Jhansi Ki Rani: The First Technicolor film

The film was the first Technicolor film of India.

India had already seen the first color feature film, Kisan Kanya , in 1937. But it was yet to see the technical exuberance of the life-like colors that the Sohrab Modi masterpiece was about to bring.

Technicolor, in essence, promised to mimic the colors as seen with eyes to the screen. In order to do this, it had evolved largely through a complex act of research and development of the effects of colors through various ‘processes’ like the additive and subtractive process.

By 1939, film-making had evolved to a process which was much more than just adding a tint in the entire film.

The Technicolor processes used in films like Becky Sharp (1935), Gone With The Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939), had rightly focussed on boosting the highlights and producing the best details on the contrasting areas of any image.

While colors were important for the films, it was also important that the film-makers held a kind of emotional connect with their audience and not splash the entire gamut of the spectrum to produce something too jarring in the end.

Known for his archaic subjects in movies like Pukar (1939), Ek Din Ka Sultan (1945), Sohrab was now shifting to something grand and larger than life. Something that would be on a bigger scale and beyond the usual.

Rani Laxmibai’s saga is one of the greatest in the 1857 mutiny against the Britishers.

Her leadership, equestrian and sword skills formed a trinity that made her almost invincible.

Married to the Maharaja of Jhansi, Gangadhar Rao, Laxmibai or the Queen Manikarnika, was never supposed to be the warrior she became.

It was on the death of her husband, that she vowed to protect her princely state against the annexation of the Britishers, on the pretext of the controversial Doctrine of Lapse.

Though her son was adopted and not a legal heir under the British rule, she revolted saying: "Main meri Jhansi nahi doongi" (‘’I shall not surrender my Jhansi’’). And she continued to fight against all forces till the day of her death, at the battlefield of Phool Bagh in Gwalior.

The sacrifice of Rani Laxmibai is etched in every Indian's heart for her immense dedication and grit for the independence of India from the imperialists. It is ironical, that many years later, it is a troop of Britishers and outsiders who helped bring her back to life by the grace of an Indian cinema.

Sohrab Modi had admittedly been a disinterested student of history, but when he got a glimpse of Vrindavan Lal Varma's novel of the queen, he had found a treasure trove of many things.

The novel had the scope of exploring a grand film, with a heavy incidence of the Urdu and Hindustani language to which he had a weakness forever.

He chose his wife, Mehtab to portray the much coveted titular role of the film. But, it was not an easy task for Mehtab to pull off at all.

Mehtab had to go through a rigorous regime of sword fighting, horse riding, and other exercises to be in shape for the role of a physically versatile Queen.It was interesting that Mehtab at the age of 35 was playing the role of a lady much younger than her.

On the brighter side, Modi was eloquent in Urdu and pulled off the role of Rajguru with ease. Rajguru, played a key role in making the young Manu, the Rani of Laxminbai of Jhansi.

When Manu’s father died, Manu and a group of children rebelled against the killer and this had impressed Rajguru so much, that he had decided to impart his expert tutelage to train this fire branded lady to be the Queen of Jhansi one day.

KM Cariappa, the first Indian Commander-in-Chief of the Army, performed the muhurat ceremony for the film on January 18th, 1951.

Sohrab had everything from lavish sets to great costumes and styling, but he was essentially lacking one thing still. So, after shooting nearly 5000 feet, or an hour of the film in black and white, Sohrab decided to change it to something 'life-like'!

The Technicolor process at the time was a complex business and incurred high production costs. But, that didn't deter Sohrab from his vision.

The idea was to capture “the multitudes of colored costumes, the pageantry, and splendor of the era" and so it was decided that the technology of Technicolor will be used.

Sohrab got the technical team from foreign lands to help him with his vision, the film was shot by Ernest Haller who had won an Oscar for his work on the milestone film Gone With The Wind (1939).

He even got George Jenkins, the Hollywood color consultant to help him further with the war scenes and the song picturizations.

The Technicolor process at the time was a complex business and incurred high production costs.

There was a three-strip technology which was involved in the color reproduction of the images. In simple words, this meant that three separate strips were run through the camera and were later processed together to produce a single image of utter brilliance.

This process promised that the highlights and the contrast on the set will be held as per the desired look and feel of every frame in the movie.

It was in September 1951, that the large troupe of equipment to shoot the grand affair began arriving from England to the shores of Mumbai.

Some of the specialised pieces of equipment included a 275-kilowatt generator, arc lights of the latest generation, transformers, sound gears, and big cables and trucks.

It was even after shooting that Sohrab had to deal with a great deal of hardship.

Indian laboratories were not equipped to process Technicolor at the earlier stages of its inception, so Sohrab had to station himself in London for weeks to complete the film. And that was not all, “The sound was re-recorded and mixed across twelve channels” as recounted by Mehelli Modi, son of Sohrab Modi.

Sohrab had made a classic for which he would be remembered for ages to come.

Nevertheless, Sohrab had made a classic for which he would be remembered for ages to come. He achieved something fresh and perhaps ahead of his time.

His style of narrative lacked a high pitched dramatic semantics both in shots and treatment. He struck a startling pathos and poignancy in his depiction of the queen, and this was far from the maudlin melodrama which was prevalent at the time.

At the time where practical effects in films are taken over by computer-generated images, we should read from the annals of the unsung heroes like Sohrab Modi to respect our roots evermore.

His son Mehelli Modi, who now distributes old Indian cinema in London regrets that the original color negative (of the film) has been lost and thus “there is currently no known print of the film in its untruncated Technicolor version.”