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Exchanging Looks: ‘Art Dekho’ Movie Theatres in Bombay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Michael Windover
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Bombay of the interwar years was a city in transition. The Urbs Prima in Indus, and second city of the British Empire, became increasingly both a site of nationalist sentiment and a conduit of cosmopolitan cultural and economic currents. Its urban fabric witnessed the shift from colonial, Victorian city to moderne metropolis. Captured in A. R. Haseler’s dramatic aerial photograph from the mid-1930S (Fig. 1), the Regal Cinema stands out against the Indo-Saracenic monuments of late imperial Bombay — notably George Wittet’s Gateway of India (1924) seen at the top of the photograph, his Prince of Wales Museum (1923) — its gardens on the bottom left — and, on the right, his Royal Institute of Science (1920). Although not a government-commissioned building, to the right of the Gateway, on the waterside, is the Taj Mahal Hotel (1903), a luxurious structure intended by the Parsi industrialist, Jamsetji N. Tata, to be a location for inter-cultural relations. Extending this type of space to some degree, the Regal was built by another Parsi, Framji Sidhwa, in 1933. The cinema marked the beginning of a decade-long building boom that corresponded with a significant population increase, as more and more migrants joined the city’s growing industrial workforce.

The Art Deco styling of the new financial, residential, and commercial buildings, like the Regal, celebrated and framed a modern public culture which responded to the unique socio-political realities of interwar Bombay. ‘Public culture’, a term developed by Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge, is conceptualized here as a dynamic process of indigenization, one that takes into account the global flow of ideologies through human migration and especially by mass media, one that destabilizes the ‘high-low’ binary and avoids the homogenizing terminology of ‘westernization’ or ‘Americanization’. The Art Deco cinema might be considered a crossroads where the often interpenetrating and sometimes competing narratives of commerce, nation, empire and formations of modern subjectivities intermingled: a nexus of cultural, economic, technological and political flow. The use of Art Deco is important in the context of Bombay as the style signified modernity and a particular sense of cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and yet resonated with or extended pre-existing cultural traditions in a distinctly local manner on the other.

Type
Research Article
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Architectural History , Volume 52 , 2009 , pp. 201 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2009

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References

Notes

1 For more on Wittet’s career and impact on the urban fabric of Bombay, see Dwivedi, Sharada and Mehrotra, Rahul, Bombay: The Cities Within, rev. edn (Mumbai, 2001), pp. 210–20 Google Scholar. Dwivedi and Mehrotra’s generally celebratory tone is countered in Hazareesingh, Sandip, ‘Colonial Modernism and the Flawed Paradigms of Urban Renewal: Uneven Development in Bombay, 1900-25’, Urban History, 28 (2001), pp. 235–55 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Hazareesingh describes the government’s inability to deal with the crises of public health epidemics and a chronic shortage of housing. In effect, the colonial government catered for urban élites, who brought great wealth into the city, allowing for the construction of these monumental structures at the expense of the growing majority of lowwage industrial workers.

2 Following the depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, which had reduced land values and slowed reclamation and building projects, Bombay’s population grew from 1.16 million in 1931 to 1.49 million in 1941 (with 50,000 homeless), when the city witnessed a peak in construction of residential and commercial developments. See Dwivedi, and Mehrotra, , Bombay, p. 242 Google Scholar.

3 See Appadurai, Arjun and Breckenridge, Carol, ‘Why Public Culture?’, Public Culture, 1.1 (1988), pp. 5–9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the excellent discussion of public culture in Pinney, Christopher, ‘Introduction: Public, Popular, and Other Cultures’, in Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India, ed. Dwyer, Rachel and Pinney, Christopher (New York, 2001), pp. 1–34.Google Scholar

4 The concept of cosmopolitanism has seen a resurgence of interest lately, particularly as a means of understanding the complex processes of subject formation in a post-colonial and globalized world. As a result, most of this material has dealt with our contemporary moment, although some scholars are beginning to interpret cosmopolitanism as a useful means of approaching cultural and subject formations within empires and metropolises in the past. For instance, see the following essays in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice, ed. Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen (Oxford, 2002): Zubaida, Sami, ‘Middle Eastern Experiences of Cosmopolitanism’ (pp. 32–41)Google Scholar; Sennett, Richard, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Social Experience of Cities’ (pp. 42–47)Google Scholar; Fine, Robert and Cohen, Robin, ‘Four Cosmopolitan Moments’ (pp. 137–62)Google Scholar; and der Veer, Peter Van, ‘Colonial Cosmopolitanism’ (pp.165–79 Google Scholar). For a useful discussion of cosmopolitanism in the 1930s — here in the context of Shanghai and Hong Kong — see Lee, Leo Ou-fan, ‘Shanghai Modern: Reflections on Urban Culture in China in the 1930s’, Public Culture, 11.1 (1999), pp. 75–107 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Abbas, Ackbar, ‘Cosmopolitan Descriptions: Shanghai and Hong Kong’, Public Culture, 12.3 (2000), pp. 769–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Rushdie, Salman, ‘Dekho, Dekho, Art Deco’, in Bombay, Meri Jaan: Writings on Mumbai, ed. Pinto, Jerry and Fernandes, Naresh (New Delhi, 2003), pp. 112–19 (p. 112).Google Scholar

6 Ibid., p. 112.

7 The idea of Art Deco as a ‘total style’ was first proposed by design historian, Bevis Hillier, in Art Deco of the 20s and 30s (London, 1968). He argues that ‘What is fascinating about Art Deco is not primarily its men of genius […] The extraordinary thing is that so rigorously formulated a style should have imposed itself so universally — on hairdressers’ shops, handbags, shoes, lamp-posts and letter-boxes, as well as on hotels, cinemas and liners. With justice, so far, we can describe it as the last of the total styles’ (p. 9). More recently, Charlotte and Tim Benton discussed the curiously heterogeneous yet still recognizable qualities of Art Deco in their catalogue essay ‘The Style and the Age’, in Art Deco 1910-1939, ed. Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton and Ghislaine Wood (London, 2003), pp. 13-27.

8 Hillier, Bevis and Escritt, Stephen, Art Deco Style (London, 1997), p. 21 Google Scholar. Like Charlotte and Tim Benton, Hillier and Escritt are responding to the fact that Art Deco was not known under a single term at the time. Although Le Corbusier used the headline ‘1925 Arts Déco’ for a series of articles in his journal L’Esprit Nouveau, largely mocking the work on display, the first use of the term as a name for the style was for the exhibition held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in 1966 — ‘Les années ‘25: Art Déco/Bauhaus/De Stijl/Esprit Nouveau’ — and its accompanying catalogue. Scholars have not always agreed with Hillier’s overarching definition of Art Deco for the period extending from c. 1910 to 1939, finding it too broad to account for the stylistic variances, and have thus attempted to use more precise language to distinguish between different ‘styles’ (e.g. Moderne, Stripped Classical, Modernistic, Depression Modern, Streamlined Moderne, etc.). For an excellent review of the literature on Art Deco, see Benton and Benton, ‘The Style and the Age’, pp. 13-27.

9 Rushdie, ‘Dekho, Dekho, Art Deco’, p. 112.

10 For more on the socio-political implications of the architecture of the Raj, see Metcalf, Thomas R., An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (Berkeley, 1989)Google Scholar. As he explains, the Indo-Saracenic style did not fundamentally mark Bombay’s cityscape despite the city’s cotton boom coinciding with the British interest in building in Indian styles following the Mutiny of 1857. Being a bridge to the West, and thus more Western-oriented, the city’s wealthy patrons (many of whom were of minority Parsi and Jewish communities) sought the appearance of Western styles.

11 Batley, Claude, Architecture (London, 1946), p. 29 Google Scholar. The Back Bay Reclamation scheme developed in response to a severe housing shortage following the First World War. Marred by controversy from the beginning, the massive project was originally meant to reclaim 1,500 acres of land between Colaba and Back Bay. While plans were developed along City Beautiful lines by William Robert Davidge, they were not followed. Instead, a series of apartment, hotels and commercial blocks of uniform height were constructed in what amounted to half of the original area. For more, see Dwivedi, Sharada and Mehrotra, Rahul, Bombay Deco (Mumbai, 2008), pp. 92–99, 104–43 Google Scholar. For more on the other reclamation projects, see ibid., pp. 143-65. Their excellent and well-illustrated survey includes discussion of the suburbs as well (pp. 264-87), with an essay by Iyer, Kamu (‘Art Deco in Hindu and Parsi Colonies and Wadala’, pp. 288–99)Google Scholar.

12 Eck, Diana, Darsan: Seeing the Diving Image in India, 2nd edn (Chambersburg, PA, 1985), p. 3.Google Scholar

13 Dwyer, Rachel, ‘Indian Cinema’, in Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film, ed. Dwyer, Rachel and Patel, Divia (London, 2002), pp. 13–41 (p. 33).Google Scholar

14 Ibid. As she notes, ‘the beholder takes darshan (darshan lena) and the object gives darshan (darshan dena)’ (p. 33).

15 Eck, Darsan, p. 5.

16 Ibid., p. 9.

17 Dwyer, ‘Indian Cinema’, p. 33. See also Divia Patel, ‘Advertising and the Communication of Meaning’, in Cinema India, pp. 183-214, and Jacob, Preminda, ‘From Co-star to Deity: Popular Representations of Jayalalitha Jayarana’, in Representing the Body: Gender Issues in Indian Art, ed. Dehejia, Vidya (New Delhi, 1997), pp. 140–67.Google Scholar

18 For a sampling, see the collections of essays in Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India, ed. Rachel Dwyer and Christopher Pinney (Oxford, 2001); Beyond Appearances? Visual Practices and Ideologies in Modern India, ed. Sumathi Ramaswamy (New Delhi, 2003); Cinema India; and Traces of India: Photography, Architecture, and the Politics of Representation, 1850-1900, ed. Maria Antonella Pelizzari (Montreal, 2003).

19 Freitag, Sandria, ‘Visions of the Nation: Theorizing the Nexus between Creation, Consumption, and Participation in the Public Sphere’, in Pleasure and the Nation, pp. 35–75 Google Scholar. Benedict Anderson is best known for his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983), in which he argued that nationalism is indebted to print capitalism since the sense of community shared by members of a nation state is largely propagated through media and not by direct interaction. This suggests a key role for literacy, which Freitag broadens to include other forms of visual production for her study of modern India.

20 Freitag, ‘Visions of the Nation’, pp. 40-49. Bhakti (devotionalism) comes from the Sanskrit verb ‘to share’ and the term refers to relational love. As Freitag explains, bhakti helped facilitate the ‘conflation between consumption and religious exercise’ since many of the saints associated with the devotionalist movements were anti-establishment, were against brahmanical ritualism, and fought for the untouchables (p. 43). This explains, in part, the popularity of religious posters among lower caste and untouchable groups.

21 Ibid., p. 40.

22 Patel, Divia, ‘The Art of Advertising’, in Cinema India, pp. 101–82 (p. 124)Google Scholar. Film booklets acted as promotional material for films, providing a film synopsis, images and, with the arrival of ‘talkies’ in the 1930s, song lyrics, written in both Hindi and Urdu. They were often sold directly to the public (ibid., pp. 102-03).

23 Ibid., p. 129. The booklet cover for Achhut Kanya is reproduced on p. 134. The debates about the social realist film ‘Achhut Kanya’ played out in The Times of India. For example, see Flashback: Cinema in the Times of India, compiled and annotated by K. N. Subramaniam with Ratnakar Tripathy (Bombay, 1990), pp. 136-37, 183.

24 Dwivedi, and Mehrotra, , Bombay, p. 292 Google Scholar.

25 Freitag, ‘Visions of the Nation’, p. 65.

26 Ibid.

27 See Lang, Jon, Desai, Madhavi and Desai, Miki, Architecture and Independence: The Search for Identity — India 1880 to 1980 (Delhi, 1997), especially pp. 116–37 Google Scholar. The modernism of Jawarhartal Nehru’s post-Independence India would also be associated with nationalism. As Dwivedi and Mehotra argue, ‘the opulence of “princely India” that Art Deco perpetuated was an interesting counterpoint to the values being popularised by Gandhi, which in some ways were closer to the sensibilities of Modernism rather than Art Deco’ (Bombay Deco, p. 15). Rather than simply an ‘interesting counterpoint’, Art Deco is better cast in this context as a complicated statement of some socio-political import, one that sought not radically to upset the pre-existing social hierarchy.

28 Alff, Jon, ‘Temples of Light: Bombay’s Art Deco Cinemas and the Birth of Modern Myth’, in Bombay to Mumbai: Changing Perspectives, ed. Rohatgi, Pauline, Godrej, Pheroza and Mehrotra, Rahul (Mumbai, 1997) pp. 250–57 (p. 252).Google Scholar

29 Just off the Colaba Causeway, the Cusrow Bagh, designed by Gregson, Batley and King in the 1930s, became the exclusive residential enclave of Parsis and also featured an agiary (fire temple), shops, a central garden (bagh), gymnasium, dispensary, school, gymkhana pavilion and a building for funeral services. See Dwivedi, Sharada and Mehrotra, Rahul, Fort Walks: Around Bombay’s Fort Area (Bombay, 1999), p. 51.Google Scholar

30 The building, designed by Rowland Mason Ordish in 1869, has the distinction of being the first prefabricated iron-framed building with brick infilling in Bombay. It was later converted into offices and renamed Mahendra Mansions. See Vinnels, David and Skelly, Brent, Bollywood Showplaces: Cinema Theatres in India (Cambridge, 2002), p. 72.Google Scholar

31 Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay, p. 267.

32 Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Fort Walks, p. 40. For more illustrations, see Ramani, Navin, Bombay Art Deco Architecture: A Visual Journey (1930-1953), ed. Cerwinske, Laura (New Delhi, 2007), p. 41 Google Scholar, and Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay Deco, pp. 156-60.

33 Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay, p. 267.

34 Charles F. Stevens was born in Bombay in 1874, educated at Bath and Bristol University before returning to Bombay in 1892 to article with his father. He was elected a member of the Society of Architects of London in 1896 and in 1895 was made a Justice of the Peace. He assisted with some of his father’s later work before establishing his own practice in 1907 with associates B. G. Triggs and T. S. Gregson. He would receive his RIBA nomination papers that same year. Besides the Regal Cinema, he is known for his designs of the offices of the Bombay City Improvement Trust (1904) and the Orient Club (1912). See Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay Deco, p. 101, note 5; and Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 94.

35 The Gothic Revival style of F. W. Stevens incorporated elements of the nascent Indo-Saracenic Style. For more on Stevens and his impact on the fabric of Bombay, see London, Christopher F., ‘Architect of Bombay’s Hallmark Style: Stevens and the Gothic Revival’, in Bombay to Mumbai, pp. 236–49 Google Scholar.

36 Seldes, Gilbert, The Movies Come From America (1937; repr., New York, 1978), p. 9.Google Scholar

37 See Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay, pp. 242-43.

38 Jaffer, Amin, Indo-Deco’, , in Art Deco 1910-1939, pp. 382–95 (p. 383)Google Scholar. As Hazareesingh argues, the Back Bay Reclamation Scheme did little to help housing shortage among the poorer classes (‘Colonial Modernism’, pp. 239-44).

39 Navin Ramani makes this argument visually in Bombay Art Deco Architecture, pp. 252-71. On the surface, Art Deco signifies modernity in both locations, but the lived experience and impact of the style were felt differently in the two contexts.

40 The motor car of course played a significant role in Britain and the European continent, and was likewise tied to notions of the modern. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is seen in the writing and designs of Le Corbusier.

41 Eliot, T. S., Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948; repr., London, 1988), p. 92.Google Scholar

42 See David, M. D., Bombay: The City of Dreams (A History of the First City in India) (Bombay, 1995), p. 248.Google Scholar

43 Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 26.

44 Ibid.

45 Alff, ‘Temples of Light’, p. 255.

46 Rushdie, ‘Dekho, Dekho, Art Deco’, p. 112.

47 Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay, p. 253. The name, the ‘New Empire’, was given to the earlier Empire Theatre (Arthur Payne, with local interior architects O’Connor & Gerald, 1908), after it changed ownership in 1937. The earlier Baroque-styled theatre was remodelled by Western India Cinemas Ltd, a film circuit owned by the Parsi Modi family, in 1948, under the supervision of British architect M. A. Riddley Abbott. According to Vinnels and Skelly, the credit for the interiors has been variously attributed to Schara, von Drieberg and W. M. Namjoshi. Still owned by the Modi family, the theatre was extensively restored in 1996. This proves to be another example of Parsi ownership and the Art Deco style. See Vinnels, and Skelly, , Bollywood Showplaces, pp. 84–87 Google Scholar, and Ramani, , Bombay Art Deco, pp. 232–39 Google Scholar.

48 See Ward, Janet, Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany (Berkeley, 2001), particularly pp. 163–181.Google Scholar

49 Shand, P. Morton, Modern Theatres and Cinemas, The Architecture of Pleasure (London, 1930), p. 24.Google Scholar

50 For more on American film-going activities in the 1930s, see Forsher, James, The Community of Cinema: How Cinema and Spectacle Transformed the American Downtown (Westport, CT, 2003)Google Scholar; Valentine, Maggie, The Show Starts on the Sidewalk: An Architectural History of the Movie Theatre, Starring S. Charles Lee (New Haven, CT, 1994)Google Scholar; Thorp, Margaret Farrand, America at the Movies (New Haven, CT, 1939)Google Scholar; Gregory A. Waller’s compendium of contemporary essays and primary source material, Moviegoing in America: A Sourcebook in the History of Film Exhibition (Maiden, MA, 2002); and Melnick, Ross and Fuchs, Adreas, Cinema Treasures: A New Look at Classic Movie Theaters (St Paul, MN, 2004).Google Scholar

51 Kuhn, Annette, An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory (London, 2002), p. 1.Google Scholar

52 Jaffer, ‘Indo-Deco’, p. 385.

53 Ibid.

54 The duality of the lifestyle is perhaps best evinced in the pair of portraits commissioned by the Maharaja of Indore in 1930. Executed by society painter Bernard Boutet de Monvel, one portrait depicts the young prince seated cross-legged in Maratha dress, while in the other he appears in Western evening clothes. For Jaffer, the painter ‘captures [the prince’s] elegant and self-assured style in both worlds’ (p. 387).

55 Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay, p. 276. See also Alff, Jon, ‘Art Deco: Gateway to Indian Modernism’, Architecture + Design, 8.6 (Nov.-Dec. 1991), pp. 57–63 (pp. 58–59).Google Scholar

56 Quoted in Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 94.

57 The 1938 advertisement is reproduced in Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 99; and Ramani, Bombay Art Deco, p. 214.

58 Alff, Art Deco’, p. 61.

59 Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 99; Alff, ‘Temples of Light’, p. 254.

60 Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 99. Chajjas are thin sloping overhangs resembling cornices.

61 See Alff, ‘Art Deco’, pp. 57-63. As Alff explains, Art Deco buildings picked up on the imagery of stamped, moulded and machined products but relied on extensive labour. Mechanized tools were used whenever possible. But complex, highly articulated forms and patterns, difficult to create in mass production, were also difficult to create with mechanized hand labour. The use of flat, bevelled or constant radius curved surfaces was easiest with these tools and led to design simplicity’ (p. 58). In her discussion of importance of media representations to the development of Modern architecture, Beatriz Colomina reminds us that several iconic Modern structures were made to look as though there were constructed from new materials, but in fact made by more traditional means. See Colomina, Beatriz, ‘Media as Modern Architecture’, in Architecture Between Spectacle and Use, ed. Vidler, Anthony (Williamstown, MA, 2008), pp. 58–73 (p. 60).Google Scholar

62 Alff, , ‘Temples of Light’, p. 255 Google Scholar. As well, see the images and description in Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, pp. 98-101; Ramani, , Bombay Art Deco Architecture, pp. 210–19 Google Scholar; and especially Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay Deco, pp. 60-75.

63 The third, the Metro, was built by MGM. For more on it, see Alff, ‘Temples of Light’, pp. 255-56; Vinnels, and Skelly, , Bollywood Showplaces, pp. 102–05 Google Scholar; Dwivedi, and Mehrotra, , Bombay, pp. 249–53 Google Scholar.

64 Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 94.

65 Alff, ‘Temples of Light’, p. 252.

66 Ibid., 254.

67 The Parsi community most likely derived its name from the language, Farsi, or the Iranian province of Persis (modern Fars) from which they emigrated as early as 696 CE to as late as 935 CE following the collapse of the Persian Empire to Islamic conquerors. The Parsis were permitted to settle in Gujarat by the King of Sanjan, Jadi Rana, on the conditions that: their high priest explain their religion to the King; they give up Persian language for language of their hosts; Parsi women must dress like other women of Gujarat, thus giving up their traditional dress; men must lay down arms; and wedding processions must only be performed in the dark. For more on the Parsi community’s origins in Bombay, see Kulke, Eckhard, The Parsees in India: A Minority as Agent of Social Change (Munich, 1974)Google Scholar; Bharucha, Nilufer E., ‘Forging Identities, Initiating Reforms: The Parsi Voice in Colonial India’, South Asian Review, 25 (2004), pp. 177–99 (pp. 177–78)Google Scholar; and Palsetia, Jesse S., The Parsis of India: Preservation of Identity in Bombay City (Leiden, 2001).Google Scholar

68 Willmer, David, ‘Theatricality, Mediation and Public Space: The Legacy of Parsi Theatre in South Asian Cultural History’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Melbourne, 1999), p. 36 Google Scholar.

69 Ibid.

70 So linked to trade were the Parsis that the 1931 Census listed it as their ‘traditional occupation’ ( Kulke, , The Parsees in India, p. 50 Google Scholar). For more on their role in the economy, see ibid., pp. 120-32.

71 Kulke, The Parsees in India, p. 79.

72 Ibid., p. 83.

73 Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, many influential Parsis (including Dadabhai Naoroji, Noaroji Furdoonji, S. S. Bengali, K. N. Cama and Ardesher Framjee Moos) attempted social and religious reforms to improve the rights of women. By the 1890s, Parsi women were ‘truly out of the purdah’. Meanwhile Behramji Malabari battled to raise the legal age of marriage for girls (regardless of religious domination) from 10 to 12 with the Age of Consent Bill of 1891. For more, see Bharucha, ‘Forging Identities, Initiating Reforms’, pp. 183-85.

74 See Willmer’s discussion in ‘Theatricality, Mediation and Public Space’, p. 48.

75 The Times, quoted in Evenson, Norma, The Indian Metropolis: A View Toward the West (New Haven, 1989), pp. 43–45.Google Scholar

76 Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Fort Walks, p. 47.

77 Narayan, Rajan, The Heritage Buildings of Bombay (Mumbai, 2001), p. 53.Google Scholar

78 Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay, p. 226. The Taj would become a site of some political importance under the Raj, hosting informal meetings of Indian princes in the Art Deco-styled Princes’ Room (see Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay Deco, p. 28). Its socio-political significance was brutally highlighted in the terrorist attacks of November 2008.

79 Kracauer, Siegfried, ‘The Hotel Lobby’, in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans., ed. and introduction by Levin, Thomas Y. (Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. 173–85.Google Scholar

80 Evenson quotes contemporary British responses to issues of indigenous land ownership (see pp. 37, 45).

81 Metcalf, An Imperial Vision, p. 96.

82 Ibid., p. 98.

83 Ibid.

84 This eclectic form of theatre, which borrowed from Shakespeare, Georgian drama, farce, music hall, Hindu mythologicals from classical and folk traditions, courtly and secular culture of Urdu literature traditions, as well as Parsi heritage drawn from Persian history and mythology. For more on Parsi theatre, see in particular Willmer, ‘Theatricality, Mediation and Public Space’, as well as Kapur, Anuradha, ‘Love in the Time of Parsi Theatre’, in Love in South Asia: A Cultural History, ed. Orsini, Francesca (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 211–27 Google Scholar; and Gupt, Somnath, The Parsi Theatre: Its Origins and Development, trans, and ed. Hansen, Kathryn (Calcutta, 2005).Google Scholar

85 Kapur, Anuradha, ‘The Representation of Gods and Heroes: Parsi Mythological Drama of the Early Twentieth Century’, Journal of Arts and Ideas, 23-4 (1993), pp. 85–107 (p. 86).Google Scholar

86 Bharucha, ‘Forging Identities, Initiating Reforms’, p. 193. Interestingly, in a paper read to the East India Association in London in 1937, Dewan Sharar attributed the appearance of female actors on stage in India to the influence of American and British films seen. Dewar Sharer, ‘The Cinema in India: Its Scope and Possibilities’, p. 3, MSS Eur F191/191, Arnold Adriaan Bake Collection, India Office Select Materials, British Library.

87 See Willmer, ‘Theatricality, Mediation and Public Space’, pp. 61-64.

88 Ibid., p. 135.

89 Ibid., p. 136. This form of the benefactor’s name is the colonial or archaic rendering of Jamshedji Jijibhai’s name, as Willmer points out.

90 See Kulke, , The Parsees in India, pp. 74–75 Google Scholar; and Bharucha, ‘Forging Identities, Initiating Reforms’, pp. 182-83. Jamshedji Jijibhai’s good works include the J. J. Hospital (1845), the J. J. School of Art (1857), the construction of the Mahim Causeway (1845) and the establishment of waterworks in Poona (1845). Kulke notes that six of the nine hospitals in Bombay in 1909 were built by the contribution of Parsis. He also outlines other, more charitable activities that were global in reach. For example, C. N. Cama offered a prize for the best essay on the advantage of vaccinations during the smallpox epidemic of 1851 and published the winning essay. Also, money was raised to assist poor Hindus in Gujarat, for textiles workers in Lancashire, earthquake victims in Japan and cancer patients in England (pp. 74-75).

91 As Willmer explains, ‘[t]he term masala literally means a mixture of spices, and indicates the wide range of ingredients (music, dance, dramatic forms, themes, sub-plots and so on) that can (even must) be included within the typical Bollywood movie’. See Willmer, ‘Theatricality, Mediation and Public Space’, pp. 214-15.

92 Willmer, ‘Theatricality, Mediation and Public Space’, p. 229. The name of the company, despite being centred out of Calcutta, refers to Parsi theatre origins in Bombay and indicates the power of this association into the twentieth century. Madan Theatres was investigated for monopolistic practices, but was cleared of allegations, largely due to its vertical integration rather than outright monopoly. See ibid., pp. 237-38. The family-owned business ran into economic hardships brought on by the global depression as well as the inauguration of sound which saw it left with only two theatres and no more film production. See Barnouw, Erik and Krishnaswamy, S., Indian Film, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1980), pp. 24–28, 64–67.Google Scholar

93 Gupt, ,The Parsi Theatre, p. 37 Google Scholar.

94 As Vinnels and Skelly note, the Regal hosted Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry recitals in the 1930s, the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, and more recently Ravi Shankar. High profile audience members included President Nasser of the United Arab Republic (1961) and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a regular patron (Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 96).

95 Willmer, ‘Theatricality, Mediation and Public Space’, p. 187.

96 Tanya Luhrmann discusses the position of the Parsis in post-colonial India as a community nostalgic for the days of élite status, when its members were key players in the creation of industrial Bombay. She interestingly explores the gender implications in the colonial relationship — how under the British many Parsis measured themselves against the masculine ideals of the colonizers (i.e., of all the colonized, Parsis were the most ‘white’, the most capable of ‘fairness’ and manliness), but since Independence Parsi men in particular are characterized by their own community as feminized and lacking the drive that led to the successes of their forefathers. See Luhrmann, T. M., The Good Parsi: The Fate of a Colonial Elite in a Postcolonial Society (Cambridge, MA, 1996).Google Scholar

97 Bharucha, ‘Forging Identities, Initiating Reforms’, p. 179.

98 See also Palsetia, , ‘Identity and Political Nationalism’, in The Parsis of India, pp. 277–319 Google Scholar.

99 See Bharucha, , ‘Forging Identities, Initiating Reforms’, pp. 180–81; Kulke, , The Parsees in India, pp. 217–24 Google Scholar.

100 Lang, Desai and Desai, Architecture and Independence, p. 137.

101 Ibid., p. 163.

102 Ibid., p. 164.

103 Alff, ‘Temples of Light’; Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces.

104 See Bruno, Giuliana, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (New York, 2002)Google Scholar for a discussion of the interpenetration of architecture and film.

105 Hall, Stuart, ‘Encoding, decoding’, in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. During, Simon (London, 1993), pp. 90–103.Google Scholar

106 Sack, Robert David, Place, Modernity, and the Consumer’s World: A Relational Framework for Geographical Analysis (Baltimore, 1992), p. 4.Google Scholar

107 Appadurai, Arjun, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, 1996), p. 1.Google Scholar

108 Michel Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’, trans. Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics, 16.1 (Spring 1986), pp. 22-27 (P- 25).

109 Alff, ‘Temples of Light’, p. 253. The Regal’s interior was extensively remodelled in 1953, leaving only the marble staircase with teak panelling that leads to the balcony foyer in tact. See Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 96.

110 See Hazareesingh, ‘Colonial Modernism’, pp. 245-46. This is quite the opposite of the British and North American experience. In the West, cinema was first associated with the working classes, as a novelty and fairground attraction. As film began to be incorporated into Vaudeville, it gained greater acceptance. The picture palaces of the 1920s evince the efforts of cinema owners, distributors, and producers (and they often were often closely allied, if not the same) to frame cinema as a ‘respectable’ activity. See, for example, May, Lary, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (New York, 1980)Google Scholar and Mark Jancovich and Lucy Faire with Sarah Stubbings, The Place of the Audience: Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption (London, 2003).

111 Annette Kuhn’s ethnographic work on British cinema-going in the 1930s is useful in highlighting the affective qualities of cinema-going that ultimately framed and influenced her respondents memory of going to the movies. See her article ‘Heterotopia, Heterochronia: Place and Time in Cinema Memory’, Screen, 45.2 (Summer 2004), pp. 106-14.

112 See images of the furnishings of the Metro in Alff, ‘Temples of Light’, pp. 255-56.

113 Henry Urbach points this out in his review of the varying depoliticizing interpretations of the term by architectural historians and critics in his article ‘Writing Architectural Heterotopia’, The Journal of Architecture, 3 (Winter 1998), pp. 347-54.

114 Under the 1918 Indian Cinematograph Act, with amendments made in 1919 and 1920, censorship was in the hands of the police; however, boards of censorship were established in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta in 1920 to assist the Commissioner of Police. The work of censorship was carried out for the most part by two paid inspectors, one British and one Indian. If a problem was foreseen, the secretary of the board asked one or two of the board members to look at the film. The board in Calcutta, for example, comprised a Hindu member, Muslim member, British military member and a British woman (thus the British always had a majority). For more on censorship, see Barnouw and Krishnaswamy, Indian Film, pp. 43-58.

115 Ibid., p. 53.

116 Sociological studies were carried out in the United States about the perceived adverse effects of film on American youth. For example, see Henry Forman, James, Our Movie Made Children (1935; repr. New York, 1970)Google Scholar. For a consideration of American films on British culture, see Massey, Anne, Hollywood Beyond the Screen: Design and Material Culture (Oxford, 2000).Google Scholar

117 Barnouw and Krishnaswamy, Indian Film, pp. 122-26. More stringent censoring returned in order to diffuse nationalist sentiments that opposed Britain’s entry into the Second World War, which was seen as an imperialist war and counter to India’s drive for independence.

118 Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay, p. 289.

119 Chowdhry, Prem, Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema: Image, Ideology, and Identity (Manchester, 2000), p. 15.Google Scholar

120 Ibid., p. 15.

121 Noyce’s speech is recorded in part in Vakil, S. B. and Hirlekar, K. S., Motion Picture Society of India 2nd Annual Report for the Year ending 31st March 1934 (Bombay, 1934), pp. 2–4 Google Scholar. In the speech he calls for further government protection against foreign competition and incentives for developing technological capacities in India.

122 Sharar also advocated the building of a first-class cinema circuit, encouraging British involvement in the field of distribution, which was recognized as primarily in the hands of Americans (especially in foreign films). See Sharar, ‘The Cinema in India’.

123 Chowdhry, Colonial India and the Making of Umpire Cinema, p. 39. Chowdhry offers the example of the western genre as akin to empire films.

124 Ibid., p. 40.

125 Ibid. Chowdhry discusses Thorp’s book, America at the Movies (New Haven, 1939).

126 Ibid., pp. 42-43.

127 Ibid., p. 45.

128 For example, see advertisements and articles reproduced in Flashback: p. 25 (‘New Cinema for Simla Viceroy Attends Opening Show’, 15 July 1925); p. 127 (Advertisement for reopening of Old Empress Theatre, 4 November 1933); p. 99 (Advertisement for showing of Mother India at Opera House, 24 February 1939).

129 See advertisement dated 22 May 1937 for the coronation procession playing at the Capitol and Regal as reproduced in Flashback, p. 194.

130 Bruno, , Atlas of Emotion, p. 82 Google Scholar.

131 Chowdhry, , Colonial India and the Making of Empire Film, p. 26 Google Scholar.

132 For contrast, see Larkin, Brian, ‘Colonialism and the Built Space of Cinema in Nigeria,’ in City Flicks: Indian Cinema and the Urban Experience, ed. Kaarsholm, Preben and Biśvāsa, Maināka (Kolkata: Seagull Books, 2004), pp. 183–210.Google Scholar

133 Alff, ‘Art Deco’, p. 37.

134 Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 56.

135 Quoted in ibid., p. 96.

136 Ibid., p. 61. They describe the horrific event of a fire in a Hyderabad cinema in 1941 where many women burned to death rather than ‘face the “shame” of escaping with the crowd’.

137 Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’, p. 25.

138 Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 100. Several details of the frieze are reproduced in Dwivedi and Mehrotra, Bombay Deco, pp. 65-71, 73.

139 Alff, ‘Temples of Light’, p. 252.

140 Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 99; Alff, ‘Temples of Light’, p. 255.

141 Alff, ‘Temples of Light’, p. 257.

142 Ibid.

143 Advertisement from The Times of India reproduced in Flashback, p. 106.

144 Golden Jubilee brochure issued in 1983 quoted in Vinnels and Skelly, Bollywood Showplaces, p. 94.