Leadership Insights from Jaina text Saman Suttam

Article 31

BioScope
“Regional” Cinema or Products 4(1) 31–49
© 2013 Screen South Asia Trust
of Bricolage? An Introduction to SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
Malayalam Studio Film of the New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
Early 1950s DOI: 10.1177/097492761200483058
http://bioscope.sagepub.com

Jenson Joseph

Abstract

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This article offers an overview of the exhibition and distribution sectors in Kerala between the late
1920s and the 1940s, and the economic and cultural considerations behind the initiatives to set up

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production centers within this region by the late 1940s. The incipient industry identified the “family
social” as a convenient format to negotiate with the industrial and aesthetic terms set by South Indian

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cinema, mainly based in Madras, and the cultural demands placed on it by linguistic constituencies and
elite patronage in the 1950s. The industrial constraints of small budgets and a narrow linguistic market

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necessitated an aesthetic that could cater to a socially and regionally mixed audience. Strategies of
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adapting existing popular genres like mythologicals, and subordinating these to the overarching narra-
tive structure privileging an aesthetic of contemporaneity, enabled the early studio films to negotiate
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commercial and cultural pressures. Jeevithanouka (The Boat of Life; Vembu, 1951) is discussed as an
instance where elements from popular mythologicals and stage performances were appropriated to
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privilege rationalist values.

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Keywords
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Malayalam studio films, South Indian cinema, family social, genre mixing
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In the scholarship on histories of early cinema produced in regional industries in India there is often a
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direct relation made between “what is shown in the film” and “what was happening in the region when
the film was being made.” While this dominant approach is limiting in several respects to studies of
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cinema in general, it is severely inadequate to understand the commercial filmmaking practices of the
1940s and the 1950s in regional industries.
The dominant approach is not attentive to the creative engagements through which early commercial
cinema in many regions devised signifying practices by borrowing generic elements from film cultures
locally and across the world to conjure up new meanings, affects, and energies. One of the focuses of this
article is to pay attention to the creative strategies adopted by the incipient commercial cinema in
Malayalam to respond to the emerging cultural ethos and demands placed on it as a cultural institution.
In the case of South India, linguistic markets were not consolidated until the early 1960s, and film
entrepreneurs worked within the possibilities and constraints of often unpredictable markets. They were
also engaged in the wider territorial networks of production and circulation stretching beyond the bound-
aries of specific linguistic regions. Hence, the recurring themes, the dominant aesthetic form and the

Jenson Joseph is Research Scholar at Department of Communication, Sarojini Naidu School of Arts &
Communication, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh 500 046, India.
E-mail: [email protected]
32 “Regional” Cinema or Products of Bricolage?

generic traits of commercial films made at studios in regional centers were often determined by cultural–
industrial factors deriving from beyond the region. To explore this history, we need a framework that
approaches cinema as operating within regional and global flows common to early cinema across the
world (see Bhaumik, 2008; Hughes, 2010; Vasudevan, 2010).
In the regions that constitute the present administrative unit of Kerala, films made in other languages,
and in provincial production centers outside of Madras, were immensely popular since the 1920s. The
distribution and exhibition sectors in the region depended on production centers outside for a steady
stream of films to sustain them, at least until the late 1950s. Two of the earliest studios in Kerala, set up
in the late 1940s, had to engage with this wide commercial network of production and circulation as well
as other popular entertainment forms like drama—an aspect that crucially determined the dominant
aesthetic form of the films they made. That the filmmakers of this period succeeded to a large extent in
responding to the commercial and cultural considerations of the wider circulation network is evident

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from the fact that a good number of the films made in Malayalam during the late 1940s and the early
1950s collected most of their revenues from screenings (of their re-made/dubbed versions) in other

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South Indian regions as well as the markets in Sri Lanka and South East Asian regions like Malaysia and

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Singapore. Rather than extolling the offshore reach of some of the early Malayalam films, the attempt

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here is to foreground the need to understand the operations of the early film industry in Malayalam
within the terms and constraints set by the wider networks of production and circulation, especially the
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industrial and aesthetic terms set by the production base in Madras. Broadly, the article is an effort to
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reinsert the early history of Malayalam cinema into the larger field of South Indian cinema of the period,
so that the specificities of the former emerge in relation to the latter, not independent of it.
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The Industrial Structure and Cinema in the Region: 1920s–1930s

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In India, after the advent of the talkies, film production, which was scattered in various urban centers,
gradually became concentrated in metros like Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras—the centers of India’s
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industrial activities during the time—where an industrial working class, even though nothing compared
to India’s total labor force, had already formed.1 Permanent, temporary, and traveling cinemas catered
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to audiences in this early period. According to Valentina Vitali, most cinema houses in India, especially
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the ones located outside the main urban centers, preferred screening foreign films since Indian films
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were costly to acquire and could not guarantee a sufficiently large audience to recover the huge hiring
and transport costs (Vitali, 2008, pp. 3–6). Only a few theaters showed Indian films exclusively, and
resorted to screening imported films only when they could not obtain Indian films (Report of the Indian
Cinematograph Committee, 1928, p. 20). In Madras, the early permanent cinema houses were set up by
Western entrepreneurs, initially to cater to the small audiences of the Europeans and elite Indians
(Baskaran, 2009, p. 46; Hughes, 2000). During the late 1910s, the attempts by Indian entrepreneurs to
set up cinemas that would cater to the working class audiences drew considerable anxieties from the
colonial government (Hughes, 2000, pp. 48–50). Against this scenario, the following section tries to
map the socio-economic conditions in which a film business, dependent predominantly on traveling
cinemas exhibiting Tamil, Hindi, and foreign films, operated in Kerala until the 1950s. Many of these
conditions enabled Tamil studios and a number of Tamil distribution companies, mostly owned by Tamil

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Jenson Joseph 33

Brahmins—an influential caste group that enjoyed government patronage in the Travancore princely
state (Jeffrey, 1975, Chapter 4)—to dominate the film business in the region.
As studies suggest, a predominantly agro-economic structure prevailed in the regions that constitute
the present Kerala, especially the princely state of Travancore, during the first two decades of the twen-
tieth century. There were hardly any (capital-intensive) modern industries. Most of the economic activi-
ties were centered on plantation agriculture and agro-processing industries. Also, there was the
near-absence of an indigenous entrepreneurial class. European capital maintained a complete dominance
and hegemony over these sectors, and the majority of the labor force was engaged in these traditional
sectors. Raman Mahadevan, in his study on the history of industrial development in the princely state of
Travancore, observes:

The industrial structure of the region continued, at least till the early forties, to be characterized by the dominance

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of the export-oriented plantation and agro-processing industries. […] [A]s a percentage of the value of total
exports, coconut and its products, the plantation crops, coffee, tea and rubber together with other hill produce,

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accounted for 80.4 per cent in 1870–1, 80.5 per cent in 1919–20, 82.1 per cent in 1938–9 and 85.5 per cent in
1945–6. […] Even as late as 1940–1, the work-force in plantations and the agro-processing industries accounted

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for over 84 per cent of the total work force in organized industries. The phenomenal growth of the cashew industry

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in the forties further strengthened the work-force in the traditional sector. (Mahadevan, 1991, pp. 160–162)

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The wages for the workforce in the traditional sectors remained considerably low, compared to the
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wages in other parts of the country. The abysmally low wage rates was one of the major factors that, on
the one hand, attracted investment from other parts of the country in the region before the 1940s in these
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traditional sectors, and on the other, resulted in the emergence of a strong trade union movement in this
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sector.2 This scenario had direct implications for the film industry as well. In fact, a committee assigned
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to look into the living conditions of laborers in the coir manufacturing industry reports that even as late
as in 1952, many of the respondents had not been able to watch a film for years due to low wages and
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awful living standards.3

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The agriculture-based industrial economy in Travancore, with the overall predominance of foreign
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capital, gradually began to change by the 1930s. The Depression resulted in severe fall in the prices of
agricultural products;4 more people began leaving agriculture and moving to urban areas; the princely
state adopted an industrial policy encouraging investment in industries as a solution to issues like grow-
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ing unemployment (see Isaac and Tharakan, 1986; Mahadevan, 1991; Pillai and Shanta, 1997). The
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falling prices of agricultural products resulted in the transfer of capital from agricultural and plantation
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sectors to other industries, though at a marginal rate. The census recorded an increase of 40.4 percent in
the number of persons engaged in organized industries from 103,490 in 1931 to 145,291 in 1941.5 A
nascent entrepreneurial class, mainly from within sections of the Ezhava and Syrian Christian commu-
nity, emerged during this time, even though the growth of this class tended to be somewhat tardy. To
compensate for the sluggish entrepreneurial response of the local business groups, the princely state
sought to actively intervene in promoting industries, often playing the role of an entrepreneur. This sce-
nario, however, did not result in any significant spurt in industrial investment which occurred only in the
1940s (Mahadevan, 1991, p. 163). Nevertheless, there was a growing migration to the employment gen-
erated by the setting up of a few industries and a number of cottage industries such as textiles, cashew
nut processing, tile making, and coir making, which heavily depended on cheap labor. In short, three
points need to be emphasized: (a) agriculture and related sectors reached a level where it could not

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34 “Regional” Cinema or Products of Bricolage?

absorb capital and work force anymore; (b) the units of traditional and cottage industries increased, even
though the prevailing conditions did not result in the setting up of modern industries in any significant
way; and (c) these circumstances accelerated the commercialization and urbanization process and the
emergence of a work force engaged in organized industries.

Early Instances of Indigenous Investments in the Film Industry

During this period, one of the sectors that the emerging entrepreneurial class invested in seems to be the
film business, especially in setting up exhibition and distribution networks.6 Tamil capital had a signifi-
cant presence in these sectors. The monopoly of European capital in almost all other sectors of the

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economy and the absence of other significant industrial areas to venture into could have propelled invest-
ments in speculative enterprises like film industry. In addition, cinema’s modern attributes—like the
glamour and status it promised, as well as the novelty of the medium—could also have played a role in

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the sector attracting investments.

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The investments in various sectors of the film business were marked by their speculative and rotating

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nature, and in most cases, the prospect of good returns was not the motivation behind them. Talking
about his foray into the field of art in the late 1920s, P.J. Cheriyan, who made Nirmala (Krishna Iyer,
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1947), one of the early talkies in Malayalam, says in his memoirs: “It was a risky decision to leave the
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traditional agricultural occupation and venture into the art sector. The field of art did not seem to be
offering the prospects of a prosperous life at all” (Cheriyan, 1964, p. 11). Leaving his father’s business
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of the edible oil trade, Cheriyan set up a photography studio (Royal Studio) at Ernakulam in 1927, and
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later started a professional drama company named “Royal Cinema and Dramatic Company” in 1929.
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Similarly, N.X. George, who was from the rubber trade, migrated to film distribution by setting up Geo
Pictures in the late 1930s, and, despite running into huge losses initially, continued in the sector (John,
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2012). These accounts points perhaps to the lack of other avenues into which capital from the stagnant
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agricultural and related sectors could move.

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Exhibition and Distribution Sectors

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The first distribution company in Kerala was started in 1928 by Nenmara Lakshmana Iyer to distribute
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films made in other parts of British India, especially Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. Lakshmana Iyer
also set up temporary exhibition centers at Kochi, Ernakulam, and Alleppey, under the name Imperial
Talkies. The exhibitors and distributors depended mainly on Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta for a regular
supply of films, along with imported films mainly from America and Britain, and also from Germany,
Italy, and France. Theaters had to change films regularly, most often every two weeks and sometimes
every three days (see Baskaran, 2009; Johnny and Venugopal, 2009, p. 20).
The exhibition and distribution sectors started expanding from the mid-1930s, with a good number of
films from across the world circulating in the region. Between September, 1936, and May, 1937, the
Censor Board examined 240 films (Nasrani Deepika, May 22, 1937). The region’s first permanent
cinema houses were set up in the late 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition sector mainly consisted of
traveling and temporary cinemas until the 1950s. According to a newspaper report, 209 exhibition

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Jenson Joseph 35

centers operated across Kerala by August 1950—125 in Travancore, 43 in Cochin and 41 in Malabar. Of
this, only around 10 were permanent theaters. The license granted to the temporary and semi-temporary
exhibition centers had expired by 1950. The report mentions that the Thiru–Cochin Film Chamber of
Commerce, formed on August 7, 1950, appealed to the government to grant the temporary exhibition
centers permission to continue in operation (Malayala Manorama, August 8, 1950).7
The memoirs of K.V. Koshy, “the first Malayali distributor”, provide us with a glimpse into the sce-
nario that prevailed during the 1930s and the 1940s. The films that circulated in Kerala were mostly
damaged copies of Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi films, after their screenings across various regions for
months. The distributors would procure films from companies based mainly in Madras, Salem, Bangalore,
or Bombay by paying a fixed amount (around `700 in the 1930s, according to Koshy). The revenue that
these films could generate from screenings across Kerala was considered a bonus by the film production
companies (Koshy, 1968, pp. 12–13, 23–24) until the early studios set up in Kerala began making films

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in considerable numbers by the early 1950s. The theaters would procure films from the distributors for a
few days and try to collect as much revenue as possible by conducting more screenings per day than were

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agreed and allowed,8 and also by screening the films at more than one venue. Until at least the late 1950s,
the distributors in Travancore used to procure the rights of Tamil films as soon as their production

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began,9 indicating their popularity and the shortage of films in circulation in the region. The traveling
and temporary cinemas dominated the scene, often competing with other entertainment forms like
popular dramas, both Tamil and Malayalam.
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The Impact of Sound

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In 1932, when Marthandavarma, a silent film on a Travancorean theme was released, Tamil cinema had
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already moved to the era of talkies. The arrival of sound gave the Tamil industry an upper hand over the
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popular and cheaply available foreign films. Even though the first sound studio in South India (Srinivasa
Cinetone, Madras) was set up only in 1934, the Tamil film industry began appropriating the technology
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for consolidating the linguistic market much before. The first sound film in Tamil–Telugu was made in
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1931 (Kalidas; Reddy, 1931). Producers based in Madras went to studios in Bombay, Calcutta, and
Kolhapur, where facilities for making sound films were available, and made talkies in Tamil and other
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South Indian languages in considerable numbers. In 1935, after sound studios were set up in Madras, 35
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talkies were made; and more than 240 films were made in the first decade of Tamil talkies (1931–1941).
Buoyed by this, by 1936, the number of cinema houses in the Presidency increased to 225, of which
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12 were in the city of Madras, and about a hundred were touring cinemas (in contrast to 46 permanent
houses and 12 touring talkies operating across the Presidency by 1927) (Baskaran, 2009, pp. 49–50).
Silent films continued to be screened in Kerala at least until the early 1940s. Though we do not have
much information about when cinema houses in Kerala began to introduce the sound system, it seems
safe to assume that they started screening talkies as early as this trend emerged in other parts of South
India, and that Tamil talkies were popular in the regions of Kerala, mythologicals being a prominent
genre among them. In 1952, a commentator, writing about the popularity of Tamil talkies in Kerala,
wrote:

The business of selling mythological ilms is more prominent in North India. In Hollywood, the birthplace
of cinema, there is no market for gods. In South India, Tamilians seem to excel in this. In fact, ilm viewers

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36 “Regional” Cinema or Products of Bricolage?

[in Kerala], for a long time, have been under the impression that Tamil is the mother tongue of gods! However,
some Malayalis have now started importing gods from Tamil cinema in order to end the latter’s monopoly.
Recently, one of my friends, after watching a Malayalam mythological ilm, said: “Finally, Lord Siva spoke in
Malayalam!” (Mohammed, 1952; emphasis added)

However, the narrow size of the linguistic market that a Malayalam talkie could cater to seems to have
initially dissuaded many from the business. Koshy notes that filmmakers in Madras thought that making
a film in Malayalam would not be commercially viable “because Kerala is not even 1/5 of the size of
Tamil Nadu” (Koshy, 1968, p. 46). The economic conditions following the Great Depression and the
Second World War further delayed the emergence of the Malayalam talkie era. In short, it took a while
for the emergence of initiatives to capitalize on the sound technology and consolidate the linguistic mar-
ket in Malayalam-speaking regions, the way the industry in Madras appropriated it to seize the linguistic

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markets in the south from foreign films.
Nevertheless, a number of local entrepreneurs as well as some of the production bases far from

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Madras were motivated by the advent of sound to explore the commercial prospects of talkies in Kerala.
The first talkie in Malayalam, Balan (Notani, 1938), was produced by T.R. Sundaram who owned

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Modern Theatres, Salem, which showed a distinct interest in the Kerala market.10 Alleppey Vincent, who

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was instrumental in the setting up of the early studios in Kerala, acted in the film and worked as its pro-

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duction executive. The production of the film was started by collecting `25,000 from the exhibitors
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beforehand. Advertised as the “first Malayalam social,” the film did well commercially (Gopalakrishnan,
2004).
A number of unsuccessful attempts at making films also marked this period. There was an attempt to
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make a film based on Bhootharayar, a novel by Appan Thampuran. The film, which was to be directed
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by S. Notani, could not be completed (Vijayakrishnan, 1987, p. 47; also see Menon, 2011). Similarly, a
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Tamil company had plans to make a Malayalam talkie titled Prema Vaichithryam in 1938, which was to
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be based on a play by a drama troupe in Alleppey (Mathrubhoomi, January 13, 1938). A report in
Malayala Manorama on December 29, 1938, said that a film production company named Kairali Talkies
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would soon be registered at Palakkad. Similarly, a group called “Kerala Fine Art Society” was set up in
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Madras to make films in Malayalam as well as “to encourage Kerala’s art forms like Kathakali and
Kalaripayattu” (Mathrubhoomi, November 1, 1939). Nevertheless, only two more films—Jnanambika
(Notani, 1940), and Prahlada (Subrahmaniam, 1941)—were made in Malayalam until 1947, as the
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industry in South India was hit by the acute shortage of raw stock due to the Second World War for
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almost a decade.
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The late 1930s and the early 1940s witnessed the emergence of a number of initiatives which were to
act as catalysts in the evolution of a commercial film industry in the region after the War, when circum-
stances became more conducive. In 1938, K.V. Koshy set up his film distribution company, Filmco. This
was closely followed by other initiatives of a similar kind. N.X. George started the distribution company
Geo Pictures at Kottayam in 1939, which later became a major production and distribution banner.
Swami Films, another major distribution firm, owned by K.S. Akhileswara Aiyar, was set up in 1939.
(Nana, 1974, pp. 183–189). Iyer later produced films like Yachakan (Velappan Nair, 1951) and
Manasakshi (Vishwanath, 1954). He was also instrumental in the setting up of the All Travancore Cinema
Association at Kottayam in 1947. T.E. Vasudevan, who was to become a major producer in the 1950s,
started his distribution company, Associated Pictures, in 1940. Associated Pictures entered film produc-
tion in the 1950s and made films such as Amma (Vembu, 1952), Ashadeepam (Rao, 1953), Snehaseema

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Jenson Joseph 37

(Rajan, 1954), Nayaru Pidicha Pulivalu (Bhaskaran, 1958), Jnanasundari (Sethumadhavan, 1961), and
Puthiya Akasham Puthiya Bhoomi (Mani, 1962). P. Subrahmaniam, who set up Merryland Studio and his
production banner Neela by the late 1940s, made his first film Prahlada in 1941, which was also the first
mythological in Malayalam.11 In the same year, Kunchacko, along with Alleppey Vincent and others,
founded a permanent production house named Udaya Pictures, which in 1948 became Udaya Studio at
Alleppey—the first studio in Kerala with sound recording facilities. However, only five Malayalam talk-
ies were made until 1949; the distribution and exhibition networks in the region had to depend heavily
on Madras and other production centers for a steady stream of films.

Post-war Economy and the Emergence of Linguistic Nationalism:

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The Late 1940s

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By the late 1940s, with the end of the War, and in the context of an industrial buoyancy especially in the
Travancore princely state (Mahadevan, 1991), the film industry in the region witnessed a significant

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spurt in initiatives in all sectors, including production and the setting up of studios. This enthusiasm was

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also nurtured by a burgeoning linguistic nationalist discourse. Around 70 films were produced in

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Malayalam during the decade—a considerable increase compared to the number of films made till then.
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This was the result of the increased investments in setting up studios, distribution firms and new cinema
halls, together with the entry of some of the distribution banners—especially those owned by K.V.
Koshy, T.E. Vasudevan, and Akhileswara Iyer—into film production. The first two films from Udaya
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Studio, set up by Kunchacko at Alleppey in 1947, were released in 1949 and 1950 (Vellinakshathram,
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Bais, 1949; and Nallathanka, Krishna Iyer, 1950). K.V. Koshy tied up with Kunchakko and launched
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their banner K & K Productions in 1949. In 1951, P. Subrahmaniam, who produced Prahlada, set up
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Merryland Studio in Thiruvananthapuram in 1951 by investing around `10 lakhs.12 His production
banner ‘Neela’ released its first film Athmasakhi (Rao) in 1952. Neela simultaneously made a Tamil ver-
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sion of the film, named Priyasakhi.

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A number of other important initiatives also emerged during the time. V. Ramakrishna Iyer, one of the
distributors of the 1940s, entered production and made films like Vanamala (Vishwanath, 1951) and
Premalekha (Mani, 1952), along with S.A. Narayanan, who set up his company in Bangalore to distrib-
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ute American films. In 1949, A.T. Abraham set up his distribution banner Cochin Pictures, and later, in
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1950, started the distribution firm, Prabhat Films, along with P.V. Varghese. He also set up temporary
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cinema halls in central Kerala. Johnson M.A. started a distribution company called Jaya Films in the
early 1950s and opened cinema halls in Kochi. In 1952, T.K. Pareekkutty, who later produced a number
of socialist realist films during the 1950s and the 1960s, set up his distribution outfit Chandrathara
(Initial Years, 75 Years of Malayalam Cinema, 2003).
The changed economic and cultural conditions seem to have enabled the local studios and Malayali
entrepreneurs to take on the powerful Tamil producers and distributors. K.V. Koshy says he “felt it was
much more viable to make films on our own by spending around `1–1.5 lakhs, rather than acquire Tamil
films for amounts like `2 lakhs, and then run into losses” (Koshy, 1968, p. 62). The strategy was obvi-
ously to make films at low costs—often ranging between `1 lakh and `3 lakhs—by keeping in mind the
possibilities of simultaneously remaking or dubbing them into other languages. Udaya’s Nallathanka
was made at the cost of around `1 lakh, and Neela’s Athmasakhi with `2.5 lakhs.13 This was the time

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38 “Regional” Cinema or Products of Bricolage?

when a big budget Tamil film would spend up to, or more than, `20 lakhs for its production. The industry
operated mainly based on a rotating capital base. S. Kumar, son of P. Subrahmaniam, said in an interview
that none of the producers of the time had enough money to spend lavishly, or make more than one film
at a time. The producers were not concerned as much about making huge returns from their films as
about ensuring moderate revenues from the screenings to cover their expenses, and re-investing the
money in producing new films.

Appropriating the Linguistic Nationalist Discourse

As the commercial initiatives exploiting the prospects in cinema gained momentum, simultaneously, a
growing culture of writing about the medium, mainly through newspapers and periodicals, also emerged.

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K.V. Koshy, after setting up his distribution firm, immediately launched a film magazine called Cinema
in 1939 (Koshy, 1968, pp. 40–42). Similarly, the Malayala Manorama announced a dedicated feature

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page for news and reports about cinema in the same year (Malayala Manorama, May 7, 1939). While

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Koshy’s intention was, among other things, to provide the necessary information regarding new releases

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to the exhibitors and to highlight the problems faced by those who are in the industry, especially the
exhibitors, Malayala Manorama stated that its purpose was to educate the masses about cinema. The
newspaper wrote:
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We have not attempted to provide necessary information to the masses about ilms. In English, as well as in some
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other Indian languages, there are writings about cinema that provide information about cinema to audiences.
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But similar initiatives have not yet been taken in Malayalam. This is one step towards that goal. (Malayala
Manorama, May 7, 1939)
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As was the case in most other parts of India, one major concern raised by the commentators was the
evil influence that cinema could have on certain sections of people. Cinema was figuratively marked as
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the favorite medium of the plebian masses with poor tastes, and cinema halls as contaminating spaces.14
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At the same time, cinema’s ability to capture “social reality” and its positive potentials as a medium, “if
utilized properly”, was fulsomely acknowledged. Consider these comments for example. The first one is
by K. Ramakrishna Pillai, a cultural critic, about the power of cinema and its implications for theater:
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The world is changing very fast. The desire for a new world order can be seen everywhere. It is cinema, rather
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than plays, that is more useful for dissemination of ideas needed for such a change. Plays cannot compete with
cinema in the latter’s ability to capture the social reality. (“Naalathe Naadakam”, Nasrani Deepika, January 10,
1941)

The second one is from a ‘letter to the editor’ in Mathrubhoomi:

Film-going has become part of the routine for city dwellers. […] The travelling cinema has started reaching even
the remotest places. No other art form has touched human lives so profoundly, and inluenced human emotions
so deeply. […] While cinema is being used in Russia for the betterment of human lives, in our country, it is being
misused for invoking animal instincts. […] Our cinema halls have the character of brothels and the attraction of
toddy shops. There will be dance sequences just for fun and vulgar scenes in the name of comedy, even though
they don’t have any relevance to the story. Most of them are mythologicals. What would the audience feel when

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Jenson Joseph 39

they see the sight of our supposedly most venerated mythological heroes running helter-skelter to get mates like
massive stud bulls? (Mathrubhoomi, 1937, December 21)

The letter indicates some recurring features in writings about cinema during the time: (a) it marks
cinema and the cinema hall as a contaminating medium/space; (b) by comparing cinema halls to brothels
and toddy shops, the letter indicates an (illicit) desire for cinema (it may be noted that the writer uses the
word “attraction”—ākarshanam—in this context) as well as a disavowal of it; and (c) it points toward a
growing disapproval of mythological films.
These anxieties and responses from the cultural elites in Kerala naturally took the form of contempt
for Tamil films, since Tamil mythologicals and musicals were popular in the region. These commentaries
attributed certain cultural sophistication to Malayalis, as against the “uneducated” Tamilians who pro-
duce the “morally contaminating” films and “dump them on Malayalis” for commercial exploitation.

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This tendency prevailed until the late 1940s. Announcing the beginning of a film feature page, Malayala
Manorama, wrote in 1939:

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Unfortunately, in Kerala, Tamil ilms are more popular. These Tamil ilms cannot be compared to Hindi and

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Telugu ilms, and not least to English ilms. How come such ilms gained popularity among us? The reason can-

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not be the lack of aesthetic sense among Malayalis, who are proud of being superior in their educational and

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cultural standards as well as having better aesthetic sense than people in any parts of India, a fact even foreign-
ER
ers have approved of. The reason could be the similarities between the two languages. We [Malayalis] can easily
follow Tamil. This could be the reason why we [Malayalis] often decide to watch these dreadful [Tamil] movies
by spending our precious time and money for the sake of some cheap entertainment. (Malayala Manorama,
M

1939, May 7; emphasis added)

M

In such writings, Tamil cinema and Tamilians emerged as the cultural “other” of the Malayali as a
O

whole. One of the major objections against Tamil films was that they contained sexual obscenity, like
C

kissing scenes. Production of films within the region, by indigenous artists, set in the region’s context,
R

was proposed as the solution. Setting up studios in Kerala and regular production of Malayalam films, it
FO

was suggested, would enable the entrepreneurs and filmmakers in Kerala to grab the market from Tamil
films and distributors, which in turn would liberate the local viewers from the “morally degrading” Tamil
films. Nasrani Deepika, in its editorial on September 13, 1949, wrote:
T
O

The [distribution] companies in Kerala concentrate only on securing the rights of Tamil ilms, and the exhibitors
here focus only on their business. In short, proit is the only motive for those engaged in ilm business in Kerala.
N

However, some [Malayalis] have started making Malayalam ilms with the help of the studios outside Kerala.
The main reasons behind the failure of Malayalam ilms are the lack of capital inlow and the lack of coopera-
tion of the experts and the experienced people in the industry. […] It is important that we make good ilms in
Malayalam. It is also important that we make them within our region. The irst aspect is related to supporting
our own aesthetics and culture through ilms, and the second is related to the economic aspect. (Emphasis added)

Moreover, the proponents of Aikya Keralam (United Kerala) explicitly declared its patronage for a
regional cinema and local production base. Pallathu Raman, a renowned poet, talking at a meeting of
Sahithya Parishad, Kannur, in the context of the campaigns for Aikya Keralam, highlighted the need for
setting up a production base in the region to prevent Tamil cinema from commercially exploiting
the market:

BioScope, 4, 1 (2013): 31–49

40 “Regional” Cinema or Products of Bricolage?

The [Tamil] ilm industry is an institution that comes like lood waters and steals money from the pockets of
Malayalis. Cinema is well suited for the promotion of music and literature. Fire can be used to burn down a
house, but also to cook food. Similarly, cinema also has two aspects. Cinema should propagate moral values.
Don’t we [Malayalis] have beauty, culture, music, and women who are experts in dance and other arts, in our
land? (Malayala Manorama, 1948, May 4)

The cultural elite’s contempt for Tamil cinema became a useful marketing strategy for the early film-
makers in Malayalam, who tried to cash in on the cultural pride in Malayalam and the native land. This
political context enabled the filmmakers to adopt most of the popular elements deployed in Tamil
cinema, make them available in a cheap format and still claim distinctiveness from popular Tamil films.
Udaya’s first film Vellinakshatram was advertised as “the Malayalam film, made by Malayalis at a studio
set up by Malayalis, in the Malayali land” (Nasrani Deepika, 1949, February 10). The case of Nallathanka,

SE
Udaya’s second film, is an interesting case indicating the dependence of the burgeoning industry in
Kerala on Tamil cinema for content. The film was based on a story which had already been made thrice

U
in Tamil with almost the same name—Nallathankal. The Tamil versions were popular in Kerala and this
was precisely the reason the filmmakers chose the same story when they were looking for a theme to

L
make a Malayalam film (Koshy, 1968, pp. 85–86). Thus, while freely adapting the visual registers and

IA
thematic content widely employed in popular Tamil films, the producers were also drawing on the cul-

C
tural elite’s promise of endorsement and patronage for the local industry. Yet tension inevitably emerged
ER
between industry circles and cultural critics. For example, Nallathanka was dismissed as a poor adapta-
tion of a worn-out theme in Tamil films and dramas. Annamma Kunchacko, wife of Kunchacko, wrote
that such “unfair” criticisms contributed to the sad plight of the Malayalam film industry (Nasrani
M

Deepika, 1950, January 9). The studios sought to mollify respectable opinion by advertising their films
M

as “suitable for family viewing,” in an implicit contrast with Tamil fare.15 Promotional strategies also
O

sought to appeal to the elites by associating films with respected public figures. An advertisement of
Udaya’s Nallathanka claimed:
C
R

The screening of Nallathanka at Madras Star Talkies will begin in the presence of Madras Mayor Dr. P.V.
FO

Cheriyan. Also playing at Bombay (Dadar), Ootty, Salem, Nagercoil, Madhrurai and Pudukkotta. (Nasrani
Deepika, 1950, April 15)
T

Udaya also arranged special screenings of their first films and managed to get famous personalities
O

and politicians to write about their experience.16

N

Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu-based studios tried to retain their Kerala market by including songs and
reels of comedy scenes in Malayalam.17 Some of them started releasing their films in multiple theaters in
one area.18 Tamil films started flaunting their lavish spending, promising more entertainment and spec-
tacle, as a marketing strategy to counter the “family-appealing” claims of Malayalam films. For exam-
ple, advertisements of Krishnabhakthi (1949), a Tamil mythological, capitalized on the claim that the
film was made at a budget of `20 lakhs (Nasrani Deepika, 1949, June 1; Malayala Manorama, 1949,
May 25). An advertisement of the Tamil film Vijayakumari flaunted its scenic locations, sets, and dance
sequences (Nasrani Deepika, 1950, February 8).
Even as the production of Malayalam films increased gradually, at least until the late 1950s, the distribu-
tion and exhibition sectors in the region were heavily dependent on the Madras-based industry for a
steady supply of films. Hence, far from taking an anti-Madras position, the distribution–exhibition sectors
deployed similar strategies used by the studios in Kerala to remarket Tamil films (Image 1). Moreover,

BioScope, 4, 1 (2013): 31–49

Jenson Joseph 41

the producers of the early talkies in

Malayalam depended heavily on reve-
nues from screenings of their films in
non-Malayalam speaking regions. Many
of the early Malayalam films generated
most of their revenues from screenings
in Tamil and Andhra regions as well as
in countries like Singapore, Malaysia,
and Sri Lanka (John, 2012, pp. 19–20).
Udaya and Merryland studios made
films at phenomenally low costs, at regu-
lar intervals, and keeping in mind the

SE
possibilities of simultaneously remaking
them into other languages, targeting a

U
larger South Indian audience. These con- Image 1. Advertisement of the Tamil film Jnanasundari inserted
ditions placed the commercial film by Geo Pictures, Kottayam, proclaiming in English that the film is

L
suitable for a family audience (Nasrani Deepika, November 8, 1948).

IA
industry that emerged in Kerala by the
late 1940s firmly within the economic Source: Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi.

C
and cultural structures of South Indian cinema. The challenge before the early studios was to mould a film
ER
culture that could address a socially and regionally mixed audience. This was achieved by drawing on vari-
ous aesthetic and promotional strategies to address diverse audiences, from the induction of popular visual
M

registers and generic elements to the soliciting of the tenuous promise of patronage and endorsement offered
by cultural elites in the wake of linguistic nationalism.
M
O
C

Negotiating with the Middle Class and the Bureaucracy

R
FO

The available accounts about the nascent film industry in Kerala provides interesting information about
how the industry sought to achieve economic stability by negotiating with the middle class, bureaucracy,
and traditional elites, often by seeking patronage. The history of the Censorship Board in Travancore is
T

an example of how the industry itself took initiatives to constitute legal procedures like censorship in
O

order to navigate unpredictable challenges that the distributors and exhibitors in Kerala often had to face.
N

Distributor N.G. John’s account of the industry’s nature during the 1930s and 1940s offers some
insight into this history. Just before launching his film distribution firm Geo Pictures in the late 1930s,
N.X. George, the writer’s father, had tried his hands at securing the distribution rights of Tamil films and
distributing them in Kerala. One such film, Dayaalan, produced by T.R. Sundaram of Modern Theatres,
Salem, ran into trouble after its commercially successful screenings at Thiruvananthapuram and
Nagercoil for the initial few days. The government officials confiscated the film on the fourth day of its
release. Apparently, the then Divan of the Princely State of Travancore, C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, was dis-
pleased with the content of the film—a story of revenge by a prince in a mythical kingdom against the
scheming and cruel minister who secured the throne after imprisoning the King. The prince kills the
minister, restores the King, and declares the country as “belonging to the people.” The Divan recognized
the political undertones and confiscated the film, the distribution rights of which were secured for a
substantial amount. P. Subrahmaniam, owner of New Theatre, Thiruvananthapuram, where the film was

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42 “Regional” Cinema or Products of Bricolage?

being screened, found a solution for the standoff. He approached Divan C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer’s private
secretary, and it was decided that a censor board would be formed for Travancore. The board—which
included the chief secretary, the Inspector General of Police, the Mayor and P. Subrahmaniam himself—
reviewed the film, and proposed removing the reels “which showed the cruelties of the Divan.” The film
was re-released and brought huge profits for the distributors and the exhibitors. John has mentioned that
the success of the film led to the setting up of Geo Pictures (John, 2012, pp. 11–12). The initiatives from
the part of the distributors and exhibitors to set up legal frameworks like a censor board was thus a way
of bringing certain operational stability to the distribution and exhibition sectors, whereby films reviewed
by the board would not have to face the ire of the authorities any longer.19
Another strategy the industry developed to manage antagonism was the custom of “free passes.”
K.V. Koshy’s accounts provide us with useful insights into the free-pass system, a mechanism to accommo-
date a range of potential antagonists. Koshy noted that owners of temporary and permanent theaters had to

SE
offer free passes to “the powerful people” in an area if the shows were to run smoothly. Often, they issued
family passes to influential people including government officials and other socially powerful figures.

U
Bureaucrats used to harass theater-owners in various ways if they were not given customary free passes
whenever a new film opened for exhibition.20 Though Koshy claims that this often caused huge losses for the

L
IA
exhibitors, there are indications in his account which suggest that this arrangement functioned as a conscious
technique of winning over local notables, and thereby removing the stigma associated with cinema as a

C
cultural institution. Koshy remembers a traveling cinema operator telling him about his modus operandi:
ER
Once we reach a new place for conducting exhibition, we irst ind out the rowdies in the locality. We keep
them happy by offering free passes. Then, we offer family tickets to the oficials in the Police, Excise, Revenue
M

and other major departments. They come for the show without fail; we welcome them. The sight of some
M

respectable people coming to the theatres would encourage more people to come for the cinema.
O

(Koshy, 1968, p. 24)

C

The free-pass system appears to have been initiated by the exhibitors as a way of seeking patronage
R

from the socially powerful of the locality, and it became a sign of class privilege for the bureaucratic
FO

elites. By the 1940s, a beneficiary of the free-pass system used it to watch films and exhibit his official
standing and social privilege and theater owners distributed free passes in order to cultivate social
acceptability for the cinema in the eyes of the middle class.
T
O
N

Early Studio Films as Products of Bricolage: The Case of Jeevithanouka

As evidences suggest, the quickly developing studios in the region identified the “family social”—
understood in the scholarship on Indian cinema as a hold-all genre—as the convenient aesthetic and an
economically viable formula to incorporate a host of attractions and address a wide audience (Prasad,
1998; Vasudevan, 1993). These films used the backdrop of familial tensions to comment upon and cri-
tique the dominant social structure and its conflicts. Talking about the general tendencies in the studio
films of the time, Cynic, a renowned critic, wrote in 1952:

A caring elder brother, his scheming wife, an ideal romantic couple from disparate social backgrounds, the prob-
lems that the couple has to face due to the disparities in their social status, the inal triumph of their love, and

BioScope, 4, 1 (2013): 31–49

Jenson Joseph 43

some comedy scenes: these have become the essential ingredients for almost all Malayalam ilms these days.
(Mathrubhoomi weekly, 1952, September 14, p. 30)

The format of the “family social” was borrowed from the practices in Bombay and Madras cinema of
the time. By the early 1950s, the studios engaged in creative maneuverings of this format using strategies
of bricolage and genre-mixing21 to evoke new meanings and energies in response to the rapidly changing
cultural-political contexts. This allowed them, on the one hand, to respond to the cultural elite’s call to
contribute to the rationalizing agendas of the state and thus gain legitimacy as modern cultural institu-
tions and, on the other hand, to incorporate and appropriate the popular elements of spectacles (targeting
the masses) which were considered as sustaining the commercial cinema in South India in general. An
examination of the organization of generic elements in Jeevithanouka (The Boat of Life; Vembu, 1951)
provides insights into how the early studio films functioned by competing with, and adopting freely

SE
from, the popular theater and Tamil films, while positioning themselves on the side of an “aesthetic of
contemporaneity” (Prasad, 2011, p. 72)—an aesthetic engagement that privileges the rational-secular

U
worldview and organizes itself along the principles of cause and effect in narrative progression—which
was emerging as dominant in India as well as across the world during the 1950s.

L
Produced by K & K Productions of K.V. Koshy and Kunchacko, the film ran for 284 days at

IA
Thiruvananthapuram (Vijayakrishnan, 1987, p. 62) and is considered the first major commercial success

C
in Malayalam. The story goes like this: Raju (Sebastian Kunjukunju Bhagavathar) and Soman (Thikkurissi
ER
Sukumaran Nair) are brothers. Raju, the elder brother, is like a father-figure for Soman. He works as the
secretary of a stingy local landlord; his wife, Janu (Pankajavalli), is a greedy, cantankerous woman. The
M

protagonist Soman, an educated man, wants to marry Lakshmi (B.S. Saroja), his childhood sweetheart
and a lower caste woman. Raju and Janu oppose the marriage. Raju, who is more considerate of Soman’s
M

desires, eventually agrees to the marriage. Soman and Lakshmi get married but have to leave the joint
O

family for a new house as Janu begins to harass Lakshmi. When Soman goes to the town in search of a
C

job, he meets with an accident when a rich family’s car knocks him down. The family takes Soman to
their house and appoints him estate manager. He decides to stay in the town for a while to make money.
R

He keeps sending money and letters to Lakshmi, but Janu and Shanku (S.P. Pillai) her scheming brother,
FO

intercept and destroy the letters and pocket the money. Lakshmi and her son live in dire poverty harassed
by Janu, her relatives and the landlord. She decides to take her son and go to Soman. She happens to see
Soman in the company of a woman and, mistaking her for his new wife, decides to end her life. Recalling
T

her motherly duties, she changes her mind and starts a welfare organization for beggars. She acts in plays
O

to raise money for the organization.

N

In the meanwhile, Janu and Shanku conspire with the landlord’s advocate (Muthukulam Raghavan
Pillai) to rob the landlord. The wily advocate however tries to kill Janu and Shanku in order to escape
with all the money. Shanku gets killed; Janu has a narrow escape. The advocate later implicates Raju for
the theft and murder, and the police arrest him. Eventually, the advocate’s guilt is revealed and the police
catch him. After a long absence, Soman returns to his village and learns of the harassment that Lakshmi
and his son had to face. In the end, Soman and Lakshmi reunite, and join Raju and a reformed Janu to set
up the joint family unit again.
The narrative, centered on the romance of a couple of different caste backgrounds, is constructed
within the rationalist, egalitarian discourse that had acquired cultural dominance in the wake of the birth
of the nation-state and growing sentiments of linguistic nationalism in the region. In terms of form, the
film sought to draw on the popularity of mythological tales and a key female star by contriving to include

BioScope, 4, 1 (2013): 31–49

44 “Regional” Cinema or Products of Bricolage?

sequences from mythological plays featuring B.S.

Saroja, by then a prominent Tamil star. By incorporat-
ing such attractions, the film challenged the appeal of
popular dramas as well and sought to wean people away
from theater. Though the incorporation of such
sequences as independent units was common in cinema
of the period, we can identify this film as effecting a
subordination of these attractive elements to the narra-
tive logic of cause and effect, as I will show.
As the film approaches its climax, a sequence involv-
ing the staged performance of a Bible tale sets in motion
a chain of events that will lead to the re-union of Soman

SE
and Lakshmi. As noted earlier, Lakshmi joins a drama
troupe to raise money for the charity organization she is

U
part of. Coincidentally, Soman, in the company of the
daughter of the aristocratic family who employ him,

L
IA
comes to watch a performance by Lakshmi’s troupe.
The drama is based on the story of Snapakayohannan,22

C
John the Baptist. Lakshmi (B.S. Saroja), sporting a
ER
Image 2. “Balan”, the first Malayalam picture, beard and carrying a stick, plays the role of the Baptist
by Silver Screen, April 30, 1938, p. 4. who has incurred the wrath of the King by denouncing
M

his adulterous behavior and ignoring his duties toward

his family and the kingdom. The performance starts with a song-dance sequence that shows the king
M

flirting with women. The song is disrupted as John interrupts the revelry and begins to scold the king for
O

his immoral ways. As this scene progresses, Lakshmi sees Soman sitting in the first row of the audience
C

along with the aristocratic woman and she begins to see the image of her own husband in the wayward
king. The Baptist’s dialogs now convey Lakshmi’s trauma as well, and attain a sharp accusatory tone. In
R

one shot, the camera is placed behind the stage: the audience can see the king, partly from behind, and
FO

John the Baptist/Lakshmi pointing his/her finger at the king. In the background, we can also see Soman
in the audience, along with the aristocrat woman (Image 2). As the moral admonishment escalates, there
T

is a cut to Soman’s face, showing his increasing discomfort, as if the moral chastisement has some
O

bearing on him. On the surface, there is no reason why the moral charge of this scene should upset
Soman, as he is not culpable of disloyalty or irresponsibility. Eventually, Soman faints, as if overwhelmed
N

by guilt, and the play comes to an abrupt end when Lakshmi also faints during the performance. Later,
Soman decides to return to his village to meet his wife and son, saying that the prophet’s speech reminded
him of Lakshmi.
The particular mythological tale recounted on the stage—of the prophet reminding the wayward King
about his responsibilities toward his family and kingdom—did not have any bearing on what was hap-
pening to the protagonists in the film. The protagonists are estranged as the result of the evil characters’
harassments; what Lakshmi thinks about Soman is the consequence of a misunderstanding—two plot
elements that the film has clearly conveyed to the audience. Nevertheless, the sequence fulfils two func-
tions; it brings the separated couple into the same space, and even though it only stages partial recogni-
tion (and that, too, a misrecognition), it draws from Soman feelings of guilt and a reminder of family
responsibility, an emotional logic which will lead him back to his family and the meeting with his wife.

BioScope, 4, 1 (2013): 31–49

Jenson Joseph 45

Additionally, the scene provides the film with another opportunity to include attractions of the popular
theater—a major source of content for the commercial cinema, as well as its competitor in the entertain-
ment industry during the time.23
We can observe the filmmakers creatively deploying strategies of fabrication and bricolage to evolve
a new aesthetic. They appropriated popular religious mythological tales through the motif of the stage
play of the sort the Tamil films and popular theater freely adapted and subsumed this into the rationalist,
secular discourse privileged and propagated by the modern nation-state as well as the cultural elites.
These different components were integrated through the deployment of cause and effect patterns of nar-
ration, notions that the popular cinema was exhorted to follow from its inception. The strategies of
appropriating from the existing registers of popular visual and performance culture as independent units,
subordinating them to cause and effect narration, and bringing these disparate generic tendencies together
through fabricated links, were crucial survival strategies for the early studio films in Malayalam. They

SE
provided a viable commercial format which would appeal to different audiences, and at the same time
lay claim to legitimacy as a cultural institution by adopting widely prescribed norms of narrative

U
construction.

L
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Conclusion
C
ER
In the late 1940s, when the first modern studios of Kerala, Udaya, and Merryland, started commercial
M

production of films in Malayalam, the hold-all genre of the “family social” provided them a basic strat-
egy to negotiate the dominant industrial terms set by the Madras-based South Indian cinema, the
M

aesthetic demands placed on them by the cultural elites in the region, and the changing socio-historical
O

context. In industrial terms, given the geographically narrow linguistic market and limited returns
C

for Malayalam films, these studios kept production costs low, while mining the possibilities of simulta-
neously remaking their films into other languages, and targeting the South Indian market at large, and in
R

some cases the wider South East Asian market. The popular Tamil films, unassailable in their ability to
FO

produce grand spectacle out of mythological and fantasy tales, provided a ready source of narrative and
visual content for the early studio films. Adopting various generic elements from Tamil cinema and
popular company dramas, Malayalam studio films subsumed these ingredients in an overarching narra-
T

tive structure governed by an “aesthetic of contemporaneity”—the dominant aesthetic to emerge with the
O

institutionalization of the modern nation-state. To borrow Prasad’s (2011) observation about the socials
N

of the 1950s, creative strategies of fabrication, genre-mixing, and the devices of bricolage enabled the
early studios in Kerala to respond to the social-historical changes taking place during the time by rede-
ploying existing resources.
During the first half of the 1950s, the genre of mythological was increasingly being sidelined in
Malayalam cinema. While the studios showed a tendency of gradually moving toward family romances,
this period also witnessed the emergence of social realism initiated by the Left-affiliated Progressive
Writers Group. Deploying melodramatic pathos, the social-realist films dealt with themes of social mod-
ernization based on rational thinking. However, mythologicals were to stage a come-back as one of the
prominent genres in Malayalam cinema by the early 1960s, a development which needs to be analyzed
in the context of the eruption of subjectivities and desires disillusioned with the secular, rationalist ideals
propagated by the Left—the “protagonists” of the modern Malayali nation.

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46 “Regional” Cinema or Products of Bricolage?

Notes
1. In South India, the early filmmaking centers were Madras, Vellore, Nagercoil, Salem, Coimbatore, and Mysore.
See Baskaran (2009), for a history of early South Indian cinema.
2. See Pillai and Shanta (1997). The Report on the Annual Survey of Industries, Kerala, 1962, says that the annual
wage rate per person employed in Industries in Kerala is `977 as against `1,905 in Madras and `1,922 for all of
India. The report says, though the population of Kerala is 3.8 percent of the all India population, the productive
capital employed in major industrial units in Kerala is only 1.6 percent of that of all of India. At the same time
the employment in these units in the state is about 4 percent of the total employment in the units in India as a
whole. The report says most of the industries in this state were traditional industries using outmoded technol-
ogy and in which the wages are comparatively low (The Report on the Annual Survey of Industries, Kerala,
1962, pp. 7–8).
3. Government of Travancore–Cochin (1953, p. 15). Also see Lindberg (2001) for the labor conditions in the
cashew nut industry, the workforce in which represented from 30 to 50 percent of the formal factory workforce

SE
in Kerala since the mid-1920s.
4. As a percentage of value of total exports, coconuts and its products, plantation crops (coffee, tea, and rubber)

U
together with other hill produce accounted for more than 80 percent between 1870 and 1945 (Pillai and Shanta,
1997, p. 10).

L
IA
5. Census of India, 1941: Travancore. The Census also reports that the population of the city and the population of
the towns have both increased by 33.7 percent, while smaller towns registered an increase between 16 percent
and 20 percent.
C
ER
6. See also Srinivas (2010) for an account on the migration of agricultural capital based in rural Andhra regions
to the film industry based in Madras during the post-Depression period.
7. The report does not give any indications as to who owned these exhibition centers. However, it can be safely
M

assumed that a good number of these must have been owned by non-Malayalis, especially Tamil Brahmins who
M

were a major presence in the distribution and exhibition sectors in Kerala since the late 1920s. Some of the
early permanent exhibition centers owned by Tamil Brahmins in the region are: Ramavarma Theatre, Thrissur
O

(1929) of T.A. Naganatha Iyer; Menaka Theatre, Eranakulam (1938) of T.D. Narayana Iyer; Central Theatre,
C

Thripunithura (1938) of S. Suryanarayana Iyer; and Sreekrishna Talkies, Thodupuzha (1938) of N.K. Krishna
Iyer (Initial Years: 75 Years of Malayalam Cinema, 2003).
R

8. For example, Nasrani Deepika, on January 13, 1939, reports that the municipality authorities had warned three
FO

theaters, conducting shows till early morning in Mattanchery (near the present Kochi), not to conduct screen-
ings after midnight.
9. The editorial in Nasrani Deepika, December 29, 1948, says that the setting up of studios in Kerala was the
T

only way to avoid this scenario of the distributors and exhibitors in Kerala procuring unfinished or even just-
O

announced Tamil films without having any idea about how the film would turn out to be.
N

10. Though T.R. Sundaram of Modern Theatres, Salem, produced only three films in Malayalam, its interventions
in the Kerala market are noteworthy. Apart from Balan, he produced and directed the first full length color film
in Malayalam (Kandam Becha Kottu, 1961) which was also one of the first Muslim socials in the language.
Established in 1936, Modern Theatres became a major banner in South Indian cinema, and also produced seven
films in Sinhalese.
11. P. Subrahmaniam began his career as an exhibitor by setting up New Theatre and Chitra Theatre at
Thiruvananthapuram in 1930.
12. Interview with S. Kumar (son of P. Subrahmaniam), November 8, 2010.
13. Interview with S. Kumar.
14. See also Bindu Menon (2005) for an elaborate account on the nature of debates about exhibition halls in
Travancore during the early twentieth century. She points out that the fears about cinema halls as public spaces
accessible for people across castes generated various anxieties and influenced governmental regulations about
exhibition halls.

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Jenson Joseph 47

15. For example, Vellinakshatram (1949), Udaya’s first film, was advertised as a “Malayalam film that can be
watched along with your family members” (Nasrani Deepika, February 10, 1949).
16. After watching the premiere of Vellinakshathram, C. Kesavan, State Congress President, wrote: I was a bit
skeptical when I began watching this film, as I remembered the dismal failures of the Malayalam films made in
non-native studios so far. But this time, two hours passed in ‘filmy’ speed, and I realized it only when the film
got over. […] It is suitable for family viewing (Nasrani Deepika, January 1, 1949).
17. For example, the Tamil film Parasuraman included three reels of comedy scenes in Malayalam, and Gemini
Pictures included Malayalam songs in one of their films (Koshy, 1968, p. 50).
18. The Tamil mythological Krishnabhakthi (1949), a big budget film, seems to be the first film to have been
released in multiple theaters in a town simultaneously in Kerala, according to a report in Nasrani Deepika, June
20, 1949.
19. The Thiruvithamcore Film Censor Board was dissolved in January 1951, as the government ordered that the
films thereafter would have to be cleared by the Central Censor Board (Mathrubhoomi, January 17, 1951).

SE
20. See Koshy (1968, pp. 24–26, 37–43). The free pass system is mentioned in a number of autobiographies and
memoirs of famous personalities in Kerala. For example see the autobiography of K.M. Mathew (Mathew,

U
2008, pp. 70–71) and P. Ramadas’s memoirs about the making of Newspaper Boy (Paul, 2008, p. 26).
21. In his recent essay, Madhava Prasad (2011) has shown instances of the film industry in India deploying fab-

L
ricatory techniques of bricolage and genre-mixing as strategies to respond to social change during the 1950s.

IA
Christopher Pinney has also pointed out pastiche and bricolage as creative devices widely deployed in the

C
mass-produced print images in India to convey new meanings out of the existing repertoires of visual culture
practices (See Pinney, 2004, pp. 178–179).
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22. Drama performances based on the story of Snapakayohannan were famous in the region since 1920s and were
repeatedly enacted by commercial drama troupes. Sebastian Kunju Kunju Bhagavathar, one of the leading
M

actors in Jeevithanouka, owned his own drama troupe and was a prominent figure in commercial theater.
M

23. Baskaran notes that all the 61 films made in the first five years of Tamil talkie era were reproductions of stage
plays—a practice that continued till the 1950s in South Indian cinema (Baskaran, 2009, p. 30).
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