Bollywood

As people have become increasingly aware of other countries (at least, some people), there's greater knowledge of Bollywood which is "Bombay" Hollywood. The film industry of India resembles that of Hong Kong or Hollywood from the 1940s, where films are cranked out with high frequency and modestly low quality.

While there are the occasional Indian art films, the average filmgoer wants to wants to go to the movies to have a good time, which usually means singing, dancing, a love interest (but nothing overtly sexy), and a bad guy to root against.

Indeed, most Hindi films are musicals because people want to hear songs in films. In the United States, music is disseminated by radios, CDs, and tours by bands. In India, popular songs are sung in movies.

Back when there used to be musical in the United States, it wasn't so uncommon to have other singers sing the songs while the actors lip-synched. Still, there was some likelihood that the actor/actress were singing their own lines. Julie Andrews, for example, had a fine voice, and would sing her parts.

In India, this is far less common. Almost all actors lip-synch their songs. This is because there's a clear delineation between those who act and those who sing. Those who sing are formally trained to be singers, rather than being "amateurs".

Unfortunately, this means that there's a certain sameness to Indian singing. Women's voices are almost always pitched a bit high. To Western ears, they are almost done in a falsetto, suggesting little girls singing. An Indian, used to such films, would probably disagree, but for example, there aren't singers (I would imagine) like Janis Joplin with a deep, husky, raspy voice that resembles yelling so much as singing. This is not to say that there aren't deep voiced women that sing. I'm told a certain kind of song called ghazals can be sung a bit more deeply.

Even so, I wonder how Indian audiences would react if both men and women that weren't formally trained were singing the parts. Would they think it sounds awful? Would audiences learn to get used to it?

Like Hong Kong films, which find audiences far beyond its own borders, Indian musicals have also found fans outside India. While it's not particularly popular in the United States, I'm told that it's popular in all of Asia.

Occasionally, there's a serious Indian filmmaker that gets to make films outside India. Mira Nair directed Salaam Bombay nearly twenty years ago. Shekhar Kapur directed Bandit Queen before direcing Elizabeth and Four Feathers. M. Night Shyamalan, on the other hand, although born in India, made films in the United States. Only one of his films have had Indian themes (his earliest, Praying with Anger).

The most famous of the art house directors from India is Satyajit Ray, who died a few years ago. I'm not that familiar with his work, but I'm told he wasn't all that popular in India, given the nature of his films (I'm guessing they're reminiscent of directors like Ozu from Japan).

I wonder if Bollywood will evolve into a different kind of filmmaking, but given the audience that their films are aimed to, it seems unlikely.