The film at crossroads

Good intentions are only one half of filmmaking. The other half is science. It takes knowledge, experience and craft to represent reality. Getting this right is vital, writes Balraj Sahni

- Balraj Sahni

On the busy street two cyclists banged into each other. An argument developed, a crowd gathered, the traffic was held up.

You happened to be watching this from the first-storey window of your house. "How silly of people to flock around like that," you thought, "and over such a small thing! What a waste of time and energy." But all the same you too went on watching the show, wasting time and energy.

What was it that held your attention? You stood there for the good part of an hour! As against this, try to recollect a road accident that you may have seen in a Hindustani film. Weren't you bored with it? Yes, you were; despite the fact that it hardly took two minutes to happen on the screen. It didn't seem to make sense. It looked so unnatural.

It's good you used that word. It is neither the story, nor songs, nor the dances, nor the stars, that make a motion picture; but the presentation of a piece of life naturally and convincingly.

That is what holds interest. It may be any piece of life, a road accident or a love affair. The very simplicity of this statement, however, makes its practice in art extremely complicated and difficult.

Suppose at your next tea-party you asked your friends to co-operate in acting out the road accident you saw from your window.

Your success would depend not only on your previous training as actor or director but also on how closely you watched the behaviour of the crowd, its movements, its composition, its mood, its individual characteristics.