‘I liked the heroine’

A fresh coat of chuna would be applied on the theatre’s front wall and an artist would paint a huge picture of the hero-heroine along with the name of the film and its producer and director. Alam Ara’s hand-painted painting on the theatre wall was huge enough to be seen from the trains passing through the railway station nearby. Those days irrespective of their marital status the heroes and heroines were addressed as master and miss, so the film’s posters mentioned the lead actors name as Master Vithal and Miss Zubeida.

Prior to Alam Ara during the era of silent films, a tabla and harmonium master would sit near the screen and give live music as per the emotions of the actors and actresses on screen. The advent of the talkie era saw a 50:50 ratio between live and recorded music though Alam Ara was three-fourth talkie and one-forth silent.

It was based on a play (by Joseph David) like most of the films of that era, which were straight adaptations of hit plays and was theatrical in its execution. I liked the heroine Zubeida. She was cute and beautiful and her character was very shy. I can recollect scenes of how she would hide from the hero and sing songs. The movie had quite a few songs (seven), but the music was very theatrical and the actors used to sing for themselves. Since there were no soundproof recording studios at that time, the film was shot at night to avoid surrounding voices from encroaching its soundtrack, while the microphone was cleverly concealed somewhere around the actor. “