Kaliya Mardan (1919)

directed by Dhundiraj Govind Phalke
India
47 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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Most Indian silent films from the early days of film have been lost, and although Kaliya Mardan's survival all this time is nothing short of amazing, it is also a very poor print and probably hasn't been touched or restored since it was first released. The bad quality of the image can't stop it from being a movie that's creative and full of intrigue, though it's so old that judging it must be done on a different scale than judging a modern movie or even one made after the advent of sound in cinema.

Movies like this make a niche for themselves that they can't be extracted from when you review one. Is it a good film in the technical sense of things, as in does it have good acting, good pacing, an interesting plot and beautiful cinematography? No, not really. It's too old for anybody to have really gotten the hang of directing movies in the style we're used to today, but realism wasn't exactly the most popular thing back then. Most movies you see from the 20s and before come across more like filmed plays, with exaggerated acting and unrealistic set pieces and effects (if there's any effects at all), and to a public who had (purportedly) been shocked into terror upon seeing a train rush at the camera for the first time, filmed plays were enough.

It's kind of interesting actually because now nearly one hundred years later, there's a movement in film that seeks to get as un-embellished and as close to real life as possible, much like these very early films where nobody really had any choice in whether or not a movie felt realistic or not. We've gone through the introduction of practical effects, dramatic soundtracks, heartbreaking acting, and spine-chilling horror, and arrived back at the beginning where we try to film people acting as untrained as they did in films like Kaliya Mardan.

Unless some attention is given to it pretty soon, this might be lost forever. But what the director and the stars of the movie couldn't have predicted was that we could preserve this even if the original print is destroyed by putting it up on the internet, where nothing ever goes away. Even if you've got no interest in Indian mythology or legend, this is a worthwhile movie based on its background alone. The director's daughter, seven-year-old Mandakini, plays the lead role of young Krishna and steals the show with her presence in every scene she's in.