Expanded Cinemas, Archival Possibilities: Josef Wirsching and Early Film Histories
In 1934, the film producer and actor Himansu Rai, along with the actress Devika Rani, established Bombay Talkies, a film studio that is intrinsically tied to pioneering early sound films in Hindi cinema. The studio, which ran until 1954, saw the association of various stalwarts who went on to work in the Indian film industry, including Ashok Kumar, who worked as a light technician for the studio and ultimately was cast as an actor in various productions, as well as Dev Anand, who debuted in the Bombay Talkies produced film Ziddi (1948). The film studio and thus the early history of filmmaking in Bombay were also recently dramatised in the OTT/TV series Jubilee (2023).
The studio was also set up with the help of Rai’s established connections with European filmmakers, particularly as a result of his time spent in Germany. His collaborators included the director Franz Osten and the cinematographer Josef Wirsching. Wirsching was a German cinematographer who worked extensively in Hindi cinema from the early twentieth century until his passing. Wirsching’s cinematographic works are associated with a number of iconic films both pre and post-independence, including Achhut Kanya (1936), Mahal (1949) and his last credited work, Pakeezah (1972) among others. The cinematographer also maintained an extensive photographic and personal archive of the film sets and his production work with Bombay Talkies and in India in general. These are featured in the ongoing exhibition A Cinematic Imagination: Josef Wirsching and the Bombay Talkies on view at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), Mumbai. Curated by film historian Debashree Mukherjee and curator and publisher Rahaab Allana, the exhibition also marked the Mumbai launch of Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema (Mapin Publishing and the Alkazi Collection of Photography, 2023), edited by Mukherjee with essays from film scholars and over 160 images from the Wirsching archive. The images open up the possibilities of the multivalent world of film histories, from the very sets and film workers present within the archival photographs to the aesthetic style that blended together visual references from German Expressionism, Bengal School painting, Art Deco architecture, urban environments and print cultures. These are evident in the elaborate set designs, costumes and technical elements employed within the films.
In her introductory essay, Mukherjee outlines the importance of paratextual materials around film and film productions in India. In particular, her essay examines the ways photography can present complex connections and ways to think about cinematic history. She writes,
“Seeing images of film practitioners immersed in the work of making movies, attempting to build a new local industry and shape an emerging art form, unsettles our assumptions about the past in fundamental ways… We are also confronted by the fact that the pioneers of Indian cinema belonged to many different classes, religions, castes, genders, even nationalities, and it would be false to demand a superficial authenticity from the past.”
Recognising the importance of the ways such archival and photographic images can animate the past away from an essentialist vision of filmic history. The archive also presents larger questions around the photographic image, the visual influences in the staged images of the actors on set to the mise-en-scene captured by Wirsching, as well as questions of infrastructural archive building. What are the expanded fields of cinema—its detritus and paratexts, the mundane and administrative, the documented and photographic processes—that can be present in Wirsching’s extensive oeuvre. Some of the images discussed in the book and a part of the exhibition are highlighted in this album.
To learn more about Debashree Mukherjee’s work on Early Bombay Cinema, revisit Ketaki Varma’s curated albums on cine-ecology and the cine-worker as well as the two-part conversation with Mukherjee on her book Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City (2020).
All images courtesy of the Josef Wirsching Archive, the Alkazi Collection of Photography and the Wirsching family, unless stated otherwise. The information/provenance of the captions are courtesy of the JW Archive and Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema (2023), ed. Debashree Mukherjee.
Click on the image to view the album
