Have you ever gotten bored while watching an old movie? Maybe the plot was predictable or the technical finesse was far below the current standard of I-have-the-latest-CGI-so-I-can-show-you-the-fight-from-720-angles-in-four-dimensions. Whatever the reason, you watched the movie for few minutes and shifted to something else or if you had to watch it, you counted every minute till The End.
I have been in this situation a few times and there was this one time when I went on watching the movie with great interest. It was much later, when I asked myself as to why I was watching that particular sub-standard movie that the light bulb went off. The reason I watched the movie had nothing to do with the plot or the acting. The main characters could have been swallowed by a boa constrictor and I would not have noticed. Since then, I particularly look forward to watching old movies. And if your interests overlap with mine, I can assure you that after reading this article, you will never get bored watching an old movie.
This does not mean that all old movies are boring. In fact, there is as much art in many of the old movies as there is in the contemporary ones but that is a topic for another post.
A slight detour. One of my interests is history. That’s a very broad statement. It’s like saying I like books so let me narrow it down. There are certain periods from the past that I find very interesting. Starting from the Triassic period – 231 to 243 million years ago – when the T Rex ruled, on to few million years ago when the Homo Sapien and its many cousins made an appearance. From say about 5000 years ago, my interests jump randomly all over the place. I am fascinated by the Indus Valley civilization, the Inkas and the Mayans but the Greek and Roman history does not hold my attention. I love the European history starting from the dark ages, about 700 A.D. going through middle ages and the renaissance. I am bored by the French history (and the movies with those false wigs). I am interested in Napolean only so far as to his effect on Beethoven’s music.
The period starting from the industrial revolution is very interesting. The American Renaissance in the 1850’s followed by the upheaval in scientific community in the beginning of twentieth century caused mainly by Einstein. All of the twentieth century is simply fascinating. Two world wars and the world map redrawn several times including many events like India’s independence. There is the cold war era, dominated by the USA and former USSR, coming down of the Berlin wall and disintegration of the Soviet Bloc.
As much as I am interested in the history of the aforementioned periods, I am also intrigued by the way the people lived in these eras. And this is where the old movies come in. We cannot watch how people lived in earlier periods, but the later part of the twentieth century is well documented in the movies. And it’s not so much as to what the movie is about or what the film-maker is trying to show.
It’s what the film-maker shows inadvertently that makes these movies so interesting. There is so much interesting information packed in these movies. Here are a few categories.
Traffic and vehicles: While watching old Hindi movies, I am more interested in the background. The traffic is so sparse, empty roads everywhere with very few cars and sometimes horse carriages. It’s a totally different world altogether. If ever a time machine is invented, the first place I want to go to is India in 1950. It’s an absolute traffic paradise. The roads are literally EMPTY!!
I am not a car guy in the sense I cannot reel off specs of every car the way Jerry Seinfeld does at the beginning of each episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. But even I notice that the cars in old movies are much different. Sometimes they have those funny doors that open like a flap from the middle. If it’s a really old movie, you can see people turning the wheel in front to start the car. Mostly in old India you see the abundance of Ambassadors. In the movie Taxi Driver (Not the De Niro one but the Dev Anand one) which is mostly shot on streets of Mumbai, I counted only ONE two wheeler in all of the movie.
Technology : All thorough movies of 50’s to 80’s you see the old telephones. In the late nineties, pagers make a brief appearance. This is followed by the first age Nokia mobile phones, then the ones that open with a flap. This has plateaued with the arrival of tablets/smartphones. No big change in last ten years, unless you are watching a Sci-fi.
Fashion : This is more interesting for women and yes that is a sexist statement. Look, I am all for equality but that does not mean we ignore the obvious differences between men and women. It’s a fact that an average woman is way more observant than an average man. Do you know why The Shawshank Redemption will never work in a women’s prison? Because each and every woman will notice that the protagonist’s shoes have been freshly polished. Old movies are the best indicators of fashion because it is the movie stars who are the main proponents of what’s hip at the time. You notice the different hair styles or accessories from oversized sunglasses to bell bottom pants. Sometimes, you marvel as to how your parents or grandparents could imagine that silly fashion was hip!
Socio-political climate : It’s not just the background that provides information. You can also tell a lot about the times by looking at which issues the film maker has chosen to highlight. For instance, Vijay Anand’s movie Tere Ghar Ke Samne was made in 1962 when the Indo-China war started. The movie is a subtext on the Indo-China problem which was the biggest issue at the time. It is very clear how much the Indians were taken in by the rhetoric of brotherhood with China (and possibly the influence of Gandhi was still strong). The movie ends on the premise supporting Nehru’s now infamous slogan “Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai”. No history book will give you a clearer picture into what ordinary people were thinking at that time than a movie like this one.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines zeitgeist as
“the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.”
Watch the old movies to experience the zeitgeist of olden times.
