Madhuja Mukherjee at Studio21. (Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya)

Writer-artist Madhuja Mukherjee won over her small but attentive audience at Studio21, blending narrative and imagery while delving into mise-en-scene, or the design aspect, in early talkies.

In her Saturday evening talk titled “Visual Cultures and Cinematic Narration: Early talkies, bazaar art, and talking through mise-en-scene”, Madhuja threaded the influence of popular street culture on early cinema made in Bengal.

Early talkies — Madhuja offered “saint films” such as Debaki Bose’s Chandidas (1932) and Bidyapati (1938) as templates — primarily drew on popular lore and biographic narrative.

But the visual language of this bhadralok cinema, a new medium in the early 20th century, borrowed from contemporary bazaar art — including Kalighat patas, Battala woodcuts, late 19th century lithographs, chromolithographs and the Chorbagan art of Bamapada Banerjee and Sital Bandyopadhyay.

Raja Ravi Varma’s art — which fused Indian traditions with the techniques of European academic art — was also used as a reference.

Focussing on details, Madhuja explained how 19th century British landscape and photography influenced frames and the use of light in the early talkies. She spoke about how the tone of satire in Kalighat patas, the stereotyped nuances and caricatures of Babu culture feature as rather direct references in silent films like Jamaibabu, showing the “dandy in distress”, as it were.

The stylised manner of dressing, gestures between lovers, facial expressions — all of this influenced the new medium. The visual design of cinema borrowed from the popular art of the times, as shown in a frame from Kalanka Bhanjan (1933) that could have been influenced by the ornate style of artist Bamapada Banerjee.

“What is crucial for cinema is the mise-en-scene that is produced: faces, places, the way people dressed. These produce an idea of a character type....,” Madhuja said.

Sound in cinema arrived in 1931. When Chandidas released in 1932, it had no precedence for music director Raichand Baral. In Bidyapati, Bose created “a narrative style that can be read as continuity as well as break from various existing modes”.

While the influences remain, it is ultimately about cinema finding its own language. Screening the raas sequence of Bidyapati, Madhuja spoke about how director Debaki Bose used aspects of two-dimensional bazaar art within the three-dimensional medium of cinema to establish a connection, deliberately creating iconic imagery and flattened effects vis-à-vis 19th century landscape or Kalighat and Chorbagan art.

Politics, too, played a role in films made by Bose, a Congressman and Vaishnavite. “Vaishnavism had become an important symbol, the revival of the Bhakti movement established Krishna as a nationalist icon,” said Madhuja.

“The Thirties was a vibrant decade.... All through Bidyapati... the female protagonists speak in a manner that, if not exactly aggressive, reflected the spirit of independence that was already in motion. There is a tremendously erotic undertone in Bidyapati, which ultimately transcends its bazaar art influences and culls a cinematic language of its own.”