Big sums, visible and unseen

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Such was the case in the olden days when industry was an industry in name only and money was a necessary evil. It’s so bad that if you look at Chetan Anand’s low town (1946), you pay little attention to the somewhat caricature representation of the rich. Anand bhai was good at it. chant money Money money In black market (1960) which turned the youth towards the black market. That was in the late 1950s of the great old, at which time we are told was the golden age of cinema. Wealth and power faced off against poverty and innocence, and the latter always emerged victorious. Nargis did not bow down before moneylender Kanhaiyalal as Bharat Mata; And Madhubala offered herself as Anarkali as a sacrifice to keep Mughal-e-Azam(1960) intact.

In the 1960s, we had rich men who had to experience a love for Yahoo through the hills and poor sailors who became rich men anyway. In the 1970s, there was something similar, though it was sometimes a class war (Bobby, 1973) and sometimes it was simply a war on the means of producing wealth (Wall, 1975) but the whole point was that Brother, the biggest rupee, The 1980s was a stagnant decade, Bollywood desperate for modernity and missing a mile. nothing worked. The rich didn’t look rich, the poor didn’t look poor, and we all yawned desperately.

In the 1990s, Sooraj Barjatya decided that it might be time to spend a little money on extras. Instead of the usual A-list extras (who could bring their own rather tattered clothes), they got ramp models and dressed them in designer clothes. Suddenly, money went all over the screen and there was no looking back. No one asked how a teacher’s daughter could wear such clothes. We didn’t care. We wanted a destination wedding and a mehendi and a story and a book and a video and there had to be a budget for it all.

After liberalization, the world began to see India as a market – we know, we know, they wanted to dump some expired goods on us – but they also thought it was worth it to park some money and to Might be a place to look for it. Grow. ICE (Internet, Communications and Entertainment) was big, does anyone use that phrase now? ICE as an investment opportunity meant there had to be bound scripts and datelines and accountability.

There was a time when Shashi Kapoor had signed more than 50 films and was doing three shifts in a day. There was a time when Ashok Kumar came on the sets and asked Leela Naidu what is the name of his character. not anymore. There were now men in suits, I was told.

So, I wasn’t prepared to get a late night call from a young lady who had just graduated from the college I taught.

“Jerry,” she said, “talk to me.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I am in a taxi on the way to this hotel in Bandra,” she said. I had heard about the hotel. I thought it was closed.

“No, some rooms are open. I have to deliver a bag to the first floor.”

My mind wandered. I thought the taxi driver was overhearing this conversation. I thought he was robbing the girl. I thought the girl was being chased by the mafia. “Let’s talk about Pedro Almodovar’s cinema,” I said.

She gave the bag, exited the hotel and stopped by the sea to breathe the cold, stuffy night air. “I don’t think I can do it again,” she said.

“You shouldn’t,” I said.

When I told this to a friend, he nodded and said, “There is no black money left in Bollywood. Now everything is check payment. Everything.” No doubt she knew where she was speaking.

Bollywood, or whatever is left, still has a precarious attitude towards money. This is because its drivers have always been sex and violence. Sex is disguised as love and love has always stood against money. Gentlemen may adore gold diggers in Hollywood and writers like Anita Luce can skillfully favor us on their side, but in Bollywood, it was gonads on gold. And as far as violence is concerned, we all know that the person with the most firepower wins. But then, the horsepower was ours old age, The bus will lose, the horse will win. Karan and Arjun will get together and remove the powerful. The five outsiders would get together and beat up the landlord.

In Sholay (1975), we have a coveted moment that renders money against the will. Two mercenaries (Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra), hired by Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar) to free their village from the clutches of Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan), seek money and Vamus instead of fighting someone else’s fight. decide to. They are caught at this by the widow of the house (Jaya Bhaduri), who plays the role of a conscience guard, dressed in white. And she doesn’t stop them. She gives them the key and asks them to take the money and leave. You knew what was going to happen in the next scene. You knew it but you were shaken.

For me, money thrown in the fire sacrifice (1980) was an eye-opener. It’s hard to miss the eagerness with which we waited to see sacrifice, The audience was actually thumping on the theater doors to get in. When Sheela (Zeenat Aman) comes running out of the waters of the Arabian Sea, there was definitely a hoot and whistling. But in further conversation, she sets fire to Rajesh’s (Feroz Khan) wrongful earnings. There was a collective groan that ran through the cinema. No one could believe that someone could do this. Later, rumors spread that the currency was real, like the one Mercedes destroyed in the parking lot scene.
But those wrong earnings bothered us. keep from stealing (Mr. Natwarlal1979, is a good comic riff about a middle class budget) or a woman’s body (take any pimp in any tawaif movies right down to Gangubai Kathiawadi) and you will see that it is not easy to put money in the tight embrace of love and violence. Both must be pure and purity is judged on the basis of freedom from the taint of wealth. As far as business is concerned, it hasn’t had as much impact in cinema as any Teacher (2007) will tell you.

This is not surprising. Even in this age where we have given all the details of our lives to Mr. Zuckerberg and the government, we will not talk about money. (Don’t ask me what they’re paying me for this piece.) Our sexual preferences, our morning meal, our kids’ actions, we’ll talk about it all but we won’t talk about money.

Is it any wonder that Bollywood is our black mirror?

pinto isAuthor of Helen: The Life and Times of the Bollywood H-Bomb and Editor of The Greatest Show on Earth; Writing about Bollywood.

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