![]() Someone who had some money and was interested in entertaining the masses would invest their savings and make a film. Chopra was only two when Bombay Talkies was founded in 1934.Īt the time, and for a greater part of its history, the Indian film industry remained a largely unorganised sector. The Romantics on Netflix narrated the history of Yashraj Films, the film production company that transformed itself into a studio. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Indian film history will recognize names such as Achhut Kanya, Kismet, Jwar Bhata, Ziddi, etc.īombay Talkies also launched the careers of women and men we now know as legends – Ashok Kumar started his career here, Madhubala got her first break with Basant, Jwar Bhata saw the birth of Dilip Kumar, and Ziddi starred a man who until then only a handful of people had heard about, one Dev Anand.Īs you may have well guessed, Shrikant Roy’s Roy Talkies is inspired from Bombay Talkies.īombay Talkies: India’s first corporate film studio Not only were several of these films blockbusters but also industry-shaping and career-defining. In 20 short years, Bombay Talkies produced more than three dozen films. Rai founded Bombay Talkies – a studio so legendary and ahead of its time in the business that it would take several decades for the rest of the industry to catch up to its thinking and successfully emulate its model. What it may fail to do is to articulate just how visionary Rai was. The Himanshu Rai Wikipedia page will likely tell you he was a movie star and a producer. Who was Himanshu Rai, the inspiration behind Jubilee’s Shrikant Roy? He, too, is based on a real person – by all accounts the first real superstar of the Hindi film industry. Ultimately, the biggest star of the show and of the films-within-the-film is Madan Kumar. And Jamshed Khan could very well have been modelled on the real life Najam-Ul-Hasan (different spellings of his names include Najam-Ul-Hussain, Najmul Hasan, etc.). Roy’s wife Sumitra Kumari harks back to Himanshu Rai’s wife and business partner, Devika Rani. ![]() Indeed, the suburb itself receives a mention in one of the scenes – watch out for the one where Sidhant Gupta’s Jay Khanna is unceremoniously thrown out of the studio premises. Shrikant Roy harks back to Himanshu Rai, by all estimates, the first superstar producer who ran his empire from the lush environs of his studio in the distant Bombay suburb of Malad. The story involving Shrikant Roy, Sumitra Kumari, Jamshed Khan, and Madan Kumar, is a hat-tip to an episode in the 1930s. However, the real-life story from which it takes inspiration, goes back to a decade before that.Īll the legal disclaimers before each episode notwithstanding, Jubilee drops several hints that reveal its source of inspiration. ![]() Jubilee is set in the months preceding Independence and the decade that followed – the late '40s and '50s. ![]() For a generation that takes moving pictures for granted – indeed you are likely scrolling through Reels on your other phone even as you read this – Jubilee is a reminder of a time when it took a village to create a single shot. In its nearly 10-hour narrative Jubilee doffs its hat to several moments in Hindi cinema that shaped the industry as we know it today. The first five episodes of Jubilee dropped on the Easter weekend and the concluding five on April 14, 2023. ![]() The 10-episode show, in an homage to old Hindi cinema tradition, divided its narrative into two halves with an intermission at the end of the fifth episode. Amazon Prime Video’s Jubilee dropped its second part this weekend. ![]()
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