Did V Shantaram really change Indian cinema?

Here's what I dislike about most memoirs: the beginning. They all start from the beginning. Which is often the least interesting part of a public person's life to begin with. You inevitably wish to skim through these early pages. I don't know if this is a local affliction. It's certainly true for the finest memoirs/autobiographies I've read by Indians - whether Khushwant Singh's immeasurably honest Truth, Love and A Little Malice, Vinod Mehta's delightful Lucknow Boy, and since we're talking films, Naseeruddin Shah's deeply confessional And Then One Day.

The latest V Shantaram book is of course not an autobiography. He had written one during his lifetime, Shantarama, with the help of his daughter Madhura Pandit Jasraj. It was published in Hindi and Marathi. This is Madhura's attempt at re-encapsulating her father's long career.

Much before the star-system in Indian cinema, there used to be the studio system. Audiences went into theatres knowing which studio had produced the picture. The unpaid office intern (like young SR Vankudre in the pioneer Baburao Painter's Maharashtra Film Company in Kolhapur) could well be the lead actor. Which is how Vankudre (who later named himself V Shantaram) made his screen debut in 1921, with the silent movie Surekha Haran, a mythological, obviously.

There is of course much in Shantaram's early life and career to marvel at. He was from a poor family. His first job was as a manual labourer (fixer) in the railways. He went on to act/direct/produce 81 films, besides founding two major studios - Prabhat and Rajkamal. We're looking at a boy who joined the movie industry in 1920 and remained actively associated with it until he died in 1990. That is only seven years short of the complete history of Indian cinema - from silent to talkie to colour to television... You would wish to get a sense of the changing world around Shantaram, films included. There is little of that in the book.

Jasraj chronologically plods through his filmography, detailing usual setbacks he faced while making his commercial successes. She mostly leaves out the flops. It reads more like an insular outcome of a series of impersonal interviews conducted by a basic academic/researcher. Since very little primary account of early Indian cinema exists anyway, you don't mind it entirely. Much like Rachel Dwyer's equally laborious Yash Chopra: Fifty Years of Indian Cinema.

On the personal front, the portrait that emerges of Shantaram is of a man obsessed with his work and his next assignment/goal, yes; but of an asexual filmmaker repeatedly spurring advances from his ever-willing heroines. The only flaw that you vaguely encounter in his personality is that he was perhaps slightly short-tempered. As a studio boss, he seems wholly selfless, doing everything to keep the flock together, while his jealous, conniving partners - Damle, Fatehlal, Pai and Kulkarni - gang up to dislodge him from the Pune-based Prabhat Film Company, the empire he built from scratch.

Mihir Bose's seminal work Bollywood: A History cites Shantaram's son Kiran's biography to suggest that the reason his partners deserted him was because Shantaram had broken a cardinal rule: fallen for an employee of the company, a much younger actor Jayashree whom he married later. Madhura is Shantaram's daughter from his first wife Vimal.

Shantaram bounced back with a new studio, Rajkamal, having moved to Bombay. As solo producer, he evidently whacked it out of the park even further with the enormous critical and commercial success of Shakuntala. By the time the first Rajkamal film was ready (in the latter half of 1943), we're told, he had become father of two more children - Charusheela (his daughter from Vimal in March), and Kiran, the biographer (his son from Jayashree). Polygamy may have been culturally acceptable then. Intricacies of such a relationship inspire much curiosity now. Madhura, the insider, dwells no further on this politics, sticking to her father's professional CV instead.

Which brings to me to book's title: The Man Who Changed Indian Cinema. Was Shantaram that man? In early years of talkies, movies mainly meant "historicals"/"mythologicals", laden with songs. Duniya Na Maane (1937; a film on child marriage) onwards, Shantaram did prove that it was possible to make films on sensitive, sensible and socially conscious subjects that challenged the status quo and were also commercially successful. His mentor Baburao Painter had failed at this with Savkari Paash (1925). It's something cinema the world over is still struggling with.

Shantaram was a regular at Cannes or Venice, while counting on silver and golden jubilee runs in local theatres. He also displayed a staggering range - Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (the 1946 biopic on an Indian doctor in China) couldn't have been more different from the grand musical Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje (1955). But it's Do Aankhein Barah Haath (1957, on prison reforms) that picked up both the Golden Bear at Berlin and a Golden Globe, and remains fresh in public memory still. I reckon it will continue to, forever. This is where he most effectively used cinema as a machine to generate mass empathy. Madhura's biography devotes Do Aankhein Barah Haath as much space as all his other films.

Along the way, Madhura credits Shantaram with introducing the following for the first time: "trolley shot"; "lingering scene" (actor remains in the same scene while, for instance, day changes to night, indicating passage of time); film soundtrack in a record (using technicians in Germany); animation film (inspired by Mickey Mouse); massively long scene in one shot (that inspired Alfred Hitchcock to recreate it in Robe); colour film (Sairandhri); technicolour film (Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje).

There are more. The roster is impressive. It's hard to verify each. The latter two claims are contestable or at least confusing. Trivia junkies and traditional quizzards, I know, consider Sohrab Modi's Jhansi Ki Rani (1957) as India's first technicolour film. Kisan Kanya (1937), produced by Ardeshir Irani is supposed to be the first indigenous colour movie. There's some quibble there over Sairandhri (1933) having been processed in Germany.

Be that as it may, Dadasaheb Phalke, who made the first Indian film, is supposed to be the "father of Indian cinema". He lived his later years in extreme poverty, seeking Shantaram out for help. Shantaram used to take care of his monthly medical expenses. Besides being a progressive filmmaker, Shantaram was an institution builder, which truly explains the size of his contribution. He remained relevant to his times, and also introduced a posse of talents over six decades. Current generation will still know Mumtaz and Jeetendra from this book.

And yeah, he was a wonderful family man. Madhura's warm love letter to her deceased father is testimony to that, even if it feels like a series of Wikipedia entries. To use the most terrible film reviewing cliché, since this is a book about films: It's really long; but you must read it, if you're a Shantaram fan! Well...