Table of Contents

Preface A Note on Transliteration 1. Inventing Bombay Cinema 2. Melodramatic Staging 3. The Texts of Mother India 4. Auteurship and the Lure of Romance 5. The Actor as Parallel Text: Amitabh Bachchan 6 Segmenting/Analyzing Two Foundational Texts 7 Cinema After Ayodhya: The Sublime Object of Fundamentalism 8. Cinema and Diasporic Desire Filmography Photographs Bibliography

About the Author

Vijay Mishra is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. He is author of The Gothic Sublime.

Reviews

"...the particular strength of Bollywood Cinema, indeed, is the plurality of critical perspectives brought to bear and the author's ability to synthesize them into a coherent whole." -- James Chapman, Film International
"...the book...rewards the reader with provocative ideas on a dozen topics: anticolonial and postcolonial struggles, melodrama, gender roles, patriarchal power, androgyny, gothic style, diaspora, and of course particular movies (like Mother India) and stars (like Amitabh Bachchan)." -- CHOICE, P.H. Stacy, University of Hartford
"A masterly synthesis of existing scholarship on Bombay cinema as well as a timely exploration of the growing importance that this cinema is assuming in the Indian diaspora. . . . an engaging study." -- Sumita Chakravarty, New School University
"Here, finally, is a book on Bollywood that is written for those who have experienced Bollywood as well as those who are strangers to that phenomenon. Mishra's analysis of Bollywood cinema is a considerable one within a handful of such analyses emerging today from within academe. It has in it something for the film historian, the curious newcomer, the fan, and the critic." -- Sonora Jh-Nambiar, Seattle University, Communication Research Trends

"...the particular strength of Bollywood Cinema, indeed, is the plurality of critical perspectives brought to bear and the author's ability to synthesize them into a coherent whole." -- James Chapman, Film International
"...the book...rewards the reader with provocative ideas on a dozen topics: anticolonial and postcolonial struggles, melodrama, gender roles, patriarchal power, androgyny, gothic style, diaspora, and of course particular movies (like Mother India) and stars (like Amitabh Bachchan)." -- CHOICE, P.H. Stacy, University of Hartford
"A masterly synthesis of existing scholarship on Bombay cinema as well as a timely exploration of the growing importance that this cinema is assuming in the Indian diaspora. . . . an engaging study." -- Sumita Chakravarty, New School University
"Here, finally, is a book on Bollywood that is written for those who have experienced Bollywood as well as those who are strangers to that phenomenon. Mishra's analysis of Bollywood cinema is a considerable one within a handful of such analyses emerging today from within academe. It has in it something for the film historian, the curious newcomer, the fan, and the critic." -- Sonora Jh-Nambiar, Seattle University, Communication Research Trends