Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City by Debashree Mukherjee

• DOI: 10.1353/cj.2021.0065
• Publication Date: 2021-11-07T14:00:14Z
• Authors: Katie Bird
• Keywords: Anecdote

Reviewed by: Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City by Debashree Mukherjee Katie Bird (bio) Mukherjee. Columbia University Press. 2020. 448 pages. $105.00 hardcover; $30.00 paper; also available e-book. In City, uses her contemporary experiences hustling as "cine-worker" the "cine-ecology" of early twenty-first-century Mumbai to enrich ambitious history specific site cinematic production: late colonial 1930s and 1940s. mingles personal anecdote with an archival approach demonstrate how cinema during period was both integrated within bodies its laborers (its cine-workers) entangled localities, infrastructures, industries, politics, technologies, peoples, environment production cine-ecology). one memorable passage, describes own experience trying find former location Talkies studio.1 Despite research into exact GPS coordinates, it is only thanks rickshaw driver's local knowledge that she arrives at spot where studio once stood. Relinquishing control, embodies fan, cine-worker, scholar taken on surprising unexpected tour rewards uncertainty waiting faith required let inhabitants speak for themselves. While reading Hustle, I kept returning this story metaphor reader's Mukherjee's account bustling city [End Page 186] transformed. The book focuses formation Bombay's studios transition sound between 1929 1942. Yet scope project encompasses city's industrial social milieu turn twentieth century theorizes lasting effects talkie period's protocols twenty-first century. demonstrates filmmaking inseparable from colonization, finance, climate, well particular social, gender, caste, ethnic politics. argues must be read web large-scale discrete ecological, economic forces, not merely result historical events happening alongside development but active interlocuter across informal connections other communities, precise locality. To study peoples rapid change, financial speculation, upheaval. showcases film production's workaday practices are often embodied always embedded world outside screen gates—what calls "cine-ecology." Careful distinguish framework cine-ecology different kind (the Hollywood system), makes clear simply structures or organizations (with their internal rules habits) organism moves, breathes, lives, part which produced consumed.2 explains book's formidable most important contribution, "the cannot disentangled."3 opening then mirrors constant conversation taking place cine-workers they work live. made up diverse group people cine-worker become organic entities living characters take anthropomorphic force story. immense energy expresses hopes anxieties collective through environmental networks wider production, distribution, reception, constantly coalescing dispersing.4 Within these useful guiding frameworks cine-ecology, accounts excel particularities. Hustle charts rise fall distinct studios, stars, productions, highlighting importance technologies crews enriching existent scholarship popular Hindi Indian cinema. compelling use...