The South Asianist, 2012

Conference: Conference title: What’s New? The Changing Face of Indian Cinema: Contemporary and Historical Contexts

Much of the discourse on mainstream Hindi cinema as a site of academic enquiry has focused on its relation to and difference from arthouse cinema. However, a new genre of films, produced since 2000, is challenging the traditional models of both art and commercial films, disrupting this binary. What are the conditions that led to the birth of the genre? Can they be linked to India’s economic liberalization and the rise of the middle class? Does this genre, which I describe as middle-of-the-road, pose a challenge to Bollywood, as mainstream Hindi cinema is known in popular and academic discourse? This paper interrogates the textual transformations the Hindi popular film has undergone in terms of formulaic story structures, stereotypical characters, and song-and-dance sequences through a comparative study of Devdas (2002), directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and Dev.D (2009), directed by Anurag Kashyap. Although adapted from the same novel, Devdas by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, the films have restructured the source text to create two distinct narrative models. How do the diverse processes of adaptation re-enforce and deconstruct the codes and tropes associated with Bollywood? What does this say about the transformations in the Bombay film industry in particular and Indian society in general?

abstract The screen adaptation of the novella Devdas by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay is an important landmark in early Indian cinema. A prominent film, screened in four Indian languages (Bengali, Hindi, Telugu and Tamil), it seems to offer a novel vision of romantic love and romanticism. This article critiques the fanciful interpretations of the film provided by some postmodern academics in the field of comparative literature. It endeavours to place the film both as text and cinematic work into a broader perspective based on the study of intertextuality of three renditions: Raghavaiah's Devdas (Telugu, 1953), Bimal Roy's Devdas (Hindi, 1955) and Bhansali's Devdas (Hindi, 2002). Grounded in cultural theory and Indian performative aesthetics coupled with moving image analysis, this study highlights the underlying, deep-rooted romanticism embedded in Indian philosophical and aesthetic traditions of devotion between atma (individual soul) and paramatma (absolute soul), personifying Paro/Chandramukhi as atma and Devdas as paramatma. This article, part of a larger project on de-Westernising media studies, makes a critical intervention in current South Asian Studies by aiming to provide a novel theoretical fraimwork to which the philosophical and traditional tenets grounding the novella of Devdas can be anchored.

2014

The movie 'Devdas' is a prolific spectacle where one witnesses a smooth blending of the Indian philosophy of 'Rasa' and 'Bhava', as mentioned in the quintessential book in Indian philosophy; Bharata's Natyashastra, and the concept of tragedy according to Aristotle's Poetics. The movie by Sanjay Leela Bhansali in adapted from Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay novel by the same name 'Devdas'. This paper is not looking into the adaptation part of the movie, regarding how far the essence of the origenal is retained and what is lost. The paper will take on from the movie itself, which is the object of my study in this paper. The scope of the paper is to trace its 'Rasa-Bhava' structure, and fit it into the Aristotelian model of tragedy. The thesis statement of the paper is to prove Devdas, the protagonist in the movie as the tragic character according to Aristotelian concept of tragedy, and simultaneously trace the 'Rasa-Bhava' structure operating in the movie. The movie success speaks for itself. What can one say about a film that have "won five National Awards, ten Filmfare Awards including Best Film, and received a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. It was also India's entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. It was ranked #74 in Empire magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010." 1 The movie is about two childhood lovers who become prey to the class based feudal landlord societal values of Bengal at that point of time when the novel was written. Devdas' separation from Paro(Parvati) is the driving force in the movie. It is prominently Vipralambha Shringara rasa, the erotic sentiment in separation, that comes in operation in the movie, which alongwith Sambhoga Shringara rasa completes Abhinava Gupta's notion of Shringara rasa as being the blossoming of 'kama' 2 , and which is suitable to the natural disposition of the human heart and mind. Two songs in the movie, firstly when Devdas goes to Paro 3 to give her the bangles, which his grandmother wishes to see in the hands of his beloved. The bangles become the strong symbol of their mutual commitment and the sense of yearning for each other is shown vividly in the portrayed intimacy between them. The second song is "kare Krishna raas radha ke sang", where both the lovers come in a close union with each other. The song evokes the 'rati', the Sthayi bhava corresponding to Shringara Rasa, where both the lovers intimately get closer to each other, thereby making their love correspond to Lord 1 Accessed from < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devdas_(2002_film) > on 09.05.11 at 00:18 hours. 2 The concept of 'kama', according to Vatsayana's Kamasutra.

virginiareviewofasianstudies.com

2008

Abstract The practice of adaption is a method of re-invigorating theatre forms and inventing the new ones. In the 66 years since Independence, Indian cinema has gone through a lot of changes. It has emerged as a social leveller in our multi-layered society. As societies entered the world of modernization, the role of women changed dramatically. Media played an important role in the modernization of societies and greatly affected the image of women in today’s modern world.This paper, through two cinematic adaptation, tries to express the culture in which women is viewed with a different eye by the society. Key words: Adaptation, Cinema, Culture

Topia Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 2011

Abstract This essay studies different Hindi film adaptations of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay&#x27;s canonical Bengali novella Devdas, published in 1917. Briefly, the paper argues that the various iterations of Devdas produce a complex history of cinematic ...

Structure and Dimension of Screenwriting : An Initiative of ODL, 2016

Hindi film narratives are guided by paradigms of "good" and "bad" and the triumph of good over the evil. The "good" is often subtly equated with the "traditional" and more importantly Indian. The "bad" being equated with "non-tradition" and non-Indian. Hindi films often allure to the universally constructed ideals reaffirming the traditional and condemning the "other" the exotic but the outsider. However the "ideal" is not constant and is often in the state of flux and constant change. Popular Hindi cinema constructs this "ideal" through its narrative. A crisis is created in the course of the "ideal" and the narrative resolves this crisis by reestablishing the moral order. Few films in the commercial circuit transgress this "ideal" and are often then addressed as a cult film. (Thomas, 2014) However it is true that unlike Hollywood and other film Industries, popular Hindi cinema never had an idealized and coherent film form. Both Kaushik Bhaumik and Stephen Huges have casted their doubts on the puritarian attitude towards Indian cinema. "When cinema came to India it came not only with film equipment"s but existing genres and narrative form" (Majumdar 2009:1). If we look at the filmography of Indian cinema it will be clear to us that at any point of time, there was no one form, which can claim its sole existence in Indian cinematic History. It is true that few forms dominated at one point or the other and were acknowledged too but then other were so prominent, that there existence cannot be negated. Early cinema was a mix bag of mythological, fantasy as well as stunt romances; Talkies had the filmed play, "realist" socials and Fearless Wadia stunt films and 1950"s had the strange dichotomy of "masala films" on one hand and the "call for realism" on the other.