Page 122 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Tamil Mythological Cinema 107

these difficulties: “The cost of traveling, the prolonged enforced stay in
distant places, vastly different in mode and clime, the absence of famil-
iar settings for South Indian themes and tunes, the step-motherly treat-
ment accorded in the studio, have been serious factors against the
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successful growth of the Talking films.” The fact that during the early
years all Tamil films were produced outside of south India had been a
matter of considerable concern and complaint. Throughout the 1930s it
was common for critics to accuse the Indian film industry of exploiting
the south Indian film market for the sole purpose of commercial gain:

The lack of a producing unit in Madras afforded enterprising producers of
Bengal and Bombay fresh field for exploitation with some tens of thousands
of Rupees, these Bengal and Bombay producers issued pictures in South
Indian vernacular and their returns were always in lakhs [100,000s].
(Anonymous 1933)

The problem main was not just that north Indian film producers were
exploiting a wide open market for talkies in the south, but that they were
doing so without the same care about the quality of Tamil and Telugu
talkies as they did for Hindi or Bengali films. A south Indian cinema jour-
nal complained that “some of the leading Bombay and Calcutta producers,
in their attempt to produce talkies for South Indian market, committed
the greatest blunders, resulting in a product inferior to that of a decade
old.” He felt, as did many other south Indians that the north Indian film
producers lacked the interest and responsibility necessary to produce films,
which were best suited for south Indian conditions (Raju 1933). These
complaints against the north Indian production of south Indian films rep-
resented the beginnings of a significant regionalist reorientation from the
1920s nationalist concern over the dominance of imported foreign films
(Arora 1995).
These concerns over where, who, and how Tamil films were being pro-
duced continued through the 1930s, but the situation began to change
from 1934 when the first south Indian film sound film studio, Srinivas
Cinetone, was established in Madras with the production of the Tamil
mythological film, Srinivasa Kalyanam (1934). This first effort was then
quickly followed by the opening of Vel Picture Studios, National
Movietone Studios, and Meenakshi Cinetone in 1935 and then Madras
United Artists in 1936. Outside of Madras several other important stu-
dios also opened in provincial centers during 1935 with Modern Theatres
in Salem and Central Studios in Coimbatore. Within a remarkably short
period of several years new film studios were for the first time offering an
alternative to production facilities elsewhere. These early south Indian