Indian Movies and All-Arounders

In this previous post, I posed a question, “Why are Indian movies mediocre?” and I gave some hints: the Indian cricket team in 1999, and Milli Vanilli.

No one tried to solve the puzzle. It reminds me of my years being a TA in college: the student always came to recitation looking for answers to homework problems not insight.

Well, so be it. Here is my answer.

The problem with Indian films is simple and many have noticed it: they are all musicals. After Satyajit Ray, the idea of making a two-hour movie with real actors and no song-and-dance has just died. And that is a pity because the musical is not just not well suited to address serious issues.

But there is a more important reason a film industry based on making musicals will have problems producing high-quality films. It has to do with the labor demand that these musicals place on the market for actors. Before I go in to that, let me explain why the genre of musical died out in the west.

The musical was invented in Hollywood. I believe Busby Berkeley made the first musicals and I think he had an impact on Indian musicals as well. Soon came Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers who made some of the best musicals of all times. I love this assessment from Astaire's first screen test:

"Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little."

Later came Gene Kelly who made the greatest musical ever: Singing in the Rain. But the genre died when Kelly and Astaire retired. Basically, it was just too hard to find people who could act, sing, dance, and looked handsome enough to be a film star.

The problem is familiar to any cricket enthusiast: the musical required an all-arounder. And it is obvious why the genre didn’t die in India. India discovered Milli Vanilli before Frank Farian did.

Who or what was Milli Vanilli? A german music producer named Frank Farian had an insight: there are many great singers who lacked dancing ability and many great dancers that lacked singing ability. Maybe if these talented people specialized, then they could produce really high-quality music videos. Farian didn’t let the paying public in on this little insight: he packaged Milli Vanilli as if the dancers were the ones doing the singing on the record. Milli Vanilli one a Grammy and then famously had it taken away when the scam was revealed.

Of course, Indian films have always used the Milli Vanilli trick. They use actors who can dance and lip-sync to the words of professional singers. This trick enabled the Indian musical to survive because they didn’t require a complete musical all-arounder. They just required actors who could dance - they didn’t have to sing.

But Indian films typically required little true acting ability so most famous Indian film stars were dancers first and foremost and maybe interesting personalities but not really actors. The all-arounder of a true actor who could dance well enough not to provoke laughter was hard to find. This is the analogy to the 1999 Indian cricket team: today’s actors are one-dimensional.

To make serious movies you need serious actors and screen writers who have skill in writing serious drama. Bollywood doesn’t have this kind of talent. I think there is a need for serious films and serious acting but it definitely a different commodity that the typical masala film.

My feeling is that there is a market for serious movies and it cannot be satisfied by making slightly more serious song-and-dance movies. If you have dance, then you will have dancers, not actors. I think a there should be a separate genre of film where there is absolutely no song-and-dance. This will force a premium on acting ability and create a new form of artistic expression in India – one that is greatly needed.

I think it would be wise to make the movies in English. Yes – you throw away 90% of the potential movie going population, but most of them what masala films anyway. And making serious movies in English allows the potential to carve a niche in the greater English-speaking movie market – a huge industry. I really believe that there is an untapped potential here. Of course, it could be that I am just tired of reading subtitles.