10 classics of Indian cinema, decade by decade

Prem Sanyas/The Light of Asia (Franz Osten, 1925) Reading this on mobile? Click here to view Among the few silent films that remain are three Indo-German co-productions that predate the arrival of the German technicians and directors who worked in the Bombay Talkies studio in the 1930s. The Light of Asia was shot in India but edited and processed in Germany and intertitled in English. The script was adapted from Sir Edwin Arnold's epic poem The Light of Asia (1861) while the opening credits proclaim it was "Shown by Royal Command at Windsor Castle, April 27 1926" and that it benefited greatly from help offered by the Maharaja of Jaipur. The film shows westerners touring India (Mumbai, Delhi, Varanasi) who come to Bodh Gaya, the site of Gautam Buddha's Enlightenment. An old man tells the story of the life of the Buddha, from his royal childhood to his death, allowing the film-makers to juxtapose Orientalist fantasies alongside fascinating, if anachronistic, images of Rajasthan in the 20s. Sant Tukaram (Sheikh Fattelal and Vishnupant Govind Damle, 1936, Marathi) Reading this on mobile? Click here to view The biopic of Sant Tukaram (1568-1650), a devotee of Vishnu as Vitthal, whose major shrine is in Pandharpur in Maharashtra, is an extraordinary film. Vishnupant Pagnis, a theatre actor who usually played female roles, brings an otherworldly quality to the role, which includes singing Tuka's well-known religious songs. Both plot and film move through several worlds – of earthly power, as the nationalist hero Chatrapati Shivaji visits the saint after hearing about his devotion; of religion, where Tuka's simple devotion to God is contrasted with a venal Brahmin who visits a courtesan; and of domesticity where his down-to-earth wife, never happier than when washing her beloved buffalo, which represents the family's wealth, cannot understand her husband, even though she loves him. Andaz (Mehboob Khan, 1949) Reading this on mobile? Click here to view Three of the great stars of Hindi film act in a love triangle, as Neeta (Nargis) appears to be in love with Dilip (Dilip Kumar), but is engaged to Rajan (Raj Kapoor). Nargis and Kapoor comprised one of the most popular couples in the 1950s but in this film she is shown to be in love with Dilip and struggling with her sense of duty. Her westernised lifestyle and dress are in part to blame and the film ends with her in prison after shooting Dilip dead, declaring: "Foreign flowers cannot flourish on Indian soil." Andaz has songs by the "Nightingale of India", Lata Mangeshkar, who has sung for heroines for more than seven decades, and whose work in the other major films of this year, Kamal Amrohi's Mahal and Raj Kapoor's Barsaat, are enduring favourites. Pyaasa (Guru Dutt, 1957) Reading this on mobile? Click here to view The 1950s is the hardest decade from which to pick a film – featuring the classics of Raj Kapoor (Awara, Shree 420), Bimal Roy (Madhumati) and Mehboob Khan (Aan, Mother India). Guru Dutt's melodramatic Pyaasa or "The desirous one" is extraordinary, a film that draws on all the features of a mainstream movie to achieve a high aesthetic, from the beautiful photography of the Christ-like tormented poet, the beauty of the streetgirl (Waheeda Rehman) and the wonderful music with some of the great Sahir Ludhianvi's best lyrics. One of the most celebrated songs asks who can be proud of India (Jinhe naaz hai) while another voices the bitterness of the artist confronted with the shallowness of the money-seeking world (Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai?). This was also the decade that India's greatest film-maker, Satyajit Ray, made his first film, Pather Panchali (1955). Mughal-e Azam (K Asif, 1960) Reading this on mobile? Click here to view The story of Akbar, the Great Mughal (reign 1556-1605) has been told countless times in India and several film versions were made. This one concerns his son Salim (later Emperor Jahangir), played by Dilip Kumar, who falls in love with a slave girl, Anarkali. In order to win her hand, Salim leads a military campaign against his father and is condemned to death, but it is Anarkali who pays the price and is buried alive – though in this version she escapes. While most of the film is shot in black-and-white, the songs are in colour, including the spectacular dance in the hall of mirrors. The narration is by "India" – an attempt to show that, even after the Partition of 1947, Hindus and Muslims can live together. The film, which took more than 10 years to complete, is redolent of the 50s, the decade that saw popular romances filmed in colour in tourist destinations, with stars singing and dancing to some of the best-loved melodies of Indian film music. Sholay (Ramesh Sippy, 1975) Reading this on mobile? Click here to view In the 70s the box office was dominated by Amitabh Bachchan as the Angry Young Man, a character written by Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar – the most popular of these films remains Sholay. The story has echoes of spaghetti westerns, and Bachchan's Jai will remind you of a classic Clint Eastwood character. The film's surprise was that the villain, Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan), almost stole the show with his memorable dialogue, including "Kitne aadmi the?" ("How many men were there?") before committing another stylishly heinous atrocity (it is a very violent film). Sholay showed that you can take any genre and make it into a Hindi film, with all the twists. Bachchan also acted in romantic films, such as Kabhi Kabhie, and in comedies such as the hilarious caper Amar, Akbar, Antony, a gem of Hindi films' "lost and found" genre where families are separated only to enjoy chance reunions. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (Kundan Shah, 1983) Reading this on mobile? Click here to view The 80s are thought of as Hindi cinema's lost decade, but much of the best "parallel" or "middle" cinema was made in these years. Such films were more realistic than mainstream Hindi cinema, and appealed to the middle classes, given their sensitive heroes and lively heroines, and the absence of big song-and-dance numbers (although usually they include music). Shyam Benegal has been making such films from the 1970s and is one of parallel cinema's greatest exponents. Actors Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri and Amol Palekar all emerged from parallel cinema, though mainstream stars also appeared, notably Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra. JBDY is a slapstick, satirical comedy. Some of it has dated, but not all. The interruption of the staging of a play of the Mahabharata remains one of the classic scenes of Hindi cinema. Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge (Aditya Chopra, 1995) Reading this on mobile? Click here to view The Indian economy was deregulated in 1991 and, after a hesitant start, society changed in ways that were previously unimaginable. The internet, satellite TV and the mobile phone helped to usher in a new youth culture that linked the metropolitan cities with each other and with overseas cities with Indian populations, notably New York and London. DDLJ presents a traditional romance in which the rich boy and poorer girl are Londoners who fall in love on an InterRail holiday in Europe. The girl has to marry an Indian man chosen by her traditional father. The British Asian hero then convinces the girl's family that he is the right husband because he loves her and understands Indian traditions. DDLJ confirmed Shah Rukh Khan as a superstar and its precocious young director, Aditya Chopra, as heir to his father, the late Yash Chopra, one of the towering figures of the Hindi film industry in the past 60 years. Lage Raho Munnabhai (Rajkumar Hirani, 2006) Reading this on mobile? Click here to view Lovable rogue Munnabhai is one of the great characters of Hindi cinema, a thug who really has a heart of gold. In his first film, Munnabhai MBBS, Munna fails to live up to his parents' dreams of becoming a doctor, so has to force his way into medical school, where his "magic hugs" give patients the happiness that medicine can not provide. In his second film, he fakes being a Gandhi scholar in order to win over his beloved. His unorthodox appropriation of the Mahatma's tactics leads to wrongs being put right as well as his realisation that Gandhi is his inner conscience. Sanjay Dutt (son of Nargis, who played the lead role in Mother India) plays Munnabhai, and the final film in the trilogy remains on hold while he serves a prison sentence in Mumbai for arms offences. Gangs of Wasseypur I and II (Anurag Kashyap, 2012) Reading this on mobile? Click here to view Anurag Kashyap cast himself as an enfant terrible, subverting a complacent, cliched Bollywood, yet its all-encompassing, unavoidable embrace meant he and his offbeat cinema inevitably became part of it. Kashyap now enjoys a godfather role helping other aspirants. After some uneven films, and the excellent Black Friday about the Mumbai blasts of 1993, Kashyap proved his mettle with this five-and-a-half hour film, split in two for release. The exemplary casting of Manoj Bajpai, Tigmanshu Dhulia (himself a director) and the new superstar of indie cinema, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, works well alongside a strong screenplay and the sharp dialogue of a Muslim gangster epic set amid the coalmines of Bihar, India's poorest state. Its depictions of relationships between men and women; their dreams of Bollywood; as well as its flashes of comedy and stark cruelty make this a remarkable film. • Rachel Dwyer is professor of Indian cultures and cinema at Soas, University of London. Her Bollywood's India will be published by Reaktion early next year