Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of New Theatres

Timestamp:

Jun 28, 2012, 3:56:45 PM (12 years ago)

Author:

Trupti

Comment:

--

New Theatres

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+'''New Theatres'''
+
+
+Main Bengali studio and one of the élite
+banners in pre-Independence Indian cinema.
+Set up by Birendra Nath Sircar (1901-80) in
+1931 as a sound studio in Tollygunge, Calcutta,
+following on from Sircar’s silent International
+Filmcraft (Est: 1930 in association with Charu
+Roy and Prafulla Roy). New Theatres acquired
+Tanar equipment and the services of Wilford
+Deming, a Hollywood sound technician
+imported by Ardeshir Irani. The studio
+attracted major technical and creative talent
+from several smaller silent studios then on the
+verge of collapse: Indian Kinema provided
+Nitin Bose, the writer, scenarist and filmmaker
+Premankur Atorthy, the stars
+Durgadas Bannerjee, Amar Mullick, Jiban
+Ganguly, etc.; from Barua Pics came P.C.
+Barua himself and Sushil Majumdar; British
+Dominion Films supplied Dhiren Ganguly.
+Sircar aimed for a cinematic equivalent of
+literature: ‘Immediately after the establishment
+of New Theatres, the first film I made was
+Saratchandra [Chatterjee]’s Dena Paona (1931).
+The first director of New Theatres was
+Premankur Atorthy, the famed litterateur. The
+film was not a success. Yet, I could perceive
+that following the path of literature would lead
+to the discovery of the right path. Seven
+subsequent films met with the same fate but
+each film pointed to the ultimate way’ (1961, in
+Jha, 1990). This formula had been launched at
+Madan Theatres when they purchased
+exclusive film rights to all of Bankimchandra
+Chatterjee’s prose and was followed by New
+Theatres, leading to such cinematic oddities as
+the big-budget Natir Puja (1932), credited
+with Rabindranath Tagore’s direction. New
+Theatres then opted for a more melodramatic
+mode with Debaki Bose’s Chandidas (1932).
+The most famous New Theatres productions
+were the P.C. Barua and Nitin Bose films and its
+major star was K.L. Saigal. The studio had
+many directors on its payroll (most studios
+managed with one in-house director, using Bfilms
+made by assistants or other employees to
+keep the production flow going) and invested
+massively in technological innovation (e.g. the
+work of sound recordist Mukul Bose). The
+decline of the studio is usually linked to the
+resignation in 1941 of Nitin Bose, one of their
+top directors and head of the technical units. Its
+fall is also connected with the rise of the
+Western and Southern Indian markets during
+and immediately after WW2, as the studio had
+never established its own outlets and was
+increasingly at the mercy of professional
+distributors charging crippling commissions.
+There are several accounts of the studio’s
+outright sale of film rights to groups like the
+Kapurchands, often at a loss. In 1944 Bimal
+Roy made an influential debut (Udayer
+Pathey) initiating a trend mainly realised in
+Bombay (e.g. Hrishikesh Mukherjee). The
+studio finally closed in 1955, although Sircar
+remained closely involved with film industry
+organisations, being on the board of the FFC
+for some years.
+
+[[Studio]]