FILMS are visual narratives – so goes the truism. The purpose of film images is to ‘seamlessly’ construct a narrative, as is often described. In Indian writing on cinema, G.W. Griffith, an American, is usually credited with the invention of such narrative. Satyajit Ray reasoned that being a young nation the US could nurture the new art of cinema since it had no historical roots of other narrative traditions.¹ As a corollary, India, an old nation soaked in countless narrative traditions exceeding a millennium or two, should have considerable difficulty in grasping the art of film narration.

Theodore Baskaran notes that the silent films produced in Tamil Nadu could not emulate Griffith in developing a capacity for visual narration.² The reason, according to Baskaran is that films sought to narrate the well-known mythological tales because of which there was no need to face the challenge of narrating an unknown unfolding of action through sequential images. Since the audiences were familiar with the mythological tales, there was no demand on film images to enhance narrative potential. In the introduction of sound, this congenital disease was further exacerbated by the inclusion of numerous songs, similar to the practice in musical drama at that time. Films sometimes did not even have a pretence to narrative enactment in the first place so that one might speak of narrative interruptions with the songs. They just had an array of songs with an excuse of a narrative. It was common for films to have several dozen songs. In a sense, the songs were an end in themselves in Tamil in the ‘fully singing era’ that lasted until 1948.

The years 1949-54 were transitional. The transition was brought about by the leaders of the political party, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Alliterative, ornamental and figurative speech replaced song as the emotional high point conveyed by characters. Neither was it the case that dialogues were not appreciated before 1949, nor was it that songs had lost their significance after 1954; still the years marked a break with the past because of the new rhetorical flourish of speech. However, this shift continued to subordinate images to the sound track since dialogue became the selling point of a film. Though DMK films decidedly moved away from the mythologicals to contemporary social themes or costume dramas, the films were equally incapable of producing the ‘visual narratives’ since their long monologues and figurative speech deterred the images from narrating the story on their own. In order to understand the meaning of this transition in sound track, we need to begin by reckoning with the endless song sequences that preceded the arrival of speech-rhetoric sequences.

How are we to think of images that accompanied the song without contributing to the progression of the narrative? If people liked music, they could go to concerts or listen to the gramophone or radio. But they chose films, obviously relating to those ‘non-narrative’ visuals. It is indeed strange that when the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, chose to write on cinema, he created a new possibility for understanding those gratuitous images. No doubt, his concerns had nothing to do with the artisanal mode of film production in a faraway land. Nevertheless, the philosopher of ‘lines of flight’ cannot begrudge the use of his concepts in the service of philosophy of cinema elsewhere.

 

The basic line of Deleuze’s extremely complex exposition is that there are two sets of images in cinema. One set belongs to movement image, which is chronologically the first to appear, and presents time indirectly; the second set belongs to the time image, which is postwar in its genesis, and presents time directly. We will have to make a long detour into the philosophy of Bergson to understand the distinction fully. For our immediate purposes, we can extract some distinctions between the two kinds of images in simple language.

Movement image is driven by sensory motor schema, which constitutes narration. Hence, time becomes subordinate to movement, and movement leads to action. Narration takes place in an alternation between situation and action. Space becomes an extended space of action. Hence the viewer’s question: ‘What are we going to see in the next image?’ This is the kind of image that Griffith is credited with and Hollywood specializes in producing.

 

In the case of time image, the sensory motor schema breaks down. The subordination is reversed and movement is now subordinated to time. Action becomes unspecified, aimless. Situations are disconnected from action and space becomes any space whatsoever. Hence the viewer’s question: ‘What is there to see in this image?’ In Deleuze’s analysis, this image came to prominence in post-war Italy through neo-realism. His most telling example is from De Sica’s Umberto D (1952).

How can we characterize the images of a song sequence? Songs certainly slacken the narrative and the sensory motor schema. In a fully singing cinema, which would outdo a musical in the West in the relentless outburst of songs, the sensory motor schema, owing to continuous slackening, nearly breaks down. Deleuze is very mindful and admiring of Fred Astaire and Jean Kelly and classifies their films as dream images, which is part of time image set. He considers sound synchronization as a great advancement. When the sound track assumes autonomy and determines the visual, we have sound images. Sound images consist of two kinds of autonomous signs. The sound we hear is sonsign. The accompanying visual we see is opsign. Ronald Bogue points out the autonomy of opsigns from narrative intent: opsigns can be classified further into many signs, one of which is lecto sign, a pure writing in cinema, when the image is read by the viewer.³ The latter can only ask the question, ‘What is there to be seen or read in this image?’

 

For example, in the film Haridass (1944),⁴ a woman who recants her decision on being advised by her father, returns to her husband. Her travel becomes expressive of her change of heart through a song. The accompanying visuals then become an optical situation as she walks through vacant landscapes, aimless in actions. In fact, almost all the main characters of the film travel out of their city through vacant landscapes indicating a quest for self-correction and spiritual attainment. They are always singing when they travel rather aimlessly. It cannot be denied that such song images were time images. Deleuze raises a specific question: ‘But what can purely optical and sound images link up with, since they no longer extend into action? We would like to reply, with recollection images or dream images.’⁵ Later on, of course, song sequences often became dream sequences in Tamil cinema.

Deleuze, in the overall layout of his work, presents an evolution. The movement image appeared first and time image later in cinema. In the conclusion, Deleuze strikes a cautious note: ‘There are many possible transformations, almost imperceptible passages, and also combinations between the movement image and time image. It cannot be said one is more important than the other; whether more beautiful or profound.’⁶ We can deduce the evolution outlined in the book as one of many possible transformations between movement image and time image. I suggest that it is possible to argue that in the case of Tamil cinema/Indian cinema, the time image appeared first and movement image later.

 

As is obvious, what distinguishes Deleuze’s philosophy is that he is concerned with images and not with narratives. It does not matter that there is some story associated with the succession of images, but that the images and signs relate to us on their own and it is with those relationships that the philosophical genius of Deleuze and before him those of Benjamin and Kracauer were preoccupied. If Kracauer (and Benjamin) spoke of the redemption of physical reality, Deleuze points to emancipation of time in cinema.

Taking a cue from Deleuze, I want to leave behind the lament and guilt about narrative breakdowns produced by the array of songs and later by long stretches of alliterative and figurative dialogue. Premising my analysis on the images and signs, I want to ask: What did the shift from songs to speech mean in the Tamil context. The transition did not do away with sound images, since the long alliterative speeches equally slackened the narrative. Before exploring the meaning of the transition during the period 1949-54, we need to understand the political context that facilitated the transition.

Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai, known by the abbreviation Anna, which also means elder brother in Tamil, inaugurated the third strand of Dravidian movement, simultaneously scripting the transition in Tamil cinema and the history of the land. There is a need to recapture quickly the different phases of Dravidian movement to understand the historical context of DMK’s involvement in cinema. The release of the Non-Brahmin Manifesto in 1916 and the founding of the South Indian Liberal Federation – known as the Justice Party due to its flagship journal Justice – can be seen as the inaugural events of the first strand of Dravidian movement, from a certain perspective, without dismissing earlier articulations of the idea of Dravidian/Tamil/Non-Brahmin selfhood or nationhood.⁷ In the founding of the Self-Respect Movement by Periyar E.V. Ramasamy (herafter Periyar) in 1925, began the second and more popular strand of Dravidian movement. He quit the Indian National Congress and founded the Self-Respect Movement with the express aim of re-founding the society on egalitarian principles. Periyar’s movement grew in strength even as the Justice Party withered in its electoral contests with the Congress.

 

Annadurai (hereafter Anna) rose to prominence in the declining years of the Justice Party, which invited Periyar to provide leadership. When Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), who became the Congress Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in 1938 under the diarchy instituted by the colonial government, proposed to make learning Hindi mandatory in schools, a popular upsurge against the imposition infused new energy into the movement by rallying students, youth and the subaltern populace, including itinerant theatre groups.

In the aftermath of the successful upsurge marked by the death of subaltern figures and the withdrawal of the mandatory learning of Hindi, the Dravidian Non-Brahmin movement assumed a new dimension. Anna was the face of the new dimension. Henceforth, the historical becoming-of-a-people came to be indissolubly linked to the sign of language – Tamil. Periyar was wary of the sign of language since he felt that Brahmins, obstacles to the becoming-of-a-people with their sectarian notion of in-born superiority, had established inextricable links to the Tamil language, and hence could only be kept at bay by invoking the sign of Dravidian race, of Non-Brahmin consolidation. In Periyar’s dialectic, it is only after the full disempowerment and de-hegemonization of the Brahmin that caste itself can be liquidated.

 

Anna had a different perspective about language. He was interested in Tamil literature, pure Tamil movement and the various trends of what is termed as Tamil renaissance in the early twentieth century. He saw the possibility of developing a new, popular style in Tamil, which would draw strength from ancient Tamil texts and the prose of Tamil purists, but at the same time appeal to the common person. He forged an influential rhetoric that soon became the mark of countless youthful aspirants in the movement. Alliteration and rhyme were among the several features that enabled the rhetoric to catch on like wildfire. Anna made rhetoric the hallmark of his writing, public speaking and play writing, the last of which he started in the early forties.

He was aware of the popularity of itinerant theatre groups and the impetus the Congress nationalist movement had received through their endorsement. As the Dravidian movement had won their sympathy after the anti-Hindi agitation, the theatre groups were ready to collaborate with the movement. Further, it is possible that many of the professional theatre groups were also in a transitional phase. They needed scripts that were new and could sustain the interest of emergent audiences consisting of the middle class in developing industrial, trade centre small towns.

 

The social and historical plays by Anna with rhetorical flourish that paid attention to sound as in the alliterative dialogue, came as a boon. However, Anna was immediately joined by a large group of playwrights who wrote highly successful plays with rhetorical flourish on the theme of social reform and dialogue. Within five years of the play writing turn, the movement could boast of about forty-five plays as their creative expressions on stage.⁸

When Anna quit Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) led by Periyar and founded the DMK in 1949, he was perhaps only formalizing the distinct nature of the politics in the new phase. The party came to be derisively called the party of koothadigal (literally artists of traditional theatre form Koothu, which extended to the artists of proscenium plays and even cinema). Tamil cinema, which used the itinerant theatre groups as the barometers of public taste and regularly adapted successful plays for screen, lost no time in inviting Anna to provide the script and dialogue for the screen adaptation of his play Velaikari (1949). His lieutenant, the inimitable Muthuvelar Karunanidhi, had already made an entry in films and together, in the five years 1949-1954, they firmly laid the foundations of the era of speech-rhetoric sound image, completely transforming Tamil cinema.

 

The folk theatre and musical drama were primarily explorations of dramatic situations of well-known (mostly mythological) stories and particularly the emotions involved. They mainly used songs to express emotions for a whole range of reasons. Early cinema that patterned itself after them, however, had other means to express emotions, primarily the face of the actors in close-ups and mid shots. The reviews of early Tamil cinema constantly complained about the lack of expression in the faces of people on screen. Songs continued to take care of expression. They had an impersonal quality since the songs also circulated beyond the screen on their own and were not necessarily pinned down to the character. In other words, songs related to situations rather than to the characters in the scene. If, however, the characters needed to make their personal expressions felt, they needed to speak. Using everyday language expressions was an option.

There were two problems with the use of everyday language in early Tamil cinema. First, it had no power to carry emotions unless the actor could provide them since the everyday language was also prosaic. Second, the everyday language was caste and region specific. The fact that the actors had no training to emote and produce the interiority of the subject in their facial expression meant that they could not give everyday language the required emotional charge.

For example, a farcical moment in the Gemini magnum opus Chandralekha (1948) is remembered even today. During a scene of daring escape, the heroine speaks in Brahmin everyday language to say that if the sentries blew their whistle the soldiers would come running. The Brahmin everyday expression lacked the requisite emotion since the actor could not figure out its intonation and for the vast majority of non-Brahmin audience it anyway sounded farcical. It is hard for members of a caste or residents of a region to identify with a dialect belonging to another caste or region.

 

The new rhetoric fashioned by the DMK solved both problems. It used a literary Tamil that was not everyday language, but at the same time not very different. It used alliteration, rhythmic and rhyming patterns of sound. It was ornamental with metaphors and similes. For example, the hero of Velaikari used this rhetorical expression in court: ‘Vesamaniyâta vetânti, môti ceyyâta mâtu, jôti illâta mâdappurâ, ceti illâta râjakumâri irukka mutiyâtâm!’ (The god-men without deceit, women without the ability to entice, the pigeon without a pair and the princess without women attendants cannot be seen!). We have two sets of alliterative sounds: Ve and ve in the first phrase, m and m in the second phrase. The presence of suffix âta in all the phrases creates a rhyming pattern. More importantly, the ti ending in the second, third and fourth phrases, môti, jôti and ceti give the sentence the power of a chant. Such powers of articulation endowed the hero with the singularity required to overcome his enemies and transform society.

While DMK used its powerful new rhetoric in writing, public speaking and in drama, the use of the rhetoric in cinema had an enhanced value for politics owing to the nature of the film sign. This is where Deleuze is helpful in explicating the intricate difference produced by the film sign. Let us recall from our discussion of Deleuze above that sound images have sonsigns (sound track) which free opsigns (visuals) from the burden of narration.

 

When the emotive power of the song shifted to such rhetorically embellished speech, the characters came to emphasize their presence. The rhetoric trained the actors to be articulate and expressive as the camera stayed on their face while they spoke. They had to authenticate the ornamental speech delivered by them. Unlike everyday language that demanded expressive power from the actors, the alliterations and figurative usages helped them to forge expressions. Since the speeches are ornamental they also retain the quality of sound images which being a time image allow the visual on the screen, the opsign, to be autonomous. Even though autonomous, the face of the actor had to accompany the speech-rhetoric sonsign. It is the mandatory-autonomous face that could forge emotions.

Let me provide an instance from a review published in Dravida Nadu, a DMK journal edited by Anna himself.⁹ The film reviewed was Devaki (1951). ‘Sufficient importance has not been given to the charming dialogue of Thozhar Mu. Karunanidhi. For example, when Devaki, weary of life, is about to jump into the water in the Kannambadi Dam, what she speaks has not been filmed in a way that excites our thoughts. We are unable to find the following words... Because, instead of showing Devaki, who speaks the words, the director shows the water below’ (translation and emphasis mine).

If the sound image is a song sequence (the sonsign being the song), the opsign on screen can be a dispersal combining any-instant-whatever with any-space-whatever. Songs exteriorized the emotions from the character, as in the case of vacant landscapes in Haridass. When the sound image is a speech-rhetoric sequence (the sonsign being the speech), the opsign on screen is limited to the face of the character. The speeches interiorized the emotions. The speeches needed to focus on the source of enunciation.

 

I propose that within the regime of sound images, song-images and speech-rhetoric images created time images of two kinds. While song images can be sonsigns accompanied by all kinds of opsigns of any-instances and any-spaces, the opsigns of the lecto sign kind accompanying the songsigns of speech-rhetoric images tend to write the interiority of the enunciatory subject as historical agent. The audience read the face of the character and related to the interiority.

As for politics, the movement from being merely subjected to power to that of becoming subject of enunciation-action, a reversal in the direction of flow of power, involves the production of the sign of interiority and the articulate agentive self. It is in fashioning such a modern subjectivity and historical agency that DMK cinema and politics came together. If the reader at this point begins to think of M.G. Ramachandran (MGR), I need to remind her of Sivaji Ganesan. The story of those two faces will demand a more complex analysis that will stretch our understanding of semeiotic further.¹⁰

 

Footnotes:

1. See Satyajit Ray, Our Films, Their Films, Hyperion, New York, 1994 (1976), pp. 19-20.

2. See Theodore Baskaran, The Message Bearers, Cre-A, Madras, 1981, pp. 87-88. Baskaran provides an illuminating account of how songs carried the message of nationalism, which can be fruitfully juxtaposed to my thesis here.

3. Ronald Bogue, Deleuze on Cinema, Routledge, New York, 2003. p. 110.

4. Haridass was a blockbuster, starring M.K. Thiagaraja Bhagavathar (MKT), the singing superstar of early Tamil cinema. The film is widely remembered for its continuous run for three consecutive Deepavalis.

5. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: Time Image, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2001 (1989), p. 273.

6. Gilles Deleuze, ibid., p. 270.

7. For an insightful genealogical account of the movement and the discussion of the concepts Dravidian, Non-Brahmin and Tamil as transitive categories, see M.S.S. Pandian, Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political Present, Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2007.

8. Article titled ‘In Service of Drama’, Dravida Nadu, 14.1.1950. The essay synopsizes the history of drama in Tamil Nadu and the major point of departure created by DMK playwrights. It is clear though that by 1950, the impact created by the successful adaptations of plays into films have stamped a far greater approval on the DMK playwrights.

9. Dravida Nadu, 8 July 1951, p. 10.

10. Semeiotic is the preferred spelling of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). One of the contributions of Deleuze’s books on cinema is to have drawn widespread attention to this great expositor of signs.