Museum of Art & Photography
Curated by Kaushik Bhaumik
Bombay film publicity art went through a revolution in the 1970s. Two major shifts in the kind of films the industry started to make in this period contributed to this change in film publicity art. One was the advent of the 'masala' film replete with thrills, action and sex. The second shift in film content pertained to production of large number of multi-starrer films.
Action, Drama, Thrills
Bombay film publicity art went through a revolution in the 1970s. Two major shifts in the kind of films the industry started to make in this period contributed to this change in film publicity art. One was the advent of the "masala" film replete with thrills, action and sex. The second shift in film content pertained to production of large number of multi-starrer films.
Film poster for 'Parvarish' by UnknownMuseum of Art & Photography
As can be seen the entire space of the poster for Manmohan Desai's Parvarish (1977) is suffused with the colours of violence- blood and flame orange-red.
The character in the left (Vinod Khanna) tots a gun at the audience, almost jumping out of the frame into our space. The character on the right (Amitabh Bachchan) emits the tension of violence through his tense sweaty face, while the lower half of the poster is anchored in the buxom sexuality of the female character in the right corner denoting an excess of in-your-face sexuality.
Explosive (sex+violence)=masala.
Film poster for 'Don' by UnknownMuseum of Art & Photography
Note the psychedelic coloration of the Urdu wording 'Don' in this poster for Chandra Barot's Don (1978). Various characters point guns from corners of the poster in all directions.
Amitabh Bachchan is depicted in the lower centre of the poster through a rifle view running towards us pointing to the life-threatening thrills in the movie.
Film poster for 'Raja Jani' by UnknownMuseum of Art & Photography
Dharmendra's bloody hands reach out as much for the villain as for our throats in this poster for Mohan Segal's Raja Jani (1972).
Dharmendra's face denotes explosive murderous violence in red while at the upper centre of the poster he is shown bare-bodied and chained ready to receive an unbelievably violent beating from the villains.
The Multi-starrer Film
The second change, the one about multi-starrers, forced publicity artists to add to the dynamism of posters by way of trying to convey to onlookers the general relationship that various figures on a poster had to one another.
Poster produced for Hindi feature film 'Sholay' (1975) by UnknownMuseum of Art & Photography
The famous poster for probably what is till the biggest film in Bombay film history – Ramesh Sippy's Sholay (1975) – simply put the power-packed star cast in a row at the top.
The logic of the blockbuster- from left to right we have- Dharmendra (cut out of frame), Sanjeev Kumar, Hema Malini, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri and Amjad Khan (cut out of frame). All are roasted and fried in the inferno of violence denoted by the explosive fiery orange that blazes across the face of the poster.
Film poster for 'Roti Kapada Aur Makaan' by C Mohan (artist)Museum of Art & Photography
An interesting rerun poster for Manoj Kumar's Roti, Kapada aur Makaan (1974) which shows Amitabh Bachchan as the main protagonist of the film...which he was not.
But the poster denotes the film re-release at a time when Bachchan had become superstar No.1 of Bombay cinema, hence the historical distortion. However, it retains the multi-starrer flavour of the film, one of the first big multi-starrers of the 1970s.
A clear hierarchy is maintained between the major characters who tower over those at the bottom left- Zeenat Aman, Shashi Kapoor and Moushumi Chatterjee denoting who the film's dynamic centres are and who are the support characters. A multi-starrer like Roti, Kapada aur Makaan thus forced the poster makers rethink poster design to convey the complexity of casting by dynamizing the distribution of characters across the poster surface in interesting ways.
Dynamite Masala
If poster art earlier tried to convey genre type and the plot of the story to be told in a film, a story already somewhat recounted on the poster, then the posters of 1970s conveyed the sense of a single genre - the 'masala' film but now as an explosive live drama into which the audience was asked to step in and experience viscerally.
Film poster for 'Deewaar' by Possibly Himanshu Gola (artist)Museum of Art & Photography
This cinema was not one of a stable symbolic universe of tradition but that of a thrilling one of continuously shifting configurations of bodies, objects and sceneries around us, always alive in the here and now and moving on towards newer destinies. The poster for Yash Chopra's Deewar (1975), one of the all-time great classics of Indian cinema, shows the violent unstable world emanating from Amitabh Bachchan's towering but frazzled and destructive pose at the centre of the frame.
He protrudes out of the poster along the z-axis to establish his presence in our midst, in society. All inside the frame seem to be reacting dynamically to his restlessness while he seems to be saying - the society you live in is all exploding all around you.
Speed, of course, was the essence of both cinema and its publicity art and speed it was that produced the sense of an explosive liveness and contemporaneity that the great masala cinema of the 1970s Bombay film industry was all about. In this poster for Manmohan Desai's Naseeb (1979) speed is denoted by the smallest detail – the smooth streamlined lithe martial arts dynamic pose Amitabh Bachchan strikes at the centre of the poster.
All the classic characteristics of 1970s masala cinema publicity art- anger, violence, sex, multi-starrer, speed, thrills etc. are present in this poster for Prakash Mehra's Muqaddar ka Sikandar (1978), another Amitabh Bachchan classic.
Interlude: The MAP Cinema Publicity Art Collection
One of the interesting characteristics of the posters of the 1970s cinema up for curation is that they are either re-issues of the original artwork with considerable modulation of original content or are meant for the non-A circuit of cinemas and distribution regions and for local cinemas. The use of photographic elements in the posters (grabs from stills and so on), their slapdash coloration, a smattering of credits etc. make them more gritty and rough and ready, more apt for the dust and grit of small or remote single-screen theatres than metropolitan ones. This is much in keeping with the original sweat and grime grindhouse feel to masala cinema itself.
A reissue of a poster of S Ramanathan's Bombay to Goa (1972)
A reissue poster for Arjun Hingorani's Kahani Kismat Ki (1973)
A reissue poster for Brij Sadanah's Victoria No. 2013 (1972)
The Angry Young Man
At the heart of 70s masala cinema of course is the much celebrated Angry Young Man, here presented more often than not towering over the entire scene of the poster, dominating everything and everyone in sight. And of course when one speaks of Angry Young Men of the 1970s 'masala' film then one cannot but speak of Amitabh Bachchan. But other stars such as Dharmendra, Sunil Dutt, Vinod Khanna and Shatrughan Sinha too played memorable Angry Young Men through the decade.
Vinod Khanna starring alongside Amitabh Bachchan - two Angry Young Men for the price of one, in Manmohan Desai's Parvarish (1977)
Shatrughan Sinha as the Angry Young Man in Subhash Ghai's Vishwanath (1978)
Yet again two Angry Young Men for the price of one - this time, Sunil Dutt at the centre of the poster and Shatrughan Sinha in a black bandit costume in the centre right in Sultan Ahmed's Heera (1973)
The "Masala"Heroine
And when we speak of 1970s "masala" cinema we cannot help but speak of the ‘bold’ piquant sexuality of the heroines of the films, a very vital spice ingredient in the "masala". Indicative of the opening up Indian society to new mores of modern sexual freedom, the heroines of "masala" were as provocative a symbol of the turbulent explosive shifts in Indian cultural history as the Angry Young Men were.
Film poster for 'Qurbani' by Narayan (Possible Artist)Museum of Art & Photography
Zeenat Aman, holding central glory here in the poster for Feroz Khan's Qurbani (1980), was one of the most important sex symbols of Bombay cinema of the 1970s.
Qurbani was a milestone in the bold and explicit depiction of the 1970s Indian woman's assertion of sexual desire.
Film poster for 'Vishwanath' by Royal Prints (printer)Museum of Art & Photography
Reena Roy anchoring this other poster for Subhash Ghai's Vishwanath (1978)...
...with a modernized version of the courtesan's dance fused with a gypsy feel. Yet again the heroine looks at us frontally forcing us to take in her voluptuous sexual appeal and acknowledge its piquant challenge to society.
Coda
Finally, we end with a suite of film publicity art showing how the ethos of heightened female sexuality informed other genres in the 1970s- horror, middle cinema and the exploitation film
Lobby card produced for Hindi film, 'Julie' (1975) by UnknownMuseum of Art & Photography
Lobby card for KS Sethumadhavan's Julie (1975) which caused a scandal through its explicit allusion to the sexual act.
Julie could be considered as taking the sexual charge of 1970s free youth sexual romance of Raj Kapoor's Bobby (1972) into the 'middle cinema' that was an important 1970s film genre dedicated to a realist depiction of middle class lives.
Poster produced for Hindi feature film 'Do Raha' (1971) by Eagle Offset Printers, DelhiMuseum of Art & Photography
The 1970s saw an explosion of sexploitation cinema in Bombay. The poster for Feroz Chinoy's Do Raha (1971), starring graduates from the Film and Television Institute of India (including Shatrughan Sinha in a special appearance).
The Do Raha poster gleefully flaunts its 'A' (for adults only) censor certificate to indicate its forbidden content. A voyeuristic suite of images of bodies deshabillés and sexual intimacy pepper the poster surface but the centre of attention is the girl in a transparent negligée.
Poster produced for Hindi feature film 'Shaitan Mujrim' (1980) by UnknownMuseum of Art & Photography
The poster for Nazar Khan's Shaitan Mujrim (1979) denotes the rise of yet another exploitation genre in Bombay cinema in the 1970s- the Hammer or Italian giallo inflected horror film. Central to this genre were scenes of scantily clad women being preyed upon by greedy lovers and various forms of the undead.
Bibliography
Ranjani Mazumdar, “The Bombay Film Poster”, Seminar, Special Issue on Film Culture, May 2003
Ranjani Mazumdar, "The Bombay Film Poster: The Journey from the Street to the Museum”, Film International, Special Issue on Film & Finance, edited by Toby Miller, No.4, July 2003
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