Showing posts with label Kishwar Desai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kishwar Desai. Show all posts
Lip lockdown; Superman can’t kiss but Devika Rani did, and how
8:24 AM
A 33-second kiss just got chopped, but a 2-minute lip-lock once rolled uncensored and unapologetic. Sunday Times looks at how we went from reel freedom to real prudish
Shruti Sonal (THE TIMES OF INDIA; July 20, 2025)
A filmmaker and two censor board officials sit inside a dark theatre. On screen, a kiss unfolds. As the seconds tick by, the discomfort on the officials’ faces deepens. After coming out, the three bicker over the scene’s duration. One official suggests trimming the kiss, while the other thinks it should be cut altogether.
This is a scene from Varun Grover’s fictional short film ‘KISS’, but it mirrors reality quite closely. In recent days, India’s censor board has sparked controversy again, this time for snipping a 33-second kissing scene from the Hollywood film ‘Superman’ for being "overly sensual". Even as audiences were bewildered by the abrupt cut in a film certified for 13+ viewers, social media erupted in memes.
But things weren’t always this prudish. Let’s rewind to 1933 when a silent film titled ‘Karma’ featured a kiss that is still considered India’s longest on screen. It starred Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai, who would later establish Bombay Talkies. Some say the kiss lasted up to five minutes, but Kishwar Desai, who chronicled the moment and Rani’s life in her National Award-winning book ‘The Longest Kiss’, says the actual scene lasted under two minutes. Yet, it was ground-breaking.
“It was one of the very few kissing scenes from films that have survived from that era. But pre-Independence India was a very different country. This kiss was just treated as part of the screenplay. The fact that Devika and Himanshu were a real-life couple helped, but there were other examples of actors exchanging kisses too,” says Desai.
Much of this openness, Desai explains, had to do with the cinematic influences shaping Indian film at the time, such as Hollywood which, in the 1930s, had bold portrayals of sex and intimacy in films like ‘Unashamed’, ‘Blonde Venus’, and ‘New Morals For Old’ — a clear departure from the prudishness of the Victorian era.
Foreign technicians and directors also brought in a very different sensibility, points out Desai. “Even ‘Karma’ was made both in Hindi and English. The director, J L Freer Hunt, was a Britisher. Rai was very clear that he wanted the film to appeal to an international audience,” she adds.
LOVE OUT LOUD
Far from being an exception, such scenes were quite common in early Indian cinema, says film scholar Meraj Ahmed Mubarki, who spent months poring over archives from the 1920s. Films from that era — often starring Anglo-Indian or Parsi actors — featured prolonged kissing scenes, sensuous dances, and significant body exposure.
Patience Cooper, a leading actress of the time, appeared in multiple such films: ‘Laila Majnu’ (1922) and Bengali drama ‘Krishnakanter Will’ (1926) included scenes with the heroine’s bust exposed, while ‘Aankh Ka Nasha’ (The Witchery of the Eyes, 1928) featured a passionate kiss. The 1932 film ‘Zarina’ sparked a big controversy for including not one or two, but 86 kisses.
It's not that censors didn’t exist. The Cinematograph Act had come in 1918, and independent film censor boards were established in Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Rangoon, and Lahore. But they were more preoccupied with politics than kissing.
In fact, the first film to be banned was ‘Bhakt Vidur’ (1921), which came just a few months after the Rowlatt Act, and featured a mythological figure modelled after Gandhi. When it came to sexuality and desire, the British were quick with cuts in American or British films, says Mubarki. “Censor committee reports show that the British were beginning to worry about how Indian audiences would react when they saw a white woman disrobing, taking a bath, sharing a drink, or kissing on screen. Films were a window to the world of the colonizer, and they had to keep it distant,” he adds.
CULTURE CONUNDRUM
Things started changing in the mid-thirties, both in Hollywood and at home. Monika Mehta, author of ‘Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema’, says that from the late 1930s onwards, a question began playing on the minds of filmmakers: “What is Indian culture right and how should it be defined in relation to western culture?” In trying to answer this, the film industry became a site for questions of morality and ethics, she adds.
Another factor was the film industry’s negotiation with the patriarchy. “In the context of Hollywood, a big kiss foregrounds the formation of the romantic couple. In the context of India, there was a fear that this notion of the romantic couple would unsettle the joint family system,” says Mehta.
FAMILY FRIENDLY
The concerns were not just ethical, but also commercial. After Independence, the ‘family audience’ emerged as the primary moviegoing demographic, replacing the predominantly male viewers of earlier decades. Elements that could make them uncomfortable were done away with, says Desai.
“In the later films Devika Rani did with Bombay Talkies, there was no kiss. Although she was a fairly liberated woman in real life, on screen she became a saree-clad lady who is very much into family. She was playing interesting roles, but they didn’t break the mould of an ideal Indian woman,” Desai adds.
Even in film magazines, the onscreen kiss became a topic of discussion. In the April 1940 edition of FilmIndia, for instance, a reader asked the editor: “Indian films use a duet to express love. Don't you think they would do well to use a kiss instead?”
The magazine’s editor Baburao Patel, famous for his caustic language, replied, “Yes, a kiss would be the shortest cut which perhaps the audience would also like, if it is passionately given. But what about the literary bile of the dialogue writer who wants to spit out love through the painted lips in the shape of senseless words? Then there are the Censor Boards with their unromantic inspectors and tired fossils as members of the Boards. Won't they fall to pieces if they see a good long-winded kiss on the screen?”
After Independence, autonomous regional censors were merged — first into the Bombay Board of Film Censors, and then reorganized as the Central Board of Film Censors in 1952. Films like ‘Karma’ gave way to nationalist and mythological offerings, which showed women as caregivers or upholders of chaste, family values. “After the turbulence of Partition, the film industry had to come back with an Indian image, which was very carefully crafted,” Desai says.
In this new image, overt depictions of desire gave way to more symbolic expressions such as two flowers coming together or a pair of feet peeking out from under a blanket. When some films tried to move away from that, like ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ in 1978, huge controversies erupted. In its coverage of the Zeenat Aman-starrer, The New York Times wrote, “In a sharp break with the tradition of modesty, the kiss has come to the Hindi motion picture screen, titillating some film audiences, scandalizing others, and fuelling a national debate over censorship.”
Decades later, the kiss keeps getting caught in the censor’s crosshairs.
Now, Lillete Dubey brings Devika Rani on stage
8:09 AM
Ira Dubey is the First Lady of Indian Cinema in a play, produced and directed by her mother with Joy Sengupta as Devika’s husband Himanshu Rai; opens in Mumbai on September 7
Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; July 24, 2019)
On September 7, Lillete Dubey will bring in her birthday with a new stage production, Devika Rani: Goddess Of The Silver Screen. The actress is directing daughter Ira Dubey who plays the First Lady of Indian Cinema with Joy Sengupta as her debonair filmmaker-husband Himanshu Rai. The play opens at the Tata Theatre in Mumbai, after an inaugural performance in Pune on August 31.Though Lillete has done many plays based on world literature, the primary aim of her theatre company has been to give a platform to original Indian writing, be it Vijay Tendulkar, Mahesh Dattani or more recently Twinkle Khanna whose short story, Salaam, Noni Apa, from her book, The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, was adapted by her for the stage. Having already experimented with a play on Gauhar, the singer from Kolkata who popularised Hindustani classical music, Lillete was not in the mood for another biopic. But then, she ran into an old college friend, Kishwar Desai, who was also on the jury of the Montreal English Theatre Awards (META) and confided that along with a book on the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, she was also writing on the cinema of Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai based on five years of research and several unpublished letters. Instantly excited, Lillete asked her if she’d also like to write it as a play and Kishwar was quick to agree.
“It’s not an already made script which guarantees a safe and successful run. After seven-eight drafts, we’ve finally decided what we want to tell. While we will start with and touch on films with women-centric topics, like Achhut Kannya, the play is not a filmography for the archives. It’s a personal story of a woman who was the grand-niece of Rabindranath Tagore, who’d been educated in London, and who broke the glass ceiling 80 years ago to enter a profession which did not draw women from respectable families then,” she points out. Lillete adds that the winner of the Padma Shri and Dadasaheb Phalke award, did not only act in movies, with her husband she set up and ran India’s first listed studio, Bombay Talkies, which introduced legends like Ashok Kumar and Dilip Kumar. “It’s a fascinating story which unfolds against the backdrop of the Second World War with the studio employing many Germans.”
And will the journey also touch on the big ‘scandal’ of the ’30s, when Devika Rani eloped with co-star Najam-ul-Hasan during the filming of Jeevan Naiya which landed lab assistant Kumudlal Ganguly, rechristened Ashok Kumar, his break as an actor? “Oh yes, and also the reason she returned home, one of them being adultery which was a punishable offence then and she could have been jailed,” she says.
Quiz her on her choice of Ira to play the titular role and Lillete reasons her daughter is a talented actress who speaks flawless English and can be both feisty and vulnerable—demure bride and dragon lady—on stage.
For Ira a biopic is always exciting, particularly one that goes back in time. “In Devika’s case, we know what she looked like and have seen her films so there’s a lot of research involved in getting the way she walked, spoke and dressed right. At the same time, one doesn’t want to make a caricature of a real person. The challenge is to capture her spirit so people believe that this is Devika Rani,” she maintains.
Her director mother points out that Ira is slim, petite and can carry a tune well and for that instant, will convince you it’s Devika Rani sitting on the branch with Ashok Kumar and crooning, “Main Ban Ki Chidiya”. “She’s the right age given the role spans from 18 to 36,” adds Lillete, informing that the play ends with the actress-filmmaker’s retirement from showbiz to marry Russian painter Svetoslav Roerich and move to Himachal where she made documentaries on wildlife, before settling down in Bangalore, where she died at the age of 85, a Garbo-like figure.
Talented Joy, for her, is also apt for his part. “He has the right look to play Himanshu, who was 16 years older than his wife, and shares a great working relationship with Ira. We also have him speaking Bangla in a few scenes,” she smiles, revealing that Kishwar has written the play with almost 50 characters with each actor playing at least three different characters. Pia Benegal is doing the costumes.
A working birthday is not everyone’s cup of cheers, but after three years, it’s become a norm for her. “It means there’s time yet before I have to start thinking of hanging up my boots or should that be sandals,” laughs Lillete, equally kicked about her real-life role of a grandmother to daughter Neha’s 10-month twins. “For the first time in my life I am experiencing pure love. These babies are mine only to spoil and indulge,” she signs off with a smile.
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