Bollywood at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web

A Western viewer comes to a Bollywood film loaded with preconceptions and expectations – syrupy melodrama, song and dance extravaganzas, cheap sets and wooden acting. Perhaps low production values? Scenes where the girls get drenched in the rain? Men with dodgy moustaches? And the fact that Bollywood produces more films and sells more tickets than Hollywood. All these assumptions are correct. But there is more to Bollywood than this.

I consider myself to be a film buff. I’m a weekly visitor to the cinema, a member of the British Film Institute and I own a bookshelf full of film criticism ranging from Pauline Kael to David Thompson. Last year I developed a fondness for Indian film following a late night season on Channel 4. Now I’ve arrived back from six months holiday in India with an even bigger addiction to Bollywood. But I find that the genre is unfairly represented in the UK. The Time Out Film Guide does not even put India in its list of major film-producing countries. Only recently have national newspapers started publishing preview information for new Indian films, and only even more recently have they started reviewing them. Yet the latest data from the Film Distributor’s Association shows that more Indian films than British were released in the UK during 2005, although this figure may be skewed by the vagaries of UK film funding. Also, the Indian segment constituted only 2% of the overall UK market turnover. The Indian International Film Awards were held in the UK in 2007 in Yorkshire. Yet coverage in the mainstream press is noticeably lacking.

Why is this situation so? The Bollywood industry is far from immature, nor are the movies entirely without artistic merit, although you do need to pick your way carefully through the release schedule to find something halfway decent. The Indian film industry releases on average 250 films a year, although in the lat few years this has fallen to around 220. But the majority of these will be very cheaply produced fodder for the local vernacular markets and not the glossy headliners with the biggest stars that will sell around the world. Mainstream Hindi films coming out of Mumbai are your safest bet for a good time, and the only way to avoid those dodgy ‘taches. Those starring one of the small handful of major stars are usually guaranteed to entertain. Yes, they are sometimes risible, with cheap stunts, shoddy effects and wooden acting cropping up as the most common crimes. Balancing things out, though, are spectacular dance scenes, songs as addictive as crack and an exuberant and giddy joie de vivre that has probably not been seen in cinema since the days of Fred and Ginger.

Starting with the next post, I’ll be posting a rundown of my favorite Bollywood movies, suitable for Bollywood Beginners and Intermediates. I’ll also be explaining the Bollywood Rules of Engagement – things to consider when sitting down to watch the latest from the subcontinent, and anything else that comes to mind.