100 Bollywood Films

by Rachel Dwyer

Bollywood film is the national cinema of India, describing movies made in Mumbai, distributed nationally across India and with their own production, distribution and exhibition networks worldwide. This informative screen guide reflects the work of key directors, major stars and important music directors and screenplay writers. Historically important films have been included along with certain cult movies and top box office successes. No guide to Hindi film would be complete without Mother India, the national epic of a peasant woman's struggle against nature and society to bring up her family; Sholay, a 'curry western' where the all-star cast sing and dance, romance and kill; Dilwale Dulhaniya le jayenge, the greatest of the diaspora films, in which two British Asians fall in love on a holiday in Europe before going to India where they show their elders how to incorporate love into family traditions; Junglee, showing how love transforms a 'savage' (junglee) who yells 'Yahoo!' before singing and dancing like Elvis, creating a new youth culture; Pyaasa, dramatically shot in black and white film with haunting songs as the romantic poet suffers for his art in the material world; Fans of Bollywood film can debate Rachel Dwyer's personal selection of these 101 titles while those new to the area will find this an invaluable introduction to the best of the genre.

Genres: India, Nonfiction, Film

268 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Rachel Dwyer is Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAS, University of London. She took her BA in Sanskrit at SOAS, followed by an MPhil in General Linguistics and Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in cinema and supervises PhD research on Indian cinema.

Reviews

[Laura Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting facts and good insight; although, I've never read it all the way through. I've found on multiple occasions, the author tends to give away more of the plot than I care to know. So, I skim for film suggestions, and then save reading the entry in-full for after the movie.