'''Imperial Films Company'''


Est: 1926. Successor to the Majestic and Royal
Art Film companies set up by [[Ardeshir Irani]]
as a diversification of his exhibition interests in
partnership with [[Esoofally]], Mohammed Ali
and Dawoodji Rangwala. Organised as a
vertically integrated combine with its own
exhibition infrastructure. Started following the
decline of [[Kohinoor]], it continued many of the
latter’s [[Mohanlal Dave]]-inspired genres, often
with the same stars and film-makers. Imperial
became closely associated with the costumed
historical genre launched with Anarkali (1928),
shot and released almost overnight in direct
competition to [[Charu Roy]]’s [[The Loves of a
Mughal Prince]] (1928). Irani also rushed out
[[Alam Ara]] (1931), released as India’s first full
talkie narrowly beating [[Madan Theatres]]’
[[Shirin Farhad]] (1931). Imperial was the first
studio to shoot scenes at night (in Khwab-e-
Hasti, 1929) using incandescent lamps. It
owned India’s top silent star, [[Sulochana]], and
promoted her along with [[Zubeida]], Jilloo and,
for a while, the young [[Prithviraj Kapoor]]. This
was perhaps the first major instance of a
deliberate manufacturing of a star-cult as a
marketing strategy. Top Imperial film-makers
include [[R.S. Choudhury]], [[B.P. Mishra]] and
[[Mohan Bhavnani]], whose film-making set the
house style, as did [[Nandlal Jaswantlal]]’s
sound films. A fair number of the studio’s
talkies were remakes of its own silent hits with
Sulochana (Anarkali, 1928 & 1935), [[Wildcat
of Bombay]] (1927) became [[Bambai Ki Billi]]
(1936), etc. It made films in at least nine
languages: Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil,
Telugu, Burmese, Malay, Pushtu and Urdu. The
first Iranian sound film, Dukhtar-e-Lur (aka
Dokhtare Lor Ya Irane Diruz Va Emruz, 1932)
was also made here. [[Kisan Kanya ]](1937) by
[[Gidwani]] was India’s first indigenously
manufactured colour film, made with the
Cinecolour process. When it closed in 1938, its
economic and generic inheritance was
continued by [[Sagar]] Movietone.

[[Studio]]