THE GOLDEN ERA (1951 TO 1960)

III. THE GOLDEN ERA (1951 TO 1960)

The golden era of the Indian film industry started sometime around the last few years of the 1940’s but came up in a big way only in the beginning of the 1950’s. The cinema of this time is marked with a distinct voice of country just free from clutches of a 200 year foreign rule. Spirits were running high and there was a taste of revolution in the air. In the past 5 years India had seen the height of the freedom struggle, gained actual freedom in the year 1947, followed by a landmark geographical partition where millions of people were displaced from their homes on the basis of their religion. The riots and the bloodshed that followed was enough to change things forever.

The 50’s saw the rise of great directors like Mehboob, Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor and Satyajit Ray (Bengali Film Industry) who changed the fate of Indian cinema and made it a force to be reckoned with. All of these directors were associated with the film industry since the 1930’s and 40’s and seen the realty of a nation change in front of their eyes. They had seen the gruesome partition and the traumatic famine. They were citizens of a world which was fighting a war against fascism and a country which was fighting against its colonial rulers. All this contributed majorly to the ethos in which the directors grew. The first international Film festival of India (IFFI) was held in Mumbai in the year 1952 and gave a much needed platform to the Indian film industry.

The 50’s were all about socio political melodramas. These were the glory years when some of the landmark films in the history were made and gained national and international fame. Examples include Raj Kapoor’s Awaara (1951), Shree 420 (1955), Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa (1957), Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam (1960), Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen (1953) and Devdas (1955).

The most important film so to speak was still Satayjit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955) which had the distinct honour of being the first Indian film to open the Cannes international film festival and once again put Indian cinema on the map of the world as a force to be reckoned with.

While mainstream films were thriving commercially, the time was also ripe for parallel cinema to rise. Films by directors like Shyam Benegal, Mani Kaul, Ketan Mehta, Govind Nihlani, Kumar Shahani and Vijaya Mehta were also being noticed as a separate intellectual genre. Chetan Anand’s Film Neecha Nagar (1946) had won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and paved the way for art (parallel) filmmakers. Many of the films made during this time find themselves listed among the best films in the world in lists created by the AFI (American Film Institute), BFI (British Film Institute) and even the prestigious lists by The Time Magazine plus Sight and Sound (Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) tied at #160).

The time between 1951 and 1965 was indeed the golden era in the history of Indian cinema for both commercial and parallel ventures. But nothing remains the same for a long time in a diverse and ever changing country like India and soon it was time for another era to begin. The era of expensive films, adventurous plots, romantic themes and super hit songs with glamorous stars was about to begin.