Tribute to a century of Bollywood: Part eight 1984-1993

On the eighth day of our illustrated tribute to 100 years of Bollywood, we look at 1984-1993.

Sridevi, who went to Bollywood from south India, could not speak any Hindi and had to be dubbed, but that did not prevent her from becoming one of the stars of the 1980s.
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A decade of bad taste and bad economics

Bollywood was not spared the epidemic of bad taste that seems to have represented the 1980s all over the world. The men wore huge shirts, the women wore flounced skirts, the stories were improbable and the look cut-rate – as if imported from the souq of remaindered ideas. This was also the time that the Mumbai mill strike of 1982, called by the union leader Datta Samant, was to put an end to the productive nature of the city and turn it into a speculative economy. This put a whole generation of young men, undereducated simply because they thought they were going to get jobs in the mills when they came of age, at the disposal of the gangs. And it is also believed to be the time when organised crime made its first inroads into Bollywood.

Sridevi

When Sridevi came to Bollywood from south India, she was described as Miss Thunder Thighs. She could not speak any Hindi and had to be dubbed. This did not prevent her from becoming one of the stars of the 1980s, appearing in a series of movies with Jeetendra, who danced well. And so the two pioneered the first dancercises, working lock-step routines on the beach with huge pots scattered about, or doing jumping jacks to express their love. An attempt to revive this “magic” has just failed at the box office.

Naseeruddin Shah

It is said that François Truffaut once described Amitabh Bachchan as “a one-man industry”. If there ever was the equivalent for Indian art cinema, that title must go to Naseeruddin Shah. He has played blind school teachers and outcaste herdsmen; middle-class Parsi losers and drink-sodden cricketers; intent-on-rape tax collectors and principled police officers. In the 1980s, he made the transition to Bollywood and to everyone’s surprise turned out to be quite a box-office favourite, too.

Prakash Mehra

When you want the kind of film in which a woman in a catsuit shares a nightclub floor with a large acrylic porcupine, you turn to Prakash Mehra's cinema. He was one of the men who created the Amitabh Bachchan phenomenon with Zanjeer, but in the 1980s, he was reduced to trying to remake the Dudley Moore hit Arthur in Hindi, with lashings of melodrama and a song sequence in which Bachchan flirts with several women in order to make his grandfather cry. No, really.

Smita Patil

Along with Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil defined art cinema. She was discovered by the filmmaker Shyam Benegal. She was reading the news and her “fiery eyes” made the auteur seek her out and cast her in several films. Like Azmi and Shah, she, too, could not resist the lure of filthy lucre, backless blouses, song sequences in the rain and Prakash Mehra. It helped that the man she was in love with, Raj Babbar, was also a B-list Bollywood hero. Patil died young, in childbirth; her son Prateik Babbar has started acting.

Gulshan Kumar

This is the man who reinvented the music industry. He took the music cassette out of the hands of the old guard company, HMV, and set it down in the souq with Super Cassettes. He churned out thousands of cheap tapes and insisted that they did not have to be sold in the traditional outlets; he took his prodigious output to cigarette shops, grocery outlets and whoever would stock them and made music for every religious occasion. He was shot outside a temple in Mumbai, allegedly because he had received funding from the underworld.

Text by Jerry Pinto; Illustrations by Mathew Kurian

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