How a German came to shoot Hindi classics

A candid black-and-white picture from 1937 shows the era’s top film star

Devika Rani

smoking during a shoot. In another, Rani, her filmmaker-husband Himansu Rai and a young Ashok Kumar share a meal under a thatched hut, while a third photo features actor Raaj Kumar in the middle of a scene in Pakeezah, surrounded by a swarm of cameras and crew.

The common thread linking all these rare images is

Josef Wirsching

, a German cinematographer who was behind the camera for many iconic films until the 1960s. They form part of a new exhibition of 158-odd photographs sourced from Wirsching’s archive.

Wirsching’s tryst with India began in 1925, when he, along with three other Germans — film director Franz Osten and two technicians — set sail from Italy to work in Bombay on an ambitious silent film on the life of Gautama Buddha. Called The Light of Asia or Prem Sanyas, the Indo-German production was the brainchild of Rai, a lawyer-turned-actor who had travelled to Germany to collaborate with the film studio Emelka.

The film’s success led to two more Indo-German films, the recently restored Shiraz and Prapancha Pash. In 1935, when Rai and Devika Rani set up Bombay Talkies, they invited Wirsching and Osten to join them and provide technical expertise, helping train Indians in film production. Wirsching became the studio’s director of photography, and went on to shoot classics such as Achhut Kanya, Jawani Ki Hawa, Mahal, Sangram and Pakeezah. He also took photographs.

Devika Rani and

Najmul Hasan

in the 1935 movie, Jawani ki Hawa (Photos courtesy the Wirsching archive)


Now, 50 years after his death in 1967, Wirsching’s photographs are being exhibited for the first time as part of the

Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa

. Titled ‘A Cinematic Imagination’, the exhibition includes film and production stills and behind-the-scene photos from 1925 to 1967, spanning Wirsching’s years with Bombay Talkies and later with Kamal Amrohi.

The German joined Bombay Talkies at a crucial juncture in the mid-1930s, when Indian cinema was making the transition from silent films to the talkies. Film scholar Debashree Mukherjee, who has co-curated the exhibition with Rahaab Allana of the Alkazi Foundation, says, “The cosmopolitan crew at Bombay Talkies brought together multiple influences ranging from German Expressionist theatre and cinema to modern Bengali reformist novels and Hindustani classical music. It played a foundational role in defining India’s commercial film form, producing some of the most iconic musical films of the era which foregrounded urgent issues of social
reform.” Allana adds that this was a wider trend, with other European filmmakers and photographers also working in India at the time.

Wirsching’s career was interrupted by World War II. As a German living in a British colony, he was arrested and sent to an internment camp from 1939 to 1947. “My grandfather always believed he would go back to Germany after he retired from working in India,” says Georg, who archived the material. “He would send back negatives, photographs, curios and even furniture to his parents in Munich. However, WWII happened and all of that was destroyed along with Josef’s hope of ever going back to his old family home.” Instead, he decided to resume work in Bombay. After the closure of Bombay Talkies, Wirsching joined Kamal Amrohi’s Mahal Films. His last film was the Meena Kumari-starrer Pakeezah, released five years after his death.

Yet, his influence extended beyond his own work and can be seen in films such as Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa. “Wirsching’s key contribution to Indian cinema lies in his use of light and composition. He brings an artistic imagination that infused Bombay cinema with the psychological depth and stylistic ethos of German Expressionism, which used sets, costumes and lighting to exteriorize inner emotions,” Mukherjee says. The project has been self-funded so far, but the Wirschings plan to raise more money to take the exhibition to other cities and compile the photographs into a book.