Summary: India's first sound film, released on 14 March
1931 at the Majestic Theatre, Bombay, narrowly
beating
Shirin Farhad (1931) to the screens. It
established the use of music, song and dance as
the mainstay of Indian cinema. The film is a
period fantasy based on Joseph David's popular
Parsee theatre play and told of the ageing king of
Kumarpur, his two queens, Navbahar and
Dilbahar, and their rivalry when a fakir predicts
that Navbahar will bear the king's heir. Dilbahar
unsuccessfully tries to seduce the army chief Adil
(Vithal) and vengefully destroys his family,
leaving his daughter Alam Ara (Zubeida) to be
raised by nomads. Eventually, Alam Ara's nomad
friends invade the palace, expose Dilbahar's
schemes, release Adil from the dungeon and she
marries the prince of the realm. The film was
made on the Tanar single-system camera,
recording image and sound simultaneously,
which was difficult esp. for the seven songs
which were its highlights. Wazir Mohammed
Khan's rendering of a wandering minstrel's
number,
De de khuda ke naam par pyare, was
particularly popular and pioneered the use of a
commentating chorus, a device adopted in
several later films. Although Mehboob was
scheduled to play the lead, Master Vithal from the
Sharda Studio got the part. Nanubhai Vakil
remade the film in 1956 and '73. Playwright David
was later known for his Wadia Movietone
scripts, including
Hunterwali (1935). A key
technician associated with this film, and with
several others in Bombay and Calcutta, was the
American Wilford Deming. Often mentioned in
early cinema histories, recent research suggests
that he was employed by a company called Radio
Installation Corp. and was imported by M.L.
Mistry & Co. when they bought Western Indian
rights to Tanar equipment. He set up sound equipment at Krishna and Imperial and went thereafter to Calcutta where his name features in the credits of some early New Theatres sound productions (also cf.
American Cinematographer, March 1932).
