Sentimental Songs, Melodrama and Filmic Narrative in Bollywood's Golden Age (1951-1963) (Anthem Film and Culture)

The considerably large critical literature on Bollywood cinema is marked by an absence as it has not engaged fully with the ways in which songs lead to the memorial construction of films and how a spectator connects with films through their songs. The studies tended to deflect the emotional dimension of songs, their internal lyrical structure and their intertextual connections in favour of readings that treat songs as subsidiary to other formal elements. Consequently, there was little understanding of songs and their complex relationship with the narrative of the film. To address this absence, this book begins by taking a look at the prior history of Bollywood songs since the arrival of talkies with the film Alam Ara (1931). The chapter takes the reader through the journey of film songs from synchronous singing and music during production to non-diegetic music and the playback singer. In addition, the somewhat disparate filmic milieu of history, emotion and ethics, much of which are drawn from traditional texts, served to affirm the values of a secular India. Melodrama, mediated via Indian theories of sentimentality, became one of the key colonial discourses through which the politico-social order was critiqued and Indianness celebrated. The book then raises the question, ‘Can one speak about periods?’ After defending periodisation in this instance because it does have heuristic value, the argument is given added support by positing melodrama as the dominant dramatic mode of Indian Hindi (Bollywood) cinema of the Golden Age. The term ‘melodrama’ is used to designate a film genre marked by sentimental songs that appeal to the heightened emotions of the spectator. Because emotionality is central to the concept of melodrama, a consideration of how emotions may be theorised is also given. The Indian classical concept of rasa is examined to provide a theoretical frame that is both historical and indigenous. Sentimental and melodramatic emotion ultimately enhanced cinema’