CHENNAI: Shots of a 19-year-old MGR on the sets of his first film Sathi Leelavathi is probably the only physical proof left of him having enacted the role. It was shot while Ellis R Dungan, an American, was directing a set of fine Tamil actors in the 1930s. There is a photo of Dungan with actor Madhuri Devi, shot in close quarters while they were shooting for Ponmudi, a 1949 film; newly married couple M S Subbulakshmi and Sadasivam in garlands shot by Dungan in 1940, and another with Dungan standing with Subbulakshmi and a large crew from Tamil industry, shot in 1994.
The photos — over 300 of them — arranged chronologically, tell a tale of a foreigner, who chanced upon Tamil cinema and made Madras his home for 15 years. It is a story that traverses through the technological development in Tamil cinema in the period between 1935 and 1950, speaking of the legendary stars during the time when fame hadn’t embraced them. The photos form part of the 80-minute documentary film on director Elis R Dungan, An American in Madras, by Mumbai-based filmmaker Karan Bali, which will be screened in the city as part of Madras Week.
“I came across Dungan in 2004, while researching on Indian cinema for the website I run — Upperstall.com. We were looking at classic stuff and luminaries who made Indian cinema. Somewhere while researching, I came across Dungan,” he says. Bali had thought to limit his work on Dungan to an article. “But slowly the thoughts of him came back, and the fact that there was this American making Tamil films sounded crazy to be true,” he recalls.
Around 2008, he started collecting material to see if there was a film in it. But despite the entry of the Internet by then, the process was more challenging than he thought.
“We have a dismal record of archiving our history. We have made more than 1,700 silent films and only about seven or eight remain, and even they are not complete. Say, up to 1950, we have lost 80 per cent of our films,” he says. But Bali did not give up.
He met Tamil film historian S Theodore Baskaran, who suggested that he refer Dungan’s autobiography — A guide to Adventure — published in 2001, the year he died. He devoured the book. The next step was to watch his movies. “I didn’t want to be caught in the exotic element of a white man making Tamil films, there had to be something more to justify his films,” he says.
Karan spent long hours watching Ambikapathy, Manthiri Kumari, Meera, Ponmudi and Sakuntalai — the five films out of the 13 he made, available in the archives. He felt that in most of them, there was an effort to keep the scenes a little more cinematic than theatrical that was typical of Indian cinema, particularly Tamil cinema in the 30s. “That’s when I decided that, yes, there is a contribution of a pioneer, who has not been given his total due,” he says.
He later got in touch with the co-author of Dungan’s autobiography Barbara Smik. “She led me on to the West Virginia State archives where Dungan had given all his material — photographs of his entire life in India, live footage of him directing films, two documentaries on India which he continued to make after he left India in 1950,” he says.
West Virginia State archives gave him access to 300-odd photographs on Dungan’s life. “I think Dungan came from a culture in which you kept a record of things in your life, especially when it was outside your country. That helped,” he says.
Having got access to Dungan’s films and photographs, and inputs from historians Baskaran and Mohan Raman, Karan wanted filmmakers to analyse Dungan’s work. Later, filmmaker K Hariharan, who earlier headed L V Prasad Studio, and his colleague Uma Vangal, who has done a thesis on Tamil films from 1950 to 2001, entered the research. “They analysed his films,” says Karan.
He parallely explored both Dungan’s personal and professional side and spoke to people who had worked with him and are still alive.
He spoke to makeup assistant Muthu and Radha Viswanathan, Subbulakshmi’s stepdaughter, who worked as a child actor in Meera and Sakuntalai. He also met R Venkatasamy who had written T R Sundaram’s biography — the guy who owned modern theatres, and was present at the shooting of Manthiri Kumari — and a man called Eric Thomas who worked with Dungan as camera assistant in Yercaud while he was shooting the wildlife of India.
“The one interview that I could not get despite trying for eight months was Karunanidhi’s. He wrote the script of Manthiri Kumari. Even in Ponmudi, there were a few scenes which were short of length, he wrote those additional scenes.” he says.
Karan got another lead with Rochelle, one of Dungan’s close friends who knew him for 50 years, and interacted with Dungan through letters. From her inputs, and his personal anecdotes in the autobiography, Karan understood that apart from his work, Dungan enjoyed many a night at the Marina Beach, used to hang around Madras Gymkhana Club and Theosophical Society. “I think he also stayed as a paying guest in an area near Spencer Hotel,” he says. Between 1935 and 1950, he would go to America and come back, he joined the British Government as a photographer, made propaganda films, documentaries on World War 2, and captured the aftermath of Hindu-Muslim riots in Mumbai.
On December 1, 2013, Bali’s film was screened at L V Prasad Studio. It was premiered at the Chennai International Film Festival, then travelled to Mumbai and was later screened at the Kerala Documentary Film Festival. The film was nominated for the best documentary award in New York and made it to the London Film Festival and will soon be screened at the Prague Indian Film Festival in October. However, for Bali, the most special screening of the film was at Dungan’s hometown in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he had settled down after leaving India. “It was housefull. A lot of them saw him in a new light because many had not known what he had achieved in India, they just knew he had gone to India,” he says. Bali later visited Dungan’s place of birth, high school and grave.
“He did not reach any heights in his hometown. When he went back, he got into making medical films, short documentaries and industrial films, never a feature film. It is a contradiction,” says Bali.
Dungan left India in 1950 while Manthiri Kumari was still in the making, obliging to his wife’s wish of getting back to America. But he kept coming back to shoot documentaries on India. Years later, in 1994, when he came to India, the entire Tamil industry got together and felicitated him. “This is suggested from the still that Rochelle had. M S Subbulakshmi is said to have got up and sang a song from Meera, the film she was part of. There were no dry eyes in the entire hall,” says Bali.
“He says in his autobiography that ‘it is only in India and the South that this can happen — a man comes back after 43 years and gets a warm welcome’,” says Bali. The documentary also ends on this note.