Nostalgia
Down Bollywood memory lane
R. KRITHIKA
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With posters from the oldest to the latest Bollywood flicks, the book makes for a visually stunning experience.
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The book also shows you how integral posters were to the films and how the star system developed.
Bollywood in Posters, S.M.M. Ausaja, OM Books, 2009, Rs. 2500.
With the famous Raj Kapoor-Nargis poster from “Barsaat” for the cover, the first reaction is to grab the book. S.M.M. Ausaja's Bollywood in Postersgoes down memory lane. Posters of Hindi films from the grand daddy of them all “Alam Ara” down to “Jodhaa Akbar” make for a visually stunning book.
Apart from the posters and sundry stills, the book has minimum text: the basic storyline, credits, cast, famous songs, and awards it has won. The more important ones, especially after film writing picked up, have quotes from various scribes placed strategically.
At first glance, the book does seem alluring but as you turn page after page, the magic palls. The glam quotient stays but the text becomes monotonous, especially as typos creep in: “complimented” for “complemented” at various points; “villain's mole” (p.56)… There are also curious turns of phrase that make you pause as you wonder what the author means. Another crib is that there's no surprise element. Most of the popular movies are featured; nothing new; no “hey, I haven't seen that one before” moment. And a third big problem is the use of colour. On certain pages, where the colour is rather dark, the text is practically unreadable: Dev Anand's “Baazi” (p.56) and Guru Dutt's “Pyaasa” (p.78) to name just two instances
Visual history
But the book also shows you how integral posters were to the films and, curiously enough, how the star system developed. The early posters are not all about the stars. Compare a poster of, say, “Achut Kanya” (incidentally Ashok Kumar's debut) with the recent “Om Shanti Om”. The latter was very obviously about SRK and Deepika while the first blared the name of the film; the actors were secondary. As you move through the decades, the faces of the stars get more prominent. And once the Big B bursts on the screen, the posters are all about him.
The other interesting feature is the development of the poster itself. From the first sketches to today's hi-tech print outs, the progress is laid out in stark detail. But there is a charm to those early posters that is missing in today's finished product.
With a foreword by Amitabh Bachchan, where he objects to the use of the term Bollywood, this is one for the hardcore film buff. Though it is rather steep at Rs. 2500.
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