Raja Harishchandra

The king is with his wife while he teaches archery to his son. At the request of the citizens the King goes out on an hunting excursion. The sage Vishwamitra achieves the help of the three powers against their will. The king keeps pulling arrows and the sage is offended and the king calms himself and gives him a sword, receiving the blessing of the sage. The king and the queen leave for abroad and entrust their son to the wise man. Phalke, the father of Indian cinema, used some members of the family as actors. In the cast, male actors played female roles, as happened in Greek tragedy. The story comes from the Indian epic written in Sanskrit: "Mahabharata"

Only bits and pieces of this movie are available. I have seen those, its silent, its shaky, its like any other good movie that would come from 1913.

Most of the roles are played by Dadabhai Phalke (Harischandra and his wife) because he could not get any woman to act in front of camera and pretend to be his wife.

But this movie is historical. It is the first movie from India. From this movie Indian film industry graduated to making the most number of movies in the world and being biggest film exporter.

An award has been named after him, Dadabhai Phalke award. which is of same status in India as is Oscar in USA.

India has a long, rich history in cinema dating even before its first feature film, May 1913's Raja Harishchandra." The country had an established movie studio by 1907, despite no film production equipment was being made in India. But it was "Raja's" release on May 3 at the Coronation Theater in Bombay, complete with a live performance of music and chanting, that marked the point where India's public embraced movies and made the film industry viable.

Dadasaheb Phalke is solely responsible for introducing cinema to India's passionate movie lovers. Known as "The Father of Indian Cinema," Phalke as a businessman had a successful career running a printing press company before getting the movie bug. He gave up his business and hocked all his family's possessions to begin a studio, focused on producing a feature film. Through a series of trials and tribulations, Phalke finally competed the 53-minute film version of the Indian mystic legend of Harishchandra's life.

Phalke's adventures in gathering cast and tech crew and filming the feature are portrayed in 2009's "Harishchandrachi Factory." The Paresh Mokashi written/directed movie was India's official Best Foreign Language Film Oscar submission for that year's Academy Awards.

Like most national industries, India has a candidate for the status of first feature film - this 1913 hit, seen as the departure point of Hindi cinema and it's mythological cycle. Both time and culture separate outside viewers from it. Even so, it is disappointing as a piece of film history.

While hunting, King Harishchandra disturbs the sage who is upset, so to atone our hero gives him his kingdom. It looks like this will precipitate a tragic outcome but Shiva intervenes.

Photographer turned filmmaker Phalke took two years to get his first film made. The technique is basic - jump cut disposal of the three women deities that the sage has summoned is as adventurous as it gets.

The mime in the style of regional theater is broad and having boys play the female parts is disturbing now.

Only a portion of India's first feature-length film exists today, but that's enough to tell us that the development of Indian cinema was lagging some way behind Europe and the United States in 1913. What survives are mostly static long shots, and it's difficult to makeout what is going on - although that's to be expected when viewing a fragment of a much longer work.