowds and doing good business for exhibitors throughout southIndia. However, even after the success of Sri Krishna Janma in Madras, the total

59 Nair, �Those Illuminating Aspects�, p. 21.60 20 Jan. 1919.61 See the testimonies of S. Devasankar Aiyar, Amateur Cinematographer; G. Narayanswamy,

President, Corporation of Madras; and A. Venkatarama Iyer (B.A., B.L.), all as cited in the ICCEvidence, Vols 3 and 4.

62 E. Nicolas, ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 208; and A. Venkatarama Iyer, ICC Evidence, Vol. 4, p. 240.63 MM, 14 Jan. 1920, p. 3.



54 / STEPHEN HUGHES

production of Indian silent films was still small enough to make the screening ofan Indian film a rare occurrence anywhere for several years to come. For example,in 1919 there were a total of eight silent films produced throughout all of India,and only half of these were screened in Madras. In 1920 the total of Indian silentfilms produced only went up to 18, and maybe eight of these managed to play inMadras.64

Compared to the usual fare of serial films and short dramas, exhibitors con-sidered Indian mythological films to be more respectable and morally unobjection-able for Hindu audiences. These purana films even attracted religiously orthodoxpeople who would never otherwise attend any public entertainment not related toworship or festivals.65 For many Indians, including many of those in the cinematrade, mythological films were a celebration of India�s spiritual superiority andan affirmation of a distinctive Indian national culture. Mythological films demon-strated to the Indian film trade a new and successful way to compete with Holly-wood films at the box office. Indian cinema exhibitors and distributors advertisedthat the viewing of mythological films was an act of religious duty and merit(puniyam in Tamil). For example, when Phalke�s Lanka Dahanam was screenedat the Wellington Cinema in Madras, a newspaper advertisement for the engage-ment claimed that �It is the sacred duty of every Indian to see this religious film�66

(see Figure 5). Exhibitors tried to use the religious content of these mythologicalfilms to their advantage by holding extra screenings of these films on Hindu reli-gious holidays and temple festivals, with as many as five and six screenings a dayduring Ekadasi and Sivaratri.

Many of those in the cinema business who catered primarily to Indian audiencespreferred mythologicals because they felt that they drew more respectable crowds,family audiences and, most especially, women. In terms of its audience correlatepurana films had a special reputation for attracting women. According to the exhib-itors women were very few in number at all film showings, except for mythologicalfilms, at which they could account for as much as a quarter of the entire audience.67

One distributor even claimed that most men did not want to see purana films, �butwith every woman six gentlemen are going due to the force of the ladies�.68 Womengenerally did not go alone to cinema theatres but usually came along with theirfamilies and children or in groups. The presence of Hindu women not only lent asocial respectability to cinema shows, it also helped raise the box office returns.

64 Production totals used here are drawn from Rangoonwalla, 75 Years of Indian Cinema. Thenumber of Indian films screened in Madras is an estimate based upon my survey of contemporarynewspapers.

65 Written statement of V. Venkataramama Aiyangar (B.A., B.L.), Member of the LegislativeCouncil, in the ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 211.

66 New India, 4 Apr. 1919.67 A. Narayanan, ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 284.68 Thomas H. Huffton, Sole Proprietor, The Peninsula Film Service, Madras, ICC Evidence,

Vol. 3, p. 355. at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 11, 2016ier.sagepub.comDownloaded from



Figure 5Advertisement for Phalke�s Lanka Dahanam

Source: New India, 4 April 1919. at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 11, 2016ier.sagepub.comDownloaded from


56 / STEPHEN HUGHES

Even though exhibitors especially associated mythological films with Indianwomen audiences, this class of film-goers never formed a majority of the totalattendance. According to A. Narayanan, the social breakdown of a typical audienceat an exhibition of an Indian mythological film was 60 per cent poorer classes andwage earners, 25 per cent ladies and 15 per cent literate Indians.69 It was relativeto other kinds of films that mythologicals attracted a higher percentage of womenand girls. With the exception of Anglo-Indians, Indian women did not attend thecinema in large numbers. One Madras government education official explainedthat �Hindu women have a natural reluctance to go to any public affair, to attendany show in a public place�. At any given film show, �at most there are about adozen [women] sitting in a roped off section or behind a purdah [screen] if thereis one�.70 Given the fact that women had not yet been calculated as being a majorpart of Madras cinema audiences, Narayanan�s statistical calculation, regardlessof whether its exactness can be believed, suggests that mythological films helpedto articulate women as an important category within the local sociology of filmaudiences.

The Proliferation of Indian Film Genres

The initial enthusiasm for mythological films quited down to some degree over the1920s as the novelty began to fade. After the great success of Sri Krishna Janmain south India, most of the other Indian mythological films that followed had dif-ficulty generating the same levels of enthusiasm. There were also obvious limitsto the popularity of mythological films with Indian audiences. Mythological filmscould only be promoted as the Indian national film genre on the basis of a series ofsocial, religious and cultural exclusions of Muslims, Christians, Anglo-Indians,Europeans and educated elite Indians.71 As the production of Indian silent filmsincreased in the 1920s (discussed below), a number of mythological films provedto be failures. A letter written to and published by the Madras Mail complained,

That badly produced and indifferently photographed plays are killing Indianfilms is obvious to anyone who visits our cinema regularly. In former dayswhen Indian films were something of a novelty, people thronged the picturetheatres. Today the novelty has worn off and cinema patrons are demandingbetter things, Indian plays fail to attract and exhibitors are faced with diminishingreturns.72

69 ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 284.70 From the written statement of Miss I.H. Lowe, Deputy Directress of Public Instruction, ICC

Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 82.71 Somnath Zutshi develops this point further by questioning the limits of Phalke�s inclusive project

of Hindu cultural nationalism. See Zutshi, �Women, Nation and the Outsider in Hindi Cinema�.72 15 Dec. 1922.




The letter writer above had no reason to be so concerned about the danger ofIndian films failing to attract audiences. There were some Indian film flops, butthese were offset by the return of the older and already proven mythological films,which continued to attract audiences. However, beyond the misplaced warnings,the writer also conveyed a frustrated sense that Indian cinema needed to improveits standards and try something new. The Indian silent film industry respondedwith a rapid increase in production and much greater experimentation in filmgenres other than mythologicals. According to one reliable estimate, even thoughmythological films comprised some 70 per cent of all Indian silent film productionsup to 1923, for the remainder of the decade they only accounted for about 15 percent of the total output.73 As the Indian film industry scaled back on mythologicals,they expanded their repertoire by developing a number of other film genres�historical, folklore, stunt and social. Indian mythological films certainly dominatedthe first decade of Indian film production, but by the mid-1920s became only oneamong a proliferation of Indian film genres.

In the 1920s, as Indian filmmakers began to experiment with other kinds offilms, two new film categories emerged as the main Indian cinematic alternativesto the mythological�first the historical, and then the social film. In the early1920s, Indian films based on historical themes, quite often about a completelyfictional past, established an important new direction. These films tended to beconstructed around popular legends about the romantic life of royalty or the adven-tures of warrior heroes. For example, there were a series of romantic costumedramas based on legendary stories about the Mughal court, such as Nurjehan(Madan Theatres, 1923) and Anarkali (Imperial Film Company, 1928). Therewere also numerous films that used well-known Persian and Arabic tales of adven-ture and romance, such as Laila Majnu (Madan Theatres, 1922) and Gul-e-Bakavali(Kohinoor, 1924). The other main variant of the historical genre were those basedon stories about the exploits of Maratha or Rajput kings, �which sought to winpublic favour by spicy tales of martial heroism and chivalry presented with all theadventure and thrill of a Wild West film�.74

�Social� films were a genre distinct from either mythological or historical filmsin that they featured contemporary settings and costumes. Usually adapted frompopular novels and dramas, the stories in social films generally revolved aroundcrime, romance, comedy and satire in urban settings. Indian social films tendedto focus on the wealthy and luxurious lifestyles enjoyed by new classes of thesocial elite, either as a parody of Indians who had adopted western habits, clothesand attitudes, or as advocating social reform of contemporary problems such aschild marriage, dowry or untouchability. The Kohinoor Film Company probably

73 Dharap, �Mythological or Taking Fatalism for Granted�, p. 79.74 Shaw, The Indian Film, p. 29. Also, for more details about some of the key Indian silent films,

see Rajadhyaksha and Willeman, Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, pp. 242�52. In the same workthe entries for the historical and social genre are also relevant; see pp. 106 and 219.



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produced the most important of the silent social films, such as Typist Girl, or WhyI Became a Christian (1926) and Gunsundari or Why Husbands Go Astray (1927).By 1928 some observers noted that the themes of Indian film productions werechanging from religious, medaieval or mystery plays to �modern plots involvingeveryday experience�.75 Meanwhile A. Narayanan claimed that while mythologicalfilms were still by far the most successful in �moffusil [rural] stations�, Indiansocial pictures were increasingly becoming more popular in the urban areas ofsouth India. One cinema hall manager from the west coast town of Calicut ex-plained that the �mushroom-like growth of social films� was due to audiences get-ting tired of the usual purana films and demanding films depicting present-daylife of modern times.76

Cinema Halls, Genre and the Local Sociology of Film Audiences

Throughout the article I have stressed a classificatory relationship between genresand audiences. This section adds cinema halls into the generic equation. By theend of the 1920s Madras cinemas became widely known and distinguished on thebasis of the kinds of films screened and their corresponding clientele. Along withaudiences, genre also helped classify the social space of cinema theatres, andeventually certain cinema halls gained a settled reputation based on their localityand film programming policy. Each film exhibitor had to work out the best possiblematch of films for the local patrons from the affordable, and sometimes limited,options. Given these overriding constraints, exhibitors in Madras did not alwayshave much choice in the kind of films they had to offer. Even so, Madras exhibitorsestablished their own local address, at least in part, through a series of programmingdecisions and changes made over time.

The frequency and number of Indian silent films shown at Madras cinema hallsbecame an important way for exhibitors to distinguish their venues as being Indianand for Indian audiences. If you wanted to see an Indian film in Madras, GeorgeTown would have usually been your best bet. As the largest business district andmost densely residential Indian neighbourhood, George Town had by 1928 threecinema halls which were known for predominantly, and competitively, exhibitingIndian films�Cinema Majestic, Kinema Central and the Crown Theatre. Thesecinema halls all maintained, as best as possible, a standard programme of Indiansilent films in an attempt to cater to their local audiences in this key Indian market.

The Cinema Majestic (seating 700) in the Grand Theatre, St. Xavier�s Street, inGeorge Town was the first Madras cinema hall to show exclusively Indian filmsfrom 1924. This venue was more successful than any other in the city in acquiringand maintaining a regular programme of Indian films.77 A rival exhibitor claimed

75 ICC Report, p. 229.76 U.B. Romesh Rao, Manager of the Radha Picture Palace, Calicut, as cited in the ICC Evidence,

Vol. 3, p. 442.77 This claim is made on the basis of advertisements in the Swadesamitran (Madras).




that the Majestic, �... always had a steady house, whatever Indian films they puton, good, bad or indifferent�.78 They built up a specific clientele who preferredIndian films at their George Town locality, whether the films were of the mytho-logical, social or historical genre. Even if they tried to change their programme towestern film serials, for example, their business would suffer on account of thefact that �... they have an established reputation for a particular film and a particularset of audiences go to them�.79

The Kinema Central (seating 650) on Govindappa Naicken Street in GeorgeTown started in the late 1920s with the expressed purpose of exclusively screeningIndian films for the majority of Indian audiences in that locality. Eventually thecinema hall also had to show western films occasionally because of the difficultiesin obtaining a steady supply of Indian silent films. Yet this small hall managed togenerate good business and maintained a steady urban Indian clientele. In 1927the manager of the cinema hall, S.K. Vasagam, claimed that there was a growingdemand for Indian social films of high quality, such as Kohinoor�s Gunsundari(1927).80 Vasagam claimed that social films drew audiences from a cross-sectionof the Indian, urban, educated middle classes and/or students according to thecinema hall.81

Matching films with the tastes of paying audiences could be a matter of survivalin the exhibition business. In the early 1920s the Crown Theatre had done wellwhen screening Indian silent films, but business suffered when they could notacquire a continuous supply. They had difficulties obtaining them at affordablerental rates and faced strong competition for a limited supply from other Madrascinema halls, some of which were being run in an exclusive collaboration withmajor Indian film producers. The Crown was for a time forced to show mostlyforeign films and serials, which were not as popular with their Indian audiences.In 1924 Venkiah was forced into bankruptcy. Venkiah�s Crown Cinema was eventu-ally purchased by Madan and Company who, on the basis of their own film produc-tions and an all-India chain of cinema theatres, were able to maintain a guaranteedregular supply of Indian silent films.82

Also located in the same neighbourhood was another cinema hall, the LibertyTheatre (seating 600), which gained a reputation for routinely screening serials.Located in George Town, Liberty Theatre also exhibited all of the Universal serials,though only after their first or second runs elsewhere. According to the managerof the Kinema Central, the Liberty was a so-called �low class� cinema hall, which

78 A. Narayanan, as cited in the ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 284.79 Ibid.80 ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 316.81 S.K. Vasagam, manager Kinema Central, ibid.82 According to F.H. Wilson, the official assignee in charge of liquidating Venkiah�s holdings after

bankruptcy, his financial failure was due to the, �... large amounts, which had been spent building thetheaters, large loans and high interest rates, bad management and robbery on the part of the staff�.The problems the Crown had in maintaining a steady run of Indian films was no doubt symptomaticof these other problems. ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 156.



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only drew a crowd when it screened �serials of the sensational type�. He claimedthat the popularity of serials at this hall was a function of the fact that �no decentpeople� would go to the hall. Further, Indian mythological films �... did not paynor attract on account of the locality� when occasionally shown at the Liberty,even though these same films did extremely well at other cinema halls, includ-ing some of those located nearby.83 What this rival exhibitor failed to mentionwas that the primary audiences at the Liberty were predominately middle andlower-class Muslims. N.R. Desai, the manager for the Universal Pictures filmdistribution office in Madras who had also earlier worked at the Liberty, explainedthat at the Liberty, �Indian pictures do not pay. Most of our patrons on that sideare Mohammedans and they do not care much for Indian pictures�.84 As the majorityof the earliest Indian silent films were based upon Hindu religious stories, theLiberty�s Muslim patrons were comparatively more interested in attending foreignfilm serials. N.R. Desai clearly understood that Muslims were not part of thesame �all-India� film market, which had been constituted around the Hindu mytho-logical film genre.

In this section I have used the example of the four cinema halls in George Townto show how genre categories also contributed to marking the physical space ofcinema exhibition. Located within a small, densely populated part of Madras, allfour cinema halls used genre categories as part of their public address accordingto their local constituencies. Genre categories helped distinguish and articulatethe reputations of these cinemas halls in relation to the highly differentiated soci-ology of George Town.

From the beginning of the 1920s the generic equation of films and south Indianaudiences was an important and changing way for understanding cinema as a setof social relations. By looking at the emerging relationships between the mainsilent film categories�serials, short dramas and Indian films�I have shown someof the various ways genre was used to construct, imagine and address the film-going publics of colonial Madras.

As the film critic for the Madras Mail so clearly expressed in his sociology offilm genre that simplistically divided Madras film audiences into the classes andthe masses, the cinema in south India had acquired a reputation for being anentertainment medium for the urban working classes and the poor. It was alsoclear to those working in the Madras cinema trade that their business was bestsustained by the far more numerous lower, uneducated and working classes. Eliteclasses were always part of the audience equation depending on the cinema hall,but their patronage was never enough to keep the 2 and 4 anna crowd from beingthe primary audience target. This simplistic reduction of the classes and massesmay have worked well enough for the purposes of selling newspapers, but a muchmore detailed and complex sociology of genre was needed for the work of filmexhibitors and film agents.

83 S.K. Vasagam, as cited in the ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 317.84 ICC Evidence, Vol. 3, p. 376.




Amongst the film trade, genre categories were used to classify and cultivatepaying audiences. Drawing on their own practical experience and their sense ofbusiness success, exhibitors brought films and audiences together the best theycould. As A. Narayanan�s exact audience calculations by genre demonstrate, exhib-itors used genres to address an array of class, gender, community and generationaldifferences depending on location and clientele. Exhibitors created their ownworking sociology of genre to manage and calculate local audiences as part oftheir business practices. Over the course of the 1920s, the equation amongst thegenres was greatly complicated by increased film production and by the prolifer-ation of genres, both foreign and Indian. Yet throughout the period genre categorieshelped the film trade address, understand and create multiple constituencies forthe cinema in urban Madras.

References

Archives

Tamil Nadu Archives, Chennai.India Office and Oriental Collections, The British Library, London.

Newspapers

SwadesamitranNew IndiaThe HinduMadras MailMadras Times

Government Publications

Indian Cinematograph Committee Report, 1927�1928, New Delhi, 1928.Indian Cinematograph Committee Evidence, 1927�1928, New Delhi, 1928, Vols 3 and 4.Fort St. George Gazette Supplement, Catalogue of Books, Madras, 1919�30.

Interviews

G.T. Sastri, interviewed by the author, Kodaikkanal, 4 Sept. 1992.

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Essays (Vern McGee, trans), Austin, Texas, 1986, pp. 60�102.



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Production to 1960, New York, 1985.Canmukam, T.K. Enatu Nataka Vazhkkai. [in Tamil], Madras, 1986.Cook, D. A History of Narrative Film, New York, 1990.Devaraj, C.B. �Flash�, Indian Talkies Era: Silver Jubilee, Madras, 1957.Dharap, B.V. �The Mythological or Taking Fatalism for Granted�, in A. Vasudev and P. Lenglet, eds,

Indian Cinema Superbazaar, New Delhi, 1983.Geetha, V. and S.V. Rajadurai. Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium: From Iyothee Thas to Periar,

Calcutta, 1998.Gunning, T. �The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, its Spectator and the Avant-Garde�, Wide Angle,

Vol. 8 (3 & 4), 1986, pp. 63�70.Hansen, M. Babel & Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film, Cambridge, MA, 1991.Hughes, S. �Pride of Place�, Seminar (525), 2003, pp. 28�32.Lahue, K. Bound and Gagged: The Story of the Silent Serials, Cranbury, New Jersey, 1968.Maltby, R. �Sticks, Hicks and Flaps: Classical Hollywood�s Generic Conception of its Audiences�, in

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Nair, P.K. �Those Illuminating Aspects�, Cinema In India, Vol. 3 (9), 1992, pp. 21�28.Neale, S. Genre and Hollywood, London, 2000.Phalke Centenary Celebrations Committee, eds, Phalke Commemoration Souvenir, Bombay, 1970.Rajadhyaksha, A. and P. Willemaen. Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, New Delhi, 1999.Ramachandra, T.M. �R. Nataraja Mudaliar: South India�s Pioneer of Silent Cinema�, in

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Abel, ed., Silent Film, London, 1996, pp. 163�93.��. �Serials�, in G. Nowell-Smith, ed., The Oxford History of World Cinema, Oxford, 1996.Sivathambi, K. The Tamil Film as Medium of Political Communication, Madras, 1981.Srinivas, S.V. �Gandhian Nationalism and Melodrama in the 30�s Telugu Cinema�, Journal of the

Moving Image, Vol. 1 (1), 1999, pp. 14�36.Thompson, K. Exporting Entertainment: America in the World Film Market, 1907�34, London, 1985.Titunik, I.R., �The Formal Method and the Sociological Method�, in V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and

the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge, MA, 1973, pp. 175�200.Uricchio, W. and R. Pearson. Reframing Culture: The Case of the Vitagraph Quality Films, Princeton,

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Silent film genre, exhibition and audiences in south India

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