A round a hundred years ago, a Bombay-based lithographer and amateur magician named Dhundiraj Govind Phalke developed an interest in moving pictures which eventually led him to make India’s first feature film Raja Harishchandra. Watching Paresh Mokashi’s 2009 biopic Harishchandrachi Factory, I realised how little we know about the details of Dadasaheb Phalke’s life — and, for that matter, about his landmark film, only fragments of which still exist.
Apart from teaching himself the craft of moviemaking, Phalke had to face down the attitudes of his time — such as the disdain for the idea that anyone would ever want to watch moving images on a screen! His story invites romanticising, and one notable thing about Harishchandrachi Factory is that it isn’t a strictly realist telling of his life (in any case, it chronicles a period of only around two years). Instead, it takes the form of a picaresque tale about an underdog sallying from one adventure to the next, triumphing over major and minor obstacles — most of which (even the possibility of his losing his eyesight) are presented in lighthearted terms, as if to reassure the viewer that everything will turn out okay.
I think this is the spirit that the makers of Harishchandrachi Factory were trying to capture. Everything about their depiction points to it: Phalke’s own unflagging optimism, the support of his equally sanguine wife, their cheerful children (there is no mention of a first wife and child who died long before the events of 1911-1913 took place). The difficulties — the selling of an insurance policy and his wife’s jewellery, the social ostracising from those who believe he is dabbling in black magic — are glossed over. Sailing to London despite having no contacts in England, Phalke is immediately welcomed and given the help he needs. In barely the blink of an eye, we see his wife waking up to discover that her husband is back home, coochie-cooing at their new baby — it’s as if he had never left at all. The little problems surrounding the shoot (such as the near-impossibility of getting male actors whose fathers are still alive to shave off their moustaches!) are presented as a series of jolly episodes.
Even the penultimate scene, where Phalke is applauded by a London audience after the screening of his film, strongly evokes the image of the self-effacing Little Tramp, blinking at the limelight. The subtext here is that Phalke quietly turns down an offer to practise his art in England, choosing instead to help set up this new industry in his homeland; we see that he is practising his own, modest version of swaraj. But the tone of the scene isn’t didactic — it’s the tone of comic whimsy.
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In other words, Harishchandrachi Factory is not what anyone could call a gritty, hard-edged film – and so it may be open to the criticism that it isn’t a “serious” biography. But I think its tone has a poetic aptness: when you consider how Phalke’s factory paved the way for the creation of so many dream-scapes over the decades, it’s nice to see his own life-story being given the texture and pace of a very pleasant dream.
Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer