The 7Th of July 1896 is a landmark in the history of Indian cinema. This was the first time a movie was shown in India. It took several years and then in 1913 Dadasaheb Phalke made Raja Harishchandra which was the first Indian movie to be made. It was 3700 feet long and was based on the Mahabharata. The movies were black and white with no sound in the beginning. Then came the movies with sounds. Alam Ara was the first movie with sound and it was released in 1931. This movie was a super hit.
Then emerged the films in colours. This happened only in the late 1950s. Colours brought in tremendous growth in this industry. This was a time when the musicals and a melodrama were seen everywhere. Stars like Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand each created a mark for themselves. 1960s and 1970s brought in action movies and stars like Dharmendra, Jeetendra and Rajesh Khanna who were known as action heroes. Another landmark in the Indian film industry took place in 1975 and that was the launch of the 70mm movies. Sholay the first movie to be released as a 70mm movie didn’t do good business in the first week. The movie became a major block buster later as slowly slowly people went in to see the movie. The 1980s the heroes became more blood thirsty and every movie had the famous dialogue “kuttey main tera khoon pee jaunga”. This was the time when Amitabh Bachchan was known as the angry young man.