Аналықтың бейнесі: «Ана Индия» фильмі талдауы

1957 film directed by Mehboob Khan
the Hindi film

The script of Aurat was devised by Wajahat Mirza, based upon a story by Babubhai Mehta. For Mother India, it was reworked by Mirza and the young screenwriter S. Ali Raza. Apart from Mehboob Khan, Mirza and Raza, prominent screenwriters Aghajani Kashmeri, Zia Sarhadi, Akhtar Mirza, music director Naushad, assistant director Chimankant Desai and many others were consulted. The dialogue, reworked by Mirza and Raza, is a blend of Urdu, vernacular Hindi, and its literary counterpart. As Mirza and Raza were from the Urdu literary tradition, they wrote the dialogues in Urdu script. of the University of Puerto Rico, Nargis's Mother India is a metonymic representation of a Hindu woman, reflecting high Hindu values, with virtuous morality and motherly self sacrifice. Film scholar Jyotika Virdi wrote that Mother India could also be seen as a metaphor of the trinity of mother, God, and a dynamic nation. Vijay Mishra, in his 2002 book Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, opined that the Mother India figure is an icon in several respects—being associated with a goddess, her function as a wife, as a lover, and even compromising her femininity at the end of the film by playing Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer, masculine gods. According to Indian film scholars Gokulsing and Dissanayake, while aspiring to traditional Hindu values, the character of Mother India also represents the changing role of the mother in Indian cinema and society in that the mother is not always subservient or dependent on her husband, refining the relationship to the male gender or patriarchal social structures. The New Internationalist said in a 1999 review that Radha transforms from a submissive wife to an independent mother, thereby breaking female stereotypes in Hindi film. In contrast, in a 2012 article in the newspaper The Hindu, author Tarini Sridharan has pointed out themes such as upholding female chastity, wifely devotion and saintly motherhood that reinforce gender stereotypes. While the action of sacrificing motherhood to uphold a woman's dignity is termed as feminist by some, other authors see it as an attempt of a community woman to protect the patriarchal village structure, that esteems izzat (honour) of women. A promotional pamphlet to introduce the social context of the film to western audiences described Indian women as being "an altar in India", and that Indians "measure the virtue of their race by the chastity of their women", and that "Indian mothers are the nucleus around which revolve the tradition and culture of ages." In a 2002 review in The New York Times, film critic Dave Kehr compares the film with Stella Dallas (1937) for the thematic similarity of the series of sacrifices made by the female lead, and with Gone with the Wind (1939) as an epic mirroring social upheavals. Film critic Mark Cousins and author Tejaswini Ganti agree that the film is the Gone with the Wind of Indian cinema. The term "Mother India" has been defined as "a common icon for the emergent Indian nation in the early 20th  century in both colonialist and nationalist discourse". Many authors, including Gayatri Chatterjee, author of Mother India (2002), interpret the film as an allegory signifying patriotism and the changing situation in the newly independent nation, and how India was functioning without British authority. It echoes the tale of a modern India, liberating itself from "feudal and colonial oppression". The film, an archetypal nationalistic picture, is symbolic in that it demonstrated the euphoria of "Mother India" in a nation that had only been independent for 10 years, and it had a long lasting cultural impact upon the Indian people. Film scholar Saibal Chatterjee considers Mother India a "mirror of independent India", highlighting problems of a nascent nation, including rural exploitation of farmers by money lenders, in a dramatic fashion understandable to the common viewer. It also represents the agrarian poverty and hardship of the people at the time. The red water that flows from the canal irrigating the green fields at the end of the film is seen by Chatterjee as a metaphor to represent the blood of Indians in the struggle for independence, flowing to nourish a new free India. The canal is described by Virdi to signal the imminent end of the feudal order. However, despite Radha's struggle against feudal oppression depicted in the film, her action of stopping the rebellious Birju and upholding status quo—the feudal and patriarchal order—is seen as "regressive" by various authors. In a study of media and popular culture in South Asia, author Mahasveta Barua draws a parallel between the film's metaphorical representation of the mother as a nation, and the metonymic identification with India that Indira Gandhi, India's only woman prime minister, sought and tried for during her tenure (1966–77, and 1980–84). In his book Terrorism, Media, Liberation, John David Slocum argues that like Satyajit Ray's classic masterpiece Pather Panchali (1955), Khan's Mother India has "vied for alternative definitions of Indianness". However, he emphasises that the film is an overt mythologising and feminising of the nation in which Indian audiences have used their imagination to define it in the nationalistic context, given that in reality, the storyline is about a poverty stricken peasant from northern India, rather than a true idea of a modernising, powerful nation. The Radha–Birju relationship is described to have "Oedipal elements" by many authors; Virdi has argued that in her chastity, Radha channels her sexual desires into maternal love for her sons who effectively become "substitute erotic subjects". Mishra opines that the crushing of the arms of Radha's husband and the mellowness of the older son symbolise castration, which is in contrast with the rebellion of Birju, identified with sexual potency. Birju's obsession with his mother's bracelets is an expression of his oedipal longings, according to Chakravarty. Rachel Dwyer, Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAS, describes how "suspiciously smoothly" the Oedipal elements fit into the film and the off screen romance between Nargis and Dutt, playing mother and son in the film. Radha's actions at the end of the film in shooting her own son was a breaking of traditional mother son relationship to safeguard morality, according to author William Van der Heide. Virdi points out that this brought ambiguity to the mother figure who acts as a sacrificing provider and also as a destroyer, annihilating her own son, something rare in Hindi cinema. She interprets Birju's sexual advances on a village girl (which is incest in north Indian village culture) as being a substitute in the plot for the incestuous mother son relationship and his death at the end as a punishment for violation of the taboo. Authors such as Eshun and Woods state that Radha and Ramu are the archetypal champions of virtue in battling hardship and injustice, while Birju is a mischievous child who becomes the anarchist whose uncontrollable rebellion destroys order. Mishra has noted that although Radha upholds Dharma (the natural law or order) in the film, it is Birju who achieves identification from the spectators; in his rebellion lies the agenda of political action that will usher social change. Mishra notes that due to such conflicting ideas, the film is very much conforming, and yet "defiantly subversive". Film scholar Vijay Mishra has pointed out the presence of the "highly syncretic hyphenated Hindu–Muslim nature" of Hindi film industry in the film. Parama Roy has interpreted that Nargis's legendary status as the titular Mother India is due to Hinduisation of the role and her real life marriage with a Hindu; she is, according to Roy, scripted as a renouncer of Muslim separatism in the film. Mishra has found metacritical value in Salman Rushdie's commentary on the film in his novel The Moor's Last Sigh (1995) in which Rushdie describes:

The production team had planned to release Mother India to commemorate the tenth anniversary of India's independence on 15 August 1957, but the film was released over two months later. It premiered at the Liberty Cinema in Mumbai on 25 October 1957, during Diwali; it ran continuously at Liberty for over a year. It was released in Kolkata (then called Calcutta) the same day and in Delhi a week later. It had reached all regions of India by the end of November. Government ministers and other officials were invited to the premieres, and a special screening was held in Rashtrapati Bhavan (the presidential quarter) in New Delhi on 23 October 1957; the event was attended by President Rajendra Prasad, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi. Chief Minister of West Bengal Bidhan Chandra Roy and Governor Padmaja Naidu attended a screening in Kolkata. Impressed with the film's nationalistic message, Chief Minister of Bombay State Morarji Desai granted it an exemption from the entertainment tax in the state. No reliable data is available on the box office earnings of Mother India. It was in continuous distribution in theatres in India until the mid 1990s. There was a renewed interest in the film in the 1970s causing an upsurge in ticket sales. According to Chatterjee, it did exceptionally good business in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka (then called Mysore State) and Maharashtra. Film trade websites provide estimates of its business. Box Office India gave the film's net collection as 40 and its gross as 80, the highest for an Indian film up until Mughal e Azam (1960), while estimating that Mother Indias inflation adjusted net would be equivalent to 1.173 billion in January 2008. Box Office India later estimated in 2017 that Mother India had over 100million footfalls at the domestic box office, making it one of the highest grossing Indian films of all time when adjusted for inflation. The film's success led Khan to name his next film Son of India. Released in 1962, it was not well received. Mother India was dubbed in several European languages including Spanish, French and Russian; it did substantial business in Greece, Spain and Russia and was released in the Eastern Bloc countries. Technicolor arranged one screening of the film in Paris on 30 June 1958, under the name Les bracelets d'or ("The Gold Bracelets"). It did minimal business in Paris, but fared better in French colonies. It was successful in the Latin American countries of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Mother India was also acclaimed across the Arab world, in the Middle East, parts of Southeast Asia, and North Africa and continued to be shown in countries such as Algeria at least ten years after its release. It was released in the US on 9 July 1959 to lukewarm response, and the UK release in 1961 was also a commercial failure. The initial international version with English subtitles was 40 minutes shorter than the Indian release. As of 2013, Mother India is available on DVD in all regions NTSC format, distributed by the Eros Entertainment.

A contemporary review in Filmfare praised the cast's enthusiastic performances and said that the film "will be remembered for a long time to come". Baburao Patel of Filmindia (December 1957) described Mother India after its release as "the greatest picture produced in India" and wrote that no other actress would have been able to perform the role as well as Nargis. A review in a British magazine Monthly Film Bulletin in 1958 remarked that audiences in UK should be grateful that the international version was shortened by 40 minutes, and termed it a "rag bag pantomime". After its US release in 1959, Irene Thirer reviewed the film in the New York Post in which she praised its "striking dramatic appeal", but feared it might not be accepted by American audiences due to cultural differences. In a 1976 article in the journal Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, author Michael Gallagher found the film "an amazing mixture of political allegory and cheap musical, a cross between the impressiveness of Eisenstein and the banality of Show Boat". The New Internationalist in 1999 found Nargis's acting "exemplary", and noted "a clever interplay—artistically and politically—between the traditional and the radical" evident in Mother India. In a 2002 article in The Village Voice, film critic J. Hoberman described the film as "an outrageous masala of apparently discordant elements." He characterised it as a mixture of "indigenous versions of Soviet style tractor opera, Italian neo realism, Hollywood kiddie cuteness, a dozen Technicolor musical numbers, and, most significantly, a metaphoric overlay of pop Hinduism." Hoberman criticised the acting as "broad", and also wrote about the "vaguely left wing" nationalist overtone of the film. Phill Hall, writing for Film Threat in 2002, described the film as exceptionally sluggish and one dimensional, and lampooned it saying "it takes the strongest of constitutions to endure this film without entertaining notions of matricide." Jonathan Romney of The Independent observed the earth mother Radha as "India's answer to Anna Magnani" and the film as "an all out exercise in ideological myth making." Women's Feature Service, in a 2007 article, noted Mother India as "one of the most outstanding films of the post Independence era." Ziya Us Salam of The Hindu wrote in 2010: "Mehboob was able to blend the individual with the universal, thereby enhancing the film's appeal without compromising on its sensitivity."

Mother India, Nargis, and Mehboob Khan received many awards and nominations. Nargis won the Filmfare Best Actress Award in 1958 and became the first Indian to receive the Best Actress award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in present day Czech Republic. Mother India won the Filmfare Award for Best Film and scooped several other Filmfare awards including Best Director for Khan, Best Cinematographer for Faredoon Irani, and Best Sound for R. Kaushik. In 1958, the film became India's first submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was chosen as one of the five nominations for the category. The international version, 120 minutes long, was sent for the Oscars. Additionally, this version had English subtitles, and dropped Mehboob Productions' logo, which featured the Communist hammer and sickle, to appease the academy. The 120 minute version was later distributed in the US and UK by Columbia Pictures. The film came close to winning the Academy Award but lost to Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria by a single vote. Khan was utterly disappointed at not winning the award. "He had seen the other films in the fray and believed Mother India was far superior to them" recalled Sunil Dutt decades later. It also won two awards at the 5th National Film Awards in 1957: an All India Certificate of Merit for Best Feature Film and Certificate of Merit for Best Feature Film in Hindi. Award Category Nominee Outcome11th Karlovy Vary International Film FestivalBest Actress Nargis30th Academy Awards Best Foreign Language FilmMehboob Khan5th National Film AwardsBest Feature Film in Hindirowspan="6"5th Filmfare AwardsBest FilmBest DirectorBest ActressNargisBest CinematographyFaredoon IraniBest Sound Design R. Kaushik

The score and soundtrack for Mother India were composed by Naushad. Mehboob Khan had worked on eight  films with Naushad and developed a rapport with him. The lyrics were by Shakeel Badayuni. The soundtrack consists of 12 songs and features vocals by Mohammed Rafi, Shamshad Begum, Lata Mangeshkar, and Manna Dey. It was not particularly well received upon release, and critics said it did not match the high pitch and quality of the film. However, its later reception has been more positive: the soundtrack made Planet Bollywood's list of "100 Greatest Bollywood Soundtracks Ever", compiled in the 2000s. The review gave the album 7.5 stars out of 10. Mother India is the earliest example of a Hindi film containing Western classical music and Hollywood style orchestra. An example is a coda during the scene in which Birju runs away from his mother and rejects her. It features a powerful symphonic orchestra with strings, woodwinds and trumpets. This orchestral music contains extensive chromaticism, diminished sevenths, and augmented scales. It also features violin tremolos. Anne Morcom writes in Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema that the piece is unmelodic and "profoundly disturbing". This use of a western style orchestra in Indian cinema influenced many later films, such as Mughal e Azam (1960), which features similar dissonant orchestral music to create the atmosphere at tense moments. The song "Holi Aayi Re Kanhai", sung by Shamshad Begum, and dance by Sitaradevi has been cited as a typical Hindi film song which is written for and sung by a female singer, with an emotional charge that appeals to a mass audience.

Mother India has been described as "perhaps India's most revered film", a "cinematic epic", a "flag bearer of Hindi cinema and a legend in its own right", Mehboob Khan's magnum opus and an "all time blockbuster", which ranks highly among India's most successful films. It was in continuous distribution, being played in theatres for more than three decades; the record ended in the mid 1990s with the advent of satellite television and a change in Indian film viewing habits. Mother India belongs to only a small collection of films, including Kismet (1943), Mughal e Azam (1960), Sholay (1975) Hum Aapke Hain Koun ! (1994), and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) which are repeatedly watched throughout India and are viewed as definitive Hindi films with cultural significance. It is also among the only three Indian films to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (the others being Salaam Bombay! and Lagaan). The Hindustan Times (in 2007) identifies the "film's pungent social references" which are "too harsh to be sold at a profit today. But this heartrending tale filled Indians with hope and pride then." The film was remade in the Telugu language as Bangaru Talli in 1971 and in Tamil as Punniya Boomi in 1978. Mother India is ranked No. 80 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. It is listed among the only three Hindi films in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (the others being Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Deewaar). Film critic Anupama Chopra included it in her list of top 100 films in world cinema. In 2005, Indiatimes Movies ranked the film amongst the "Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films". It was ranked third in the British Film Institute's 2002 poll of "Top 10 Indian Films". It was also included in TIMEs list of the best Bollywood classics in 2010, and in CNN IBN's list of the "100 greatest Indian films of all time" in 2013. The film was premiered in the Cannes Classics section of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Rajeev Masand of CNN IBN notes that Mother India "didn't just put India on the world map, it also defined Hindi cinema for decades that followed." Film critic Dave Kehr agrees that it influenced Indian films for the next 50 years. A 1983 Channel 4 documentary on Hindi cinema describes the film as setting a benchmark in Indian cinema. The shooting stance of Nargis at the end of the film is one of the all time iconic images of Hindi cinema. Other iconic scenes include Radha pulling the plough through the field (see film poster at the top) and feeding chapatis to her two sons as they pull the plough. The Hindustan Times states that Nargis symbolised mothers in "which all the mothers [in later films] had the same clichéd roles to play. Representing both motherhood and Mother Earth, who also nurtures and occasionally punishes, Nargis immortalised the Indian mother on celluloid." The film pioneered the portrayal of two morally opposed brothers personifying good and evil, which became a repeated motif in Hindi films, including Gunga Jumna (1961) and Deewaar (1975). The rebellious Birju also inspired the "angry young man" stock character that arose in 1970s Hindi cinema. According to scholar Brigitte Schulze, Mother India played a key role in shaping the young Republic of India's national identity in its early years following independence from the British Raj, due to how the film was able to successfully convey a sense of Indian nationalism to the urban and rural masses.