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| Sunday, 30 January 2005 |
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Towards a middlebrow cinema Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake
On the occasion of the 58th Anniversary of the Sinhala cinema which fell on January 21 hard-boiled film journalist Earnest Waduge has composed both an elegy and a lament, an elegy to the heroic phase of the cinema and a lament on its decline. Both are necessary since they celebrate two distinct historical phases and reflect two sets of realities. From the high ground and the vantage point of what Waduge sees as the historic heroic phase the Sinhala cinema certainly seems to be on the decline but is that also not the result of the afflux of time and perhaps the percussor to a new era in its evolution. Romantic relationship Earnest Waduge makes no bones of the fact that he has had an unabashedly romantic relationship with the Sinhala cinema. A long time writer for the Lake House cinema weekly, the 'Sarasaviya' he later worked for a rival weekly, the 'Sarasi' before launching his own array of publications of which perhaps 'Rasa' is the best known. In the present work 'Sadadaraneeya Sinhala Cinemawa' he chronicles with undiluted nostalgia the exploits of the larger - than life heroes and heroines of a now vanished celluloid era. Rukmani Devi This he does both as journalist and participant since apart from film journalism he had also assisted in film direction. In fact, he recalls how reluctant he had been to approach the then reigning screen goddess Rukmani Devi to give her instructions on dialogue as assistant director of the film 'Anusha'. But being Rukmani Devi she had put the neophyte director instantly at ease, recalls Waduge. Waduge belongs to an early generation of film buffs who virtually grew up with the cinema - Sinhala, Hindi, Tamil and Hollywood. There is something of that sense of adventure, of that sense of the frontier in his recollections of those early days when adolescents had been addicts of bubble gum because a pocket calendar size photograph of such sex goddesses as Bridget Bardot, Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Mansfield was given gratis with each pack of gum. The book opens with a gripping account of how two film directors had struck out to South India, the womb and forging house of the infant Sinhala cinema, each competing with the other to bring out the first Sinhala film. Minerva theatre While B.A.W. Jayamanne, the head of the legendary Minerva theatre group of Negombo was backed by M.S. Nayagam the chief of Chitrakala Movietone Company to produce their famous play 'Kadawunu Poronduwa' in Madurai, Shantikumar Seneviratne backed by Sir Chittampalam Gardiner of Ceylon Theatres was producing at Coimbatore the film 'Asokamala'. In the neck-and-neck race the first film won narrowly being screened on January 21 1947 at the Kingsley Theatre thus writing the first chapter in the saga of the Sinhala cinema. While the credit rightly went to the Jayamanne film, 'Asokamala' too became popular largely because of the haunting music of Mohamed Ghouse and the songs sung by Mohideen Baig and Amaradeva (then known as W.D. Albert Perera), Amaradeva's song in this film 'Ayi Kale Yamaku Ale' is a firm favourite even today. These early Sinhala film directors were an ingenious lot. While the green horn Jayamanne crew embarked to India on the assumption that their play was to be photographed just as if was Shantikumar (who had had some acquaintance with the Indian film scene having studied dancing there) gave instructions to his crew not to reveal at any stage that they were ignorant of the rudiments of the Cinema lest they let the country down. but soon the Sri Lankans were mastering all the tricks of the trade. umbilical cord But here too was the rub. The South Indian umbilical cord was to prove stifling in the sense that it threatened to smother the infant Sinhala film by an Indian embrace prompting Jayavilal Wilegoda's celebrated bon mot that with the birth of the Sinhala cinema the Indian cinema began speaking in yet another tongue! Waduge's lament is over the expiry of the heroic phase of the Sinhala cinema. He quotes with approval a recent comment on television by Sonia Dissanayake about how stars used to be mobbed by fans at first nights or on the streets. Those were the happy and carefree days of autograph hunting and enormous fan mails to the stars. But this apparent decline after all was the inevitable result of the infusion of realism into the cinema, of art imitating life. The crusade that early film critics such as Jayavilal and Karunasena Jayalath carried out for a cinema more reflective of contemporary concerns served to dissolve the mystique of stardom associated with the early films. Today we are all stars and ironically as a result of the spread of the kind of film newspapers edited by the likes of Waduge the average fan knows all about the private lives of the stars. So familiarity has bred a kind of benign contempt. The contemporary decline of the cinema is situated not so much in the dissolution of stardom as in the paucity of works to sustain a viable cinema. Waduge makes the valid point that an occasional flash in the pan can not maintain the industry. For a variety of reasons chief among them being the popularity of television, that favourite bogey, and the attraction of other sources of income opened up by the open market economy investments in films have alarmingly dried up. But who should come to the rescue of the distressed cinema? Is it the State or the private sector? That opens up an all too familiar debate. But in the absence of an answer the industry such as it is has regressed to either a copy cat cinema of the old type or a spawning of nauseating comic films. That is at the popular pole. New generation On another level the more talented of the new generation have opted to explore unusual areas touching on radical politics or sexual or feminist themes of a type popular among the western avant garde prompting the accusation that these films are directed at western film festivals. The old film empires have collapsed and the old lions have gone into hybernation in their lairs. Hence the present climate of lament. What then of the way forward? Waduge does not quite offer an answer except for a rousing cry to revive the moribund industry but it would appear that what is necessary is a kind of middle brow cinema which can bring back both the popular and serious audiences to the deserted palladiums of entertainment. But if, 'Sadadaraneeya Cinemawa' does not quite offer any answer to the crisis of the Sinhala cinema it is an anecdotal recollection of the industry at its peak apart from a prodigious catalogue of stars, film-makers, technicians, singers and film writers. Waduge has a good word for everybody which makes for a warm and loveable salute to his beloved industry. |
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