Designing Publicity for the Masala Film
The form of the masala film that dominated Hindi commercial cinema in the 1970s and 1980s, is best captured by the phrase “an item in every reel”, the words of the 1970s’ most famous Hindi masala film director, Manmohan Desai. A typical masala film contained a bit of everything: action, romance, song-dance sequences, stunts and fights, all elements of a multi-generational story in which family and kinship loomed large, and order is restored by movie’s end. The booklets for these masala films likewise condense varying ingredients almost as if to pack them into every available square inch. The cover for Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (Destiny’s Conqueror, 1978) compacts melodramatic anguish on the hero’s face, a shooting scene involving the movie’s other male and female leads, a dance by a courtesan, and the movie’s villain (on the bottom right), into a single frame. Notice the emphasis on red both in the blood against a white suit, and in the lettering of the title of the movie; the fractured backdrop; the frayed edges of the photographic portions of the image, and the dynamic articulation of the movie’s lettering. Together, these elements convey the movie’s ultimately tragic ending (the hero sacrifices his life) and its emphasis on suffering and turmoil. Notice also that the stars’ names were not listed, frequently unnecessary in the front-facing aspects of visual publicity at a time when Hindi commercial cinema had become entirely star-driven.
Seeta aur Geeta (1972), also a masala film, included plenty of comedy and showcased actress (and one of the era’s biggest female stars) Hema Malini’s expressive range in a “double-role” as lost-at-birth twin sisters who are eventually reunited. One is a street performer and fearless; the other suffers meekly and tearfully in the mansion bequeathed to her but controlled by her wicked relatives who treat her as domestic help. The booklet’s cover lists Malini’s name twice as if the fictional storyline dictated star listing. By the same logic, it depicts her three times, as part of a romantic duo, as a fearless action star, and as the meek and put-upon sister. (Notice once again, the blue over-painting on Malini’s troubled face in the center).
In Kasme Vaade (1978), Amitabh Bachchan plays a “double role” as a peace-loving college professor in the first half who is killed, and in the movie’s second half, as an unrelated criminal look-alike who reforms and connects with the dead professor’s family. The cover avoids any depiction of Bachchan the professor and makes it clear that the star who personified the era’s “angry young man” is best visualized in his more recognizable iconography: as fighter and performer.
Running counter to that decade’s “Angry Young Man” films were hugely successful, romance and musical medley-rich films such as director Nasir Husain’s Hum Kisi Se Kam Nahin/We’re No Less Than Others (1977, Hindi). The songbook for this movie, pages pictured below, is unique in this collection for including a behind-the-scenes montage on the back page.