In the 1940s, a Tamil studio attempted a pan-Indian epic that cost over Rs 3 million and told the story of two royal siblings warring over the kingdom and a woman. The film was Chandralekha and it had a scale that till then had been seen only in Hollywood films. The famous drum scene […]
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Tag: mehboob khan
Aan: The First Big Mad Blockbuster
There was a lot of Victor Fleming and Gone with the Wind in Mehboob Khan’s Aan even though the first film came in 1939 and the second in 1952. The sunsets, the panoramic sweeps of the earth and the sky joined by a twisted tree in the middle, long shots of horses running fretfully, […]
Ten Magical Collaborations
The Indian film industry is one of the largest in the world, and Indian cinema is unmatched in its variety. Tracing the history of Indian cinema through the traditional methods is not tedious – it is too gargantuan a task. This is just an attempt to revisit the Indian film history, and look at various […]