20 | | Set up production company Naya Sansar (1951), providing India’s most consistent representation of socialist-realist film (cf. [[Thoppil Bhasi]] and [[Utpal Dutt]]). Best work is in the scripts for his own films and for those of [[Raj Kapoor]] ([[Awara 1951]]); [[Shri 420]], 1955, both co-written with V.P. Sathe; [[Jagte Raho]], 1956; [[Bobby]], 1973) and Shantaram’s [[Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani]] (1946; adapted from his own book, And One Did Not Come Back), which combined aspects of Soviet cinema (Pudovkin) and of Hollywood (e.g. Capra and Upton Sinclair), influencing a new generation of Hindi cineastes (Kapoor, Chetan Anand) and sparking new realist performance idioms ([[BALRAJ SAHNI]]). His [[Munna]], without songs or dances, and [[Shaher Aur Sapna]], cheaply made on location in slums, were described as being influenced by neo-realism. [[Pardesi]] is the first Indian-Soviet co-production, co- directed by Vassili M. Pronin. The landmark Supreme Court censorship judgement about his [[Char Shaher Ek Kahani]] (aka A Tale of Four Cities) curtailed ‘arbitrary’ governmental pre- censorship powers on the grounds that the Indian Constitution guarantees the right to free speech. His constitutional challenge of the Cinematograph Act led to the famous [[http://indiankanoon.org/doc/1719619/|Supreme Court decision]] upholding the validity of precensorship of cinema. Interestingly in Interestingly in 1939, K A Abbas had written a letter to Gandhi urging him to reconsider his opinion on the idea of the evil of cinema. He writes |
| 20 | Set up production company Naya Sansar (1951), providing India’s most consistent representation of socialist-realist film (cf. [[Thoppil Bhasi]] and [[Utpal Dutt]]). Best work is in the scripts for his own films and for those of [[Raj Kapoor]] ([[Awara 1951]]); [[Shri 420 (1955)]], 1955, both co-written with V.P. Sathe; [[Jagte Raho]], 1956; [[Bobby]], 1973) and Shantaram’s [[Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani]] (1946; adapted from his own book, And One Did Not Come Back), which combined aspects of Soviet cinema (Pudovkin) and of Hollywood (e.g. Capra and Upton Sinclair), influencing a new generation of Hindi cineastes (Kapoor, Chetan Anand) and sparking new realist performance idioms ([[BALRAJ SAHNI]]). His [[Munna]], without songs or dances, and [[Shaher Aur Sapna]], cheaply made on location in slums, were described as being influenced by neo-realism. [[Pardesi]] is the first Indian-Soviet co-production, co- directed by Vassili M. Pronin. The landmark Supreme Court censorship judgement about his [[Char Shaher Ek Kahani]] (aka A Tale of Four Cities) curtailed ‘arbitrary’ governmental pre- censorship powers on the grounds that the Indian Constitution guarantees the right to free speech. His constitutional challenge of the Cinematograph Act led to the famous [[http://indiankanoon.org/doc/1719619/|Supreme Court decision]] upholding the validity of precensorship of cinema. Interestingly in Interestingly in 1939, K A Abbas had written a letter to Gandhi urging him to reconsider his opinion on the idea of the evil of cinema. He writes |