No country for old films
Summary
Instead of offering easier access to our cinematic heritage, streaming has made it tougher than ever to find and watch classic Indian films in their original form
It’s an image burned into every Hindi film fan’s brain. Three beds in the top half of the frame, vertically aligned, Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan in them, three nurses, a doctor. In the foreground a fourth bed, horizontal, with Nirupa Roy. And the title in bright blue: ‘Amar Akbar Anthony (Eastmancolor)’. It’s a tightly composed image: two of the nurses’ heads are cut off at the hairline, Roy’s right arm is mostly out of the frame. It looks untidy, but maybe Hindi directors didn’t care about careful compositions in 1977.
What if I told you this wasn’t the image? What if Roy’s arm and her entire bed was in view? What if the top of the frame extended well above the nurses’ heads? What if it didn’t seem like the doctor had been told to bend to be in the shot?
This is what the film’s original audiences saw in theatres. TV viewers and those renting video cassettes probably saw this too. But if you want to stream the film today, it’s a “restored" version by Shemaroo that you will encounter, on Amazon Prime Video and their own platform, ShemarooMe. On the face of it, the film looks great, in HD, colours vibrant. I thought as much when I watched this print, in a packed theatre in 2022, as part of the “Bachchan: Back to the Beginning" retrospective. But there’s a catch, the reason why those heads and arms are cut off. The film has been cropped from its original aspect ratio.
This may not sound like a big deal, but it’s the difference between a carefully composed image and something that looks like a mistake (watch a trailer for Amar Akbar Anthony in the original 4:3 on Golden Ratio Films’ YouTube channel to get an idea of the difference). 4:3 is a narrower ratio, the preferred shooting format for Indian films right up till the end of the 1980s. To crop this to 16:9—the aspect ratio of TV screens and laptops—necessitates lopping off the top and bottom of the frame. This means approximately 25% of the image is lost. If you did this to Van Gogh’s The Starry Night (which is close to 4:3), the painting would be missing the crown of the cypress tree and the first row of houses at the bottom.
Cropping films to fill the whole screen is common practice on Indian streaming platforms. But this is hardly the only problem as far as pre-1990s cinema is concerned. Searching for old films, whether classics or commercial hits or rarities, is a frustrating experience, with the streaming market run by a few stakeholders with little expertise or, seemingly, interest in presenting these works with the respect they deserve. Somewhere along the way, our films were lost to us.
Missing canon
In 2022, the website Film Companion polled over 150 directors, technicians, actors and critics to determine the best Indian films of all time. Of the 12 top-ranked titles (two ties), only four are afforded the basic quartet of decent print, subtitles, correct runtime and aspect ratio on at least one streaming platform: Sholay (#1), Pather Panchali (#2), Pyaasa (#3) and Iruvar (#9). Meghe Dhaka Tara (#5) and Nayakan (#7) are in the wrong aspect ratio on Hoichoi and Amazon Prime, respectively. Mughal-e-Azam (#5) on ShemarooMe is in the correct ratio, but the print is terrible. Satya (#8) on SonyLiv is missing 12 minutes, including the famous ‘Goli Maar Bheje Mein’ musical number. Four films—Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (#4), Mahanagar (#6), Garm Hava (#10) and Guide (#10)—aren’t available to stream at all.
If this were a list of arthouse titles, you could still imagine accessing them might be difficult. But most of these are beloved, commercially successful films, epic westerns and historicals and gangster dramas. That you can’t watch a third of them, and another third only exist in a compromised state, speaks volumes about the mess Indian streaming is in. Pather Panchali, a landmark of world cinema, is cropped on Amazon Prime; it’s a free American platform, Plex, which cares enough to carry it in the correct ratio. Satyajit Ray’s film is also there, as is Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara, in beautiful restored versions on another US streamer, The Criterion Channel—but that isn’t available in India.
To be interested in old Hindi cinema is to be reminded on a weekly basis how many titles are simply not there online. Watching Angry Young Men, a recent docu-series on the legacy of Salim-Javed, I was struck by the beauty of scenes from Zanjeer in it. I knew that the 1973 film was only available in awful bootlegs on YouTube. Yet, here was a tantalising glimpse of the film restored in rich, subtle colours. Zanjeer made stars of Amitabh Bachchan and Salim-Javed. It’s the moment when Hindi cinema dramatically changed course. But you can’t watch it.
Sometimes the film is available, but not whole. In Chupke Chupke on Prime (via Shemaroo), there’s 17 minutes missing from the original runtime, including the song ‘Bagon Mein Kaise Ye Phool’. Mother India—India’s first Oscar-nominated film—has 23 minutes missing from its runtime on ShemarooMe.
Much of the old Hindi cinema online is found on three platforms: YouTube, Amazon Prime and Zee5. Shemaroo and Ultra too have their own paid platforms. Most titles on ShemarooMe and UltraPlay are ones they’ve licensed to other streamers or uploaded on their YouTube channels; they have the same problems with presentation and quality. ErosNow, another subscription platform, has a “classics" section with films across languages, mostly in terrible prints in the wrong ratio.
Also read: How 2024 became the year of re-released films
Amazon Prime has a large selection of films from the 1950s onwards, licensed from digital rights holders and content providers. But, for the older titles on here, there’s an evident preference for screen-filling presentation that plays havoc with images shot in 4:3. Netflix, SonyLiv, Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema deal mostly in post-90s cinema. There was a site called Cinemas of India, where you could stream restored versions of National Film Development Corporation of India productions like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro. But these are no longer available on the site (a handful are on MUBI).
I reached out to Amazon Prime, Shemaroo and Ultra to try and understand the variances between original film and streaming version that crop up so often. Ultra did not respond, but I received emails from the others, which are excerpted below. “For SD (standard definition) films, we maintain the same ratio to avoid quality loss while upscaling the file," Nishith Varshneya, head—international business & India, digital syndication at Shemaroo, wrote. “In a situation where a SD movie file is required in any other aspect ratio, we align with the technical teams of the platform and service them on a case-by-case basis."
An Amazon Prime spokesperson wrote: “To accommodate the evolution of technology over the years, we offer flexibility to content providers to utilize a broad range of industry standard technical asset specifications. We support both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios, allowing content providers to utilize the format that best suits their content." Neither statement makes clear why films need to be shortened or adjusted to fill the screen. Both seem to indicate it’s the other calling the shots.
When you play a film shot in 4:3 on a TV or laptop, there should be vertical black bars on the sides of the image. It is perhaps a fear of this negative space that drives rights holders and streamers to fill up the screen, even if it means sabotaging the work itself.
We all have our white whales. For museum curator and Indian film blogger and podcaster Beth Watkins, it’s a subtitled version of New Delhi Times. For me, it’s seeing the gothic splendour of Josef Wirsching’s photography in Mahal get a proper restoration. So much has fallen through the cracks. In Atul Sabharwal’s Berlin, which released on Zee5 last month, one of the characters credits Sadhu Aur Shaitaan as the inspiration for a bit of improvised spy craft. I went looking for the 1968 comedy, but there wasn’t even a bootleg on YouTube. Sabharwal, luckily, had a VCD of the film to refer to. His work as writer and director often involves peering into the past—the Hindi cinema of the 1950s in Jubilee, or the conflicts of the 1980s in Berlin and Class of ‘83. The more specific the era, the tougher the search is for films of that time. “If I have a DVD, I watch that," Sabharwal says. “My second option is usually YouTube. The last option is streaming."
YouTube is where most old Indian film fans end up. The titles are scattered across the channels of rights holders (Shemaroo, Ultra, Zee), bootleggers and enterprising individual uploaders. Viewing here usually requires some level of compromise—subtitles are often missing and quality varies. But at least YouTube offers the comfort that the films are out there.
Safe havens
The Indian streaming space has been anything but a good home for old films. Luckily, there are a few players that can be relied on. Zee has always put its large library of vintage cinema to good use. But it’s also rare among streamers for playing films in the original aspect ratio. “We don’t want to stretch the image or give the viewer a poor experience," Manish Kalra, chief business office at Zee5 India, says when I asked him about cropping to fill the screen. “Wherever the format permits (widescreen), we will; wherever it doesn’t, we won’t change the aspect ratio."
The restoration on Zee5 is serviceable, subtitles are sometimes missing. But there’s a wealth of old films, across Indian languages. And it’s largely free—subscription is required for newer titles or originals. “We want to use evergreen movies to bring people on board," Kalra says. “For consumers to spend money upfront on a new platform is difficult, so what you do is give them a stepping stone."
You can also set your watch by Tommydan55. This YouTube channel is a legend in old Indian film circles: restored prints, accurate subtitles. It’s the first place Sabharwal checks if he’s looking for a film from the 1940s-60s. “He uploads films in the right aspect ratio," he says. “You see the frames the way the cinematographer, the director actually intended it to be seen." The comments under the videos are invariably wholesome, with Tommydan being thanked—or blessed, given that his viewers are often senior citizens—in a variety of Indian languages. The comments on his upload of the 1953 Tamil film Penn are full of 70- and 80-somethings recalling the first time they saw Vyjayanthimala and Gemini Ganesan. His work often wrings something like poetry from his viewers. One user concludes a wistful comment on the 1959 Bengali film Chaowa Pawa with “Thank you for uploading the film and I pray for the peace of the souls of all the heroes and heroines of the film."
YouTube is also vital in allowing viewers to watch Indian non-fiction. Documentaries have been terribly served by paid streaming platforms—only a few scattered titles, despite the global acclaim that’s come their way in recent years. On YouTube, though, you can access the films of leading directors like Anand Patwardhan and Lalit Vachani, and the invaluable archives of Films Division and the Public Service Broadcasting Trust. You’ll also find, popping up like mushrooms, works that wouldn’t make it onto any subscription platform: Patwardhan’s Ram Ke Naam, Ashvin Kumar’s Inshallah Kashmir, Rakesh Sharma’s The Final Solution.
The offline world
It’s not just the streamers or content libraries that are to blame. Everything can be traced to a larger culture of neglect, an assumption by all stakeholders that Indian cinema will take care of itself. Films aren’t preserved properly; if they survive, they aren’t restored with care and expertise; if they’re restored, they aren’t accessible to the film-viewing public.
Outside India, when a classic film gets a serious restoration, it has two ready outlets—repertory theatres and physical media. In India, neither exist. There is no tradition of repertory film programming—theatres dedicated solely to classic, cult and arthouse films. This is a monumental loss, not just because there’s no home for new Indian films that premiere in festivals abroad and even have theatrical runs there, but never play more than a few festival dates in their own country, but also because the incentive to restore and exhibit old films is much less if there’s no assured screening venue. A film critic in New York is more likely to see a restored print of an Indian classic, painstakingly worked on in Bologna, fêted in Cannes, than a cinephile in India.
It doesn’t help that physical media culture is extinct here. There are no new DVD/Blu-ray releases, and you can’t buy them in stores. Watkins says that of all the ways to access Indian films in the US, “DVDs remain the best, especially if you want English subtitles. They’re ideal, because nobody can suddenly remove them from a streaming service on a whim, leaving you bereft." Blu-rays by boutique labels like Criterion and Eureka have a role to play in shaping modern cinephilia, exposing viewers across the world to untapped filmmaking traditions and directors. India, which is represented on foreign Blu-rays by a slew of Rays and Ghataks but little else, is entirely out of this conversation.
Multiplex chains can’t be expected to perform the function of repertory theatres. Nevertheless, the recent spate of re-releases offers some hope that old films on the big screen will be a regular occurrence and not just a curious trend that took over that one year. I watched Padosan on a rainy September afternoon in Delhi, in a spotty but vibrant print, marvelling at the sheer speed of comic mayhem. During last year’s Dev Anand retrospective, I fell in love with the gorgeous transfers of Jewel Thief and C.I.D.: it really did feel like watching the films for the first time. Most memorable, though, was a screening of Ray’s Mahanagar at a local PVR in September. The projectionist got the aspect ratio right, but someone had forgotten to raise the blinds that cover the top of the screen. As I bolted towards the exit to raise the alarm, I saw someone from the screening ahead of me, equally panicked about seeing a partially veiled Ray. Back in the theatre, an unlucky floor manager fended off questions while the problem was sorted out. “Why do you screen films in 4:3 if you don’t know how to?" someone grumbled. A heckle about aspect ratios in an Indian multiplex! If this isn’t encouraging, I don’t know what is.
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