Sexy Invisible Dance Number
From my favourite Bollywood movie (I’ve seen so few) MR INDIA. Proletarian superhero Mr India (Anil Kapoor) who, like Frodo, is equipped with a mystical ring of invisibility, dances with his love, played by the voluptuous Sridevi.
Director Shekhar Kapoor is one of very few Bollywood directors (maybe he’s the only one) to movie onto the international stage, with BANDIT QUEEN (very good), then ELIZABETH — not so good — he started swinging the camera about for no reason around this time, and the movie does feature one of my favourite unfortunate lines: a heretic is being burned at the stake, and cries, “Throw on more wood, I’m burning too slowly!”
Then came THE FOUR FEATHERS, a remake of an Imperialist British warhorse, with the stunt casting of Kapoor as director designed mainly, I fear, to assuage doubts about the politics of the piece. The movie totally tanked, and went straight to video in Britain, I think. Haven’t seen it.
Since then Kapoor has done ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE, and it seems quite possible he’ll be returning to the adventures of Queen Liz in future, but meanwhile he’s got an episode of I LOVE NEW YORK under his belt, which might be fun. I liked bits of PARIS JE T’AIME.
You’ll notice a particularly fine example of the wet sari scene in the above clip. This scene was de rigeur in Bollywood musicals (I remember with fondness a Bollywood movie that stole the plot and all the best bits from LETHAL WEAPON, but added musical numbers, thus improving on the original by about 200%), and I once saw a very serious Indian actress interviewed, saying that she wasn’t sure she could explain the significance of the wet sari to a western audience…
shadowplay 
July 10, 2009 at 11:03 pm
To one who has seen a wet sari scene, no explanation is necessary. To one who has not, no explanation is possible!
July 10, 2009 at 11:34 pm
I think that expresses it very well.
July 11, 2009 at 3:30 am
“gulp”…these little numbers put western clang n bang sex scenes to great shame..
July 11, 2009 at 5:36 am
Well in Bollywood, until recently kissing was forbidden in films and casual nudity is totally taboo. There’s a lot of repression in Indian society but that’s where exotic Bollywood numbers come from.
Mr. India is one of my favourite Bollywood films as well…it’s so childish but at the same time it’s charmingly well done in the old fashioned silent tradition and serials.
July 11, 2009 at 10:18 am
It even has a gratuitous robot and a James Bond villain who wants to take over India. “Mogambo…kushua!” or words to that effect. I’ve only seen about a third of the film with subtitles, after catching it on Channel 4, when I was so impressed I rented it from a local Asian store and watched without subs.
More recently, Shilpa Shetty’s dance moves seem on the erotic side — is there a gradual loosening of censorship in India, the way there was in Hollywood, do you think?
July 11, 2009 at 10:52 am
No no, dance numbers in old Bollywood movies always had an erotic side. There were a number of personalities like Zeenat Aman who became famous for their provocative music numbers in movies which otherwise aren’t very good. It’s a bit of exploitation stuff alongside the family bits or toasts to motherland and the like. That is to the say it isn’t healthy eros like Busby Berkeley’s musicals…My friends mention that often in those old movies there was a scene where the bad guy forces the heroine to dance before him and his fellow bad guys and the audience is basically put into the same position as ugly looking bad guys leering over these fleshy lovelies until the dashing pretty hero comes to the rescue to give the villain a sadistic torture. Pretty messed up sexual politics working there.
Robot, can’t remember that, do you mean the scene with the flying Hanuman statue…that’s not a robot, that’s the invisible man using the statue to beat and scare the bad guys.
I think censorship remains a big deal in Indian Cinema, chiefly because India has never had a serious sexual revolution, .unlike Japan. There’s still a huge problem with the sex ratio with more men than women and women’s rights are still an issue. So that woud be a big deal as long as the people and society don’t decide to change. In America and Britain censorship fell away at the same time you had all the youth movements, civil rights movements, the feminists and the LGBT, no way any self-respecting film-maker would use the old standbys then. It also depends on whether film-makers or film industry people are taking a stand.
The funny thing is there’s more conservatism among the metropolitan middle class cities than anywhere else. They are way more repressed than…anybody.
July 11, 2009 at 10:53 am
And the other thing is that unlike Hollywood, Bollywood has never had a Pre-Code Era…
July 11, 2009 at 3:20 pm
The robot is just seen walking along a corridor in the bad guy’s HQ. For no reason at all. Cool robot though.
A sexual revolution in India would be quite a dangerous proposition, from what I can tell — it seems like anybody propagating such a thing would be at risk of their life. Not to downplay what the suffragettes went through in Britain, but we didn’t seem to have the same tendency to get homicidal when “our values” were threatened by our womenfolk. Maybe because we could vent our frustrations on our colonies…
It does seem like repressed sexuality curdles into something unpleasant, in a Reichian way — that was my take on the explosion of sexual violence (From Reverance to Rape) that came in British and American cinema as soon as censorship was lifted somewhat. But now I suspect that had as much to do with the personalities of certain prominent filmmakers.
July 11, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Most studies by Indian psychologists have noted that sexuality used to be less repressed and more open in the pre-colonial period but then the Indian middle class modelled themselves on the British and have since Independence essentially created a kind of value system similar to Victorian Britain(hence most Indian males’ obsession with voyeurism and pornography, key twin Vic-era obsessions). Bollywood is basically run by this class, a small tiny minority. But then even alternative cinema in India tends to be puritanical, the Communist party here especially. There’s no genuine authentic subversive left-wing feeling there at present.
But you’ll be amazed to find stories of rare tolerance in the rural areas like the Indian Government finally decriminalized homosexuality last week and there were a lot of stories and one of them talked about a lesbian couple in a village who were initially banished but later invited to return by their local heads and have since been openly living in the same village safely. This was before this motion got passed and it’s one of many such stories. So I see it as a furnace of possibilities. One good insight – the divorce rate is steadily rising!!!! And in rural areas more and more women are working and those numbers will rise, especially in the wake of those mass suicides by farmers.
Repressed sexuality is always unpleasant in any form. The key thing is the attitude of the film-makers. Hitchcock deals with sexuality but in PSYCHO which is like the start of the slasher film, he actually subverts the usual narrative. The villain is a dangerous repressed young man and the victim is a woman who is sexually aware but who is also a genuinely nice person. The usual thing earlier was RED RIDING HOOD – the threat was sexual and terrifying while the threatened was safe and pure. In Hitchcock, it’s subverted. The murderer is the kind old “mother”, the grandma kills red riding hood.
The fall of censorship obviously allowed the bad apples to parade their wares to eager eyes and ears in the US and UK but it also allowed for LAST TANGO IN PARIS and IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES to be big hits over there. Though the latter needs better qualification since it was rejected and banned by it’s country of birth.
July 11, 2009 at 9:24 pm
In a way,I think censorship is a good thing,it forces one to be more creative.Just because you can now see things and hear things you couldn’t before,dosen’t make it all that great.
Films got much better after the Code was inforced in Hollywood.I like a gritty classic now and then,but really,who remembers all those 1929-34,Warners ,Paramount,Universal assembly line jobbers?..For me ,Imagination and creativeness is a big key to entertainment .Hearing people swear,seeing them screw,violence,bad attitudes..dosen’t do anything for me..I can see that all around me..I think western filmakers should be jealous of those sex-dance numbers in bollywood films..Having the freedom to show what you want is always the best ,but do something worthwile with that fredom and knowhow now and again..
July 12, 2009 at 2:53 am
Those of u interested in Indian movies,check out the movies of Guru Dutt.
July 12, 2009 at 10:51 am
Thanks for the tip. I believe Mark Cousins is always singing Dutt’s praises.
July 12, 2009 at 10:57 am
Christopher, I love those pre-code programmers, which appear to have made a comeback thru TCM. Not only remembered, but currently celebrated. I think they have a more accurate take on their times than the films which followed. Of course, from the late ’30s, technical standards had improved so a lot of filmmaking got more fluid, and filmmakers did indeed show great ingenuity in working around the censor’s strictures — but there were still subjects they simply couldn’t address.
Arthur, that’s fascinating, and a great reading of Psycho too. Although I find the sexuality of Last Tango fairly rancid — I’d call Bertolucci a bad apple in that respect. But as a portrait of demented grieving and sexuality gone rotten, it has a kind of validity.
July 12, 2009 at 11:46 am
LAST TANGO is a very extreme film but it’s also very sincere and genuinely touching story of doomed love between those two characters. It’s perhaps too psychogical for most people’s tastes.
July 12, 2009 at 11:53 am
Oliver Assayas is a big fan of Guru Dutt’s PYAASA too, I unfortunately can’t comment because I’ve never seen it on a good print.
One excellent Bollywood film that migt interest you, and it’s from the 90s is RANGEELA, which is quite good and has the thoroughly delicious Urmila Matondkar in her iconic role. It’s slightly dated but it’s not primitive at least.
It’s not a Bollywood film but Satyajit Ray’s sole Hindi film with big Bollywood actors THE CHESS PLAYERS(which has one of Richard Attenborough’s best performances) is quite a fascinating film about India’s colonial struggle. No musical numbers except for one dance performance presented naturally but it has Shabana Azmi at her most alluring.
July 12, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Its true tho,since the days of TCM coming along ,those Pre-Codes have been pulled from the vaults and polished up and made anew to a yet another generation thats really for the first time,given them any credit..I think these were the kind of films given to TV stations in the 50s..and I’ve mentioned before,I believe ,that I would catch them in the early mornings ,staying home from school and find a little something differen’t in them(they were always straight dramas tho) ,but noone really made a fuss about the pre-codes till lately..