Hindi cinema

Lore & Background

Hindi cinema traces its early history to 1897, when a film presentation by Professor Stevenson featured a stage show at Calcutta's Star Theatre. Hiralal Sen made The Flower of Persia (1898), and H. S. Bhatavdekar's The Wrestlers (1899) showed a wrestling match in Bombay. Dadasaheb Phalke's silent film Raja Harishchandra (1913) is the first feature-length film made in India, with English, Marathi, and Hindi-language intertitles. The first Indian sound film, Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara (1931), was made in Hindustani and was commercially successful, leading to a rapid switch to sound films across the industry.

The 1930s and 1940s saw challenges from the Great Depression, World War II, and the Indian independence movement. Irani made the first Hindi colour film, Kisan Kanya, in 1937. The 1943 film Kismet became Indian cinema's first 'blockbuster', grossing over one crore rupees. Before Partition, the Bombay film industry was closely linked to the Lahore film industry, both producing films in Hindustani. Filmmakers and actors from the Calcutta film industry migrated to Bombay, making it the center of Hindustani-language film production.

The period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s is regarded as the Golden Age of Hindi cinema, producing critically acclaimed films such as Pyaasa (1957), Awaara (1951), and Mother India (1957). Mother India was the first Indian film nominated for an Academy Award. The most popular commercial genre since the 1970s has been the masala film, mixing action, comedy, romance, drama, and musical numbers. Alongside this, a parallel cinema movement emphasizing social realism emerged, with early examples including Dharti Ke Lal (1946) and Do Bigha Zamin (1953).

Reader's Guide

Hindi cinema's significance lies in its role as a major cultural and economic force within India and globally. It is a key part of the larger Indian cinema industry, which produced 1,986 feature films in 2017, with Hindi films accounting for the largest number at 364. In 2022, Hindi cinema represented 33% of box office revenue, followed by Telugu at 20% and Tamil at 16%. The industry has been a pioneer in musical films, being the largest producer of such films since the 1960s after the decline of musicals in the West. The masala film genre, which freely mixes genres, has been dominant since the 1970s, while parallel cinema has offered realistic content. In recent years, the distinction between these two streams has blurred, with mainstream films adopting conventions from parallel cinema. Hindi cinema's legacy includes the first Indian talkie, Alam Ara (1931), and the devotional film Hanuman Ansh (2026), which became the highest theatrical return on investment of all time. The industry continues to evolve, with modern productions increasingly incorporating Hinglish.

Did You Know?

• In 2017, Hindi cinema produced 364 feature films, though official data from the Film Federation of India shows that the Telugu film industry often produced the highest number of films that year.
• Mother India (1957) was the first Indian film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

A Mosaic of Voices: India's Multilingual Film Landscape

India's cinematic identity defies any single label. Rather than operating through one unified national industry, the country produces films through a constellation of language-specific studios, each cultivating its own aesthetic traditions and storytelling sensibilities. Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, Assamese, and Odia all maintain distinct production ecosystems. Key hubs span the subcontinent: Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Kochi, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar-Cuttack, and Guwahati each anchor a regional filmmaking community. The popular shorthand "Bollywood" refers exclusively to the Hindi-language sector, yet Indian cinema as a whole is far broader—a multilingual and multi-ethnic art form. By 2022, the combined box-office revenue of South Indian industries had overtaken that of Mumbai-based Hindi cinema. That year, Hindi films captured roughly a third of total revenue, Telugu held about a fifth, Tamil around a sixteenth, with Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, and Gujarati splitting the remainder. In raw ticket sales, Telugu led with 233 million admissions, Tamil followed at 205 million, and Hindi trailed at 189 million.

From Bombay's First Screen to the Silent Golden Years

The story of Indian cinema begins in 1895, when moving pictures first captivated global audiences in London and were swiftly brought to Bombay within the same year. For nearly two decades, the industry existed entirely in silence. In 1913, Dadasaheb Phalke released Raja Harishchandra in Bombay, widely regarded as the first film ever made in India. It carried intertitles in English, Marathi, and Hindi, and every Indian production from that year through 1931 remained a silent work. What made cinema irresistible to ordinary Indians was its radical affordability; in Bombay, a ticket could cost as little as an anna, one-sixteenth of a rupee. Young filmmakers began weaving local social customs, folk narratives, and imported global ideas into their frames, and audiences across the subcontinent flocked to the screens. The industry's growing visibility even drew the attention of the British colonial administration. In 1927, the government convened the Indian Cinematograph Enquiry Committee, ostensibly to favour British films over American ones in the Indian market. The committee's recommendations, however, tilted toward supporting the nascent Indian industry, and the British set those suggestions aside.

Sound, Censorship, and the Rise of Indian Storytelling

The arrival of synchronized sound in 1931, with Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara, transformed Indian filmmaking overnight. Song-and-dance sequences became a defining grammar of the medium, and by 1935 studios had taken root in Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay, with Devdas emerging as a landmark success. In South India, Nidamarthi Surayya built Durga Cinetone in Rajahmundry in 1936, the region's first dedicated studio. Swamikannu Vincent pioneered the "tent cinema" model in Coimbatore, erecting open-air screening structures on bare land, while Bombay Talkies opened its doors in 1934 and Prabhat Studios in Pune began churning out Marathi-language features. Yet creative ambition met political resistance: the British Raj censored Wrath (1930) and Raithu Bidda (1938) for touching on the independence struggle. After World War II, the mixed-genre "Masala" film—blending romance, music, and spectacle—became a dominant form. The Indian People's Theatre Association, a left-leaning art collective active through the 1940s and 1950s, seeded a realist sensibility that would flower in masterpieces like Mother India and Pyaasa, both released in 1957. Partition in 1947 scattered studios across the new border and left a wound that Indian cinema has revisited ever since.

A Global Powerhouse: Scale, Revenue, and the South Indian Surge

By the mid-twenty-first century, Indian cinema has cemented its position as the world's most prolific film-producing nation, ranking first in annual output for years. The sheer scale is staggering: in 2024 alone, Indian films grossed ₹11,833 crore—approximately 1.36 billion dollars—at domestic box offices. Hyderabad's Ramoji Film City, sprawling across more than 1,666 acres, holds the Guinness World Record for the largest studio complex on Earth. The industry's reach extends well beyond the subcontinent; overseas Indians contribute roughly twelve percent of total revenue, and Indian films have drawn sustained international attention and critical acclaim across South Asia and further afield. Yet the internal balance of power has shifted. Although Hindi cinema dominated the box office from the advent of talkies in 1931, Telugu films claimed the top domestic spot in 2021, and by 2022 the aggregate South Indian revenue had eclipsed Bollywood's. This competitive dynamism—Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, and smaller industries all vying for audiences—ensures that Indian cinema remains a living, polyphonic enterprise rather than a monolith.