This is a subjective list, determined to some extent by what is available on Netflix -- you could watch these films in chronological sequence as a companion to the Ram Guha India After Gandhi book.
This is a list only of Hindi films. For the best of Indian cinema, arguably, you should watch the films of Satyajit Ray in Bengali, all available widely with English subtitles.
There are more or less dynamic, equally uneven as Hindi, regional cinemas in Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, and Punjabi, to name just a few.
1. Mehboob Khan, Andaz (Fashion / Mode / Style), 1949 -- modernity, marriage, gender, class -- hasn't aged very much even six decades later.
2. Raj Kapoor, Shree 420 (Mr. 420 -- Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code covers cases of fraud), 1955 -- shades of Chaplin, and one enduring treatment of the big, bad city, typically Bombay (now called Mumbai).
3. V Shantaram, Do Ankhen Baarah Haath (Two Eyes, Twelve Hands), 1957 -- nationalism, social reform, prison reform
4. Mehboob Khan, Mother India, 1957 -- women in the new nation, caste in the countryside
5. Bimal Roy, Sujata (the name of the female lead, etymologically 'the well-born one'), 1959 -- how the nationalists viewed caste and how they thought casteism could be reformed.
6. Manmohan Desai, Chhalia (The Trickster), 1960 -- what happened to women uprooted during Partition ...
7. Nitin Bose, Gunga Jumna (the names of the two brothers in the film, also the names of two of the chief rivers in northern India) (1961) -- land, peasantry, and the nation -- why do you think the two lead characters have to be brothers? Hindi cinema would return repeatedly to the trope of the two brothers with different trajectories.
8. Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Asli Naqli (The Real and the Fake), 1962 -- Hindi cinema's standard mode for resolving issues of inequality.
9. Abrar Alvi, Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (The Master, his Wife, and the Servant), 1962 -- modernist nationalism as it perceived the (feudal) past of landed elites and their way of life.
10. Bimal Roy, Bandini ('the bonded one, the devoted one'), 1963 -- how the nationalists viewed gender and the role of women in politics.
11. Shakti Samanta, Kashmir ki Kali (the flower of Kashmir), 1964 -- rebellious love, channeling Elvis but in distinctive Hindi cinema idiom
12. Vijay Anand, Guide (1965) -- many people would argue that this has probably been the best commercially produced (as opposed to arthouse) Hindi film ever -- gender and modernity ...
13. Shakti Samanta, Aradhana (Worship), 1969 -- what are women to do? the persistence and the many uses of melodrama
14. Raj Kapoor, Bobby (the name of the lead character), 1973 -- rebellious love again, this time across religious communities
15. Shyam Benegal, Ankur (The Seedling), 1974 -- the emergence of arthouse cinema in Hindi -- social realism, the persistence of feudalism and its consequences for the working poor in the countryside
16. Shyam Benegal, Nishant (The End of the Darkness), 1975 -- will revolution come to the feudal countryside? And what will trigger it? Arthouse cinema again, worth comparing and contrasting with Deewaar and Sholay, released the same year.
17. Yash Chopra, Deewaar (The Wall), 1975 -- two brothers again -- but the much darker public mood just as the Emergency was being declared.
18. Ramesh Sippy, Sholay (The Flames), 1975 -- again the much darker mood of the mid-70s, a crisis in the legitimacy of the state, the many uses of Clint Eastwood and the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone -- this film is still occasionally shown on the big screen, and still runs to packed houses when it does. Its dialogues, its characters, all became iconic, and became stock allusions in later Hindi cinema.
19. Basu Chatterjee, Chhoti si Baat (A Small Matter), 1975 -- the emergence of parallel cinema, the attempt to tell more real stories about more real people.
20. K Balachander, Ek Duuje ke Liye (For Each Other [till death do us part ...]), 1981 -- rebellious love yet again, this time across the north-south divide.
21. Mani Ratnam, Roja (The Rose, the name of the female lead), 1992 -- what Hindi cinema makes of separatist demands in Kashmir.
22. Yash Chopra, Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge (The Man with the Heart will Get the Bride), 1995 -- dear, oh dear, whatever happened to rebellious love!!! The first of the Hindi films of the last fifteen years tailored more sharply to the emerging NRI (non-resident India) market in the UK, Canada and the US.
23. Mani Ratnam, Bombay (1995) -- what the progressives in Hindi cinema are willing to make of Hindu-Muslim relationships in contemporary India, and what they can portray of pogroms against Muslims.
24. Subhash Ghai, Pardes (The Foreign Land), 1997 -- incredibly cheesy, again tailored to an expatriate market, very revealing of how those expatriates (including your South Asian heritage students) are perceived in India ...
25. John Matthew Mathan, Sarfarosh (The Martyr), 1999 -- how Hindi cinema deals with Pakistan ...
Ashutosh Gowariker, Lagaan (The Tax), 2001 -- incredibly cheesy again, but your students are likely to have watched it ... unfortunately ...
26. Vinay Shukla, Godmother (1999) -- I use this in my introductory survey class at the end of the semester, and it works like a charm -- high school students would like it, probably inappropriate for younger audiences. Caste, gender, development, and politics and crime in contemporary Gujarat, as well as a window into more local and heterodox 'Hinduisms' -- and many of you are likely to have Gujarati students in your classrooms.
27. Rakesh Omprakash Mehra, Rang de Basanti (Dye it Saffron / Dye it the Color of Spring), 2006 -- reminiscent of the 1975 films in terms of its depiction of a completely moribund political order, and in its endorsement of similar solutions ...
28. Anusha Rizvi, Peepli Live, 2010 -- farmer suicides in rural India, and the milking of it in the media -- hopes for a better Bollywood?
29. Kiran Rao, Dhobhi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries), 2010 -- caste and the city -- hopes for a better Bollywood?
30. Anurag Kashyap, Gangs of Wasseypur, 2012 -- Bollywood, but still manages to portray the gritty world of mining and its politics in the north Indian hinterland in Bihar. Hopes for a new Bollywood?
31. Sujoy Ghosh, Kahaani (The Story), 2012 -- won a lot of national awards for cinema in India earlier this year. What Hindi cinema can make of terrorism ... the city of Kolkata comes alive, and the central character is interesting ... there is a gender revolution afoot silently in India ...
This is a list only of Hindi films. For the best of Indian cinema, arguably, you should watch the films of Satyajit Ray in Bengali, all available widely with English subtitles.
There are more or less dynamic, equally uneven as Hindi, regional cinemas in Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, and Punjabi, to name just a few.
1. Mehboob Khan, Andaz (Fashion / Mode / Style), 1949 -- modernity, marriage, gender, class -- hasn't aged very much even six decades later.
2. Raj Kapoor, Shree 420 (Mr. 420 -- Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code covers cases of fraud), 1955 -- shades of Chaplin, and one enduring treatment of the big, bad city, typically Bombay (now called Mumbai).
3. V Shantaram, Do Ankhen Baarah Haath (Two Eyes, Twelve Hands), 1957 -- nationalism, social reform, prison reform
4. Mehboob Khan, Mother India, 1957 -- women in the new nation, caste in the countryside
5. Bimal Roy, Sujata (the name of the female lead, etymologically 'the well-born one'), 1959 -- how the nationalists viewed caste and how they thought casteism could be reformed.
6. Manmohan Desai, Chhalia (The Trickster), 1960 -- what happened to women uprooted during Partition ...
7. Nitin Bose, Gunga Jumna (the names of the two brothers in the film, also the names of two of the chief rivers in northern India) (1961) -- land, peasantry, and the nation -- why do you think the two lead characters have to be brothers? Hindi cinema would return repeatedly to the trope of the two brothers with different trajectories.
8. Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Asli Naqli (The Real and the Fake), 1962 -- Hindi cinema's standard mode for resolving issues of inequality.
9. Abrar Alvi, Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (The Master, his Wife, and the Servant), 1962 -- modernist nationalism as it perceived the (feudal) past of landed elites and their way of life.
10. Bimal Roy, Bandini ('the bonded one, the devoted one'), 1963 -- how the nationalists viewed gender and the role of women in politics.
11. Shakti Samanta, Kashmir ki Kali (the flower of Kashmir), 1964 -- rebellious love, channeling Elvis but in distinctive Hindi cinema idiom
12. Vijay Anand, Guide (1965) -- many people would argue that this has probably been the best commercially produced (as opposed to arthouse) Hindi film ever -- gender and modernity ...
13. Shakti Samanta, Aradhana (Worship), 1969 -- what are women to do? the persistence and the many uses of melodrama
14. Raj Kapoor, Bobby (the name of the lead character), 1973 -- rebellious love again, this time across religious communities
15. Shyam Benegal, Ankur (The Seedling), 1974 -- the emergence of arthouse cinema in Hindi -- social realism, the persistence of feudalism and its consequences for the working poor in the countryside
16. Shyam Benegal, Nishant (The End of the Darkness), 1975 -- will revolution come to the feudal countryside? And what will trigger it? Arthouse cinema again, worth comparing and contrasting with Deewaar and Sholay, released the same year.
17. Yash Chopra, Deewaar (The Wall), 1975 -- two brothers again -- but the much darker public mood just as the Emergency was being declared.
18. Ramesh Sippy, Sholay (The Flames), 1975 -- again the much darker mood of the mid-70s, a crisis in the legitimacy of the state, the many uses of Clint Eastwood and the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone -- this film is still occasionally shown on the big screen, and still runs to packed houses when it does. Its dialogues, its characters, all became iconic, and became stock allusions in later Hindi cinema.
19. Basu Chatterjee, Chhoti si Baat (A Small Matter), 1975 -- the emergence of parallel cinema, the attempt to tell more real stories about more real people.
20. K Balachander, Ek Duuje ke Liye (For Each Other [till death do us part ...]), 1981 -- rebellious love yet again, this time across the north-south divide.
21. Mani Ratnam, Roja (The Rose, the name of the female lead), 1992 -- what Hindi cinema makes of separatist demands in Kashmir.
22. Yash Chopra, Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge (The Man with the Heart will Get the Bride), 1995 -- dear, oh dear, whatever happened to rebellious love!!! The first of the Hindi films of the last fifteen years tailored more sharply to the emerging NRI (non-resident India) market in the UK, Canada and the US.
23. Mani Ratnam, Bombay (1995) -- what the progressives in Hindi cinema are willing to make of Hindu-Muslim relationships in contemporary India, and what they can portray of pogroms against Muslims.
24. Subhash Ghai, Pardes (The Foreign Land), 1997 -- incredibly cheesy, again tailored to an expatriate market, very revealing of how those expatriates (including your South Asian heritage students) are perceived in India ...
25. John Matthew Mathan, Sarfarosh (The Martyr), 1999 -- how Hindi cinema deals with Pakistan ...
Ashutosh Gowariker, Lagaan (The Tax), 2001 -- incredibly cheesy again, but your students are likely to have watched it ... unfortunately ...
26. Vinay Shukla, Godmother (1999) -- I use this in my introductory survey class at the end of the semester, and it works like a charm -- high school students would like it, probably inappropriate for younger audiences. Caste, gender, development, and politics and crime in contemporary Gujarat, as well as a window into more local and heterodox 'Hinduisms' -- and many of you are likely to have Gujarati students in your classrooms.
27. Rakesh Omprakash Mehra, Rang de Basanti (Dye it Saffron / Dye it the Color of Spring), 2006 -- reminiscent of the 1975 films in terms of its depiction of a completely moribund political order, and in its endorsement of similar solutions ...
28. Anusha Rizvi, Peepli Live, 2010 -- farmer suicides in rural India, and the milking of it in the media -- hopes for a better Bollywood?
29. Kiran Rao, Dhobhi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries), 2010 -- caste and the city -- hopes for a better Bollywood?
30. Anurag Kashyap, Gangs of Wasseypur, 2012 -- Bollywood, but still manages to portray the gritty world of mining and its politics in the north Indian hinterland in Bihar. Hopes for a new Bollywood?
31. Sujoy Ghosh, Kahaani (The Story), 2012 -- won a lot of national awards for cinema in India earlier this year. What Hindi cinema can make of terrorism ... the city of Kolkata comes alive, and the central character is interesting ... there is a gender revolution afoot silently in India ...
Richard Attenborough's 'Gandhi' isn't listed here. Is there a reason it isn't on your list? I would be very curious what an Indian thinks of it. My students are very positively impacted by it.
ReplyDeleteI listed only films made in Hindi and produced in Bombay, I didn't list films produced internationally and directed by people from outside India. So I didn't list Salaam Bombay by Mira Nair or the Earth / Water / Fire trilogy by Deepa Mehta -- those are essentially international films about India, even if they draw on Indian subject matter.
ReplyDeleteAttenborough's film is alright at projecting Saint Gandhi -- I complicate the picture for my students by assigning either excerpts from Gandhi's 1905 _Hind Swaraj_ or from the Penguin Gandhi reader -- Gandhi was anti-modern, anti-industrial, hated trains, advocated against vaccination ... he was a man of his times, born in 1869 ...
I'd like to discuss this more next week-
ReplyDeleteSure!
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