Old Hindi Movies

The Hindi movies produced in Bollywood have successfully carved a niche in the world of cinema. The Hindi movies, also often referred to as the Bollywood movies, has been around for more than seventy years now.

Before India won her independence, few Hindi movies were even heard of, if at all. It was as if, the Indian independence also opened up the gates for Hindi movies. With the nascent technology available, the directors of late forties and through the fifties used their creativity to come up with Hindi movies that left an indelible mark in the history of cinema making in the world.

Interestingly, the Hindi songs that are found invariably in all Hindi movies made till date, started with the dance numbers way back with the earliest ones made in the late forties and early fifties. Even though those movies were shot in black and white, the Hindi songs from those movies are famous even today. KL Sehgal’s songs have been part of every Hindi movies fan’s collection.

The sixties started the real golden age of Hindi movies. With the directors becoming more confident and mature and the technology getting better, the creativity of the Hindi movie directors and the Hindi music directors really started showing their true colors. This period also brought forward producers of Hindi movies like V Shantaram and the music directors like Naushad. The well known classics like Mother India, Anarkali, Taj Mahal were the products of this golden age of cinema.

The sixties and seventies are also called the golden age for the Hindi music that was used in the Hindi movies. Singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Mohammad Rafi, Manna Dey, Kishore Kumar and more became legends for ever in the world of Hindi movies. Naushad, SD Burman, Gulam Mohammad , OP Nayyar, Madan Mohan and many more created the eternal Hindi music compositions that are still popular even today. I have just named a few musicians but the real list of the music directors of Hindi movies in those times is pretty long and impressive.

The actors of Hindi movies in the seventies were Raj Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Sanjeev Kapoor, Pran just to name a few! Some of the main actresses were Meena Kumari, Vaheeda Rahman, and Nanda. Again the list is pretty long and very impressive.

The reason Hindi movies had the gold period through the sixties and the seventies is mainly because the Hindi movie directors and the music directors largely used their own creativity rather than copying from another movie made earlier or outside of India. They worked relentlessly to the minutest detail which does not happen today because of the technology available. For example, in the old Hindi movies, a song was recorded live with the singer and the musicians playing all at the same time. Today, the musicians often use computers to form complex rhythm patterns and make the singer’s voice merged with the music after each piece has been recorded and edited separately. In those days, even the established singers like Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammand Rafi used to practice a song for weeks before getting it finally recorded. These days, one singer can easily record more than 15 songs a day!

Therefore, with the advancement of the technology, the quality of content in the Hindi movies began to deteriorate to the extent that the nineties was like the worst period for the Hindi movies. The Hindi songs were often meaning less and cheap. The acting became mediocre and the story lines faded towards the worst. There are only a handful of Hindi movies made during the nineties that are memorable. In the nineties, even though singers like Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle were still working, but their singing talents were not used.

[nbsp]

The beginning of the new century brought some life back to the world of Hindi movies. By this time, new actors like Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan and Shri Devi started appearing in the Hindi movies. Amitabh Bachchan was started being considered “old” and he started getting less and less movies with the lead role. Thankfully, Amitabh is still acting and he has become a legend that the world of Hindi movies will remember for ever.

In the late nineties, it seemed even Lata Mangeshkar was not keen to sing the Hindi songs that were composed in the Hindi movies then. She therefore, created her own collection singing the songs of her colleagues who were no more and called her albums “Shradhanjali”. She sang the songs of Gita Dutt, Mukesh, SD Burman and several more and gave those gems a new life! Her incredible voice along with the advanced technology made those old Hindi songs take on a new life! It was like as if only Lata Mangeshkar could have done justice to those old Hindi songs!

Next time, we would be talking about the new Hindi movies!