Film historian and Proffessor Piyush Roy revisits Hunterwali (1935), the groundbreaking Wadia Movietone stunt classic that introduced Fearless Nadia, a female action icon whose daring screen persona transformed Indian cinema and captivated audiences across the country:

Birth of a Star!

Hunterwali (1935)

Direction: Homi Wadia

Cast: Nadia, Sayani Atish, Boman Shroff

Music: Master Mohammad

She came, they saw, and a nation was conquered! That, in essence, is the story of the ‘Fearless Nadia’s’ spectacular coming post the release of the genre-defining Hunterwali in the 1930s. For generations since, depending on when one was born, such impact in Indian cinema was re-created once in the 1970s (Rajesh Khanna) and again at the turn of the millennium (Hrithik Roshan). But for an actress to be the focus of such hysteria, Nadia remains a solitary exception in the history of world cinema.

It’s a pity that very few of her hit films can be accessed today, and what I saw of Hunterwali, through chunks of missing soundtrack and faded scenes at Pune’s National Film Archives recently, does not exactly do justice to her ground-breaking debut.

Doing her first film at the age of 25, Nadia’s was a much belated debut in an industry which even today prefers to launch its heroines in their late teens. Moreover, casting the half Scottish-half Greek blonde with little knowledge of Hindi and an awkward accent was sheer hara-kiri for any producer in an era when talkies had captured the national imagination and the ability to sing well was often the only prerequisite for a lead actor candidate.

Filmindia, in its July 1935 review of Hunterwali notes: ‘An ordinary stunt story with some gripping situations. Nadia’s work as Madhuri stands out prominently, though she lacks expression. She will improve a lot if she looks after her language... Direction is hopeful and promising. Songs are not good though background music at places is happy… On the whole the picture is entertaining. From the box-office viewpoint it can go down as one of Wadia’s successes and will play well in provinces where stunt stories are appreciated.’

The film became more than a pan-Indian success, running all over the country for more than twenty-five weeks, outstripping the wildest expectations of its ambitious makers, Jamshed and Homi Wadia, owners of one of Bollywood’s foremost early studios, the Wadia Movietone.

The Story of the Fearless Princess

The story of Hunterwali revolves around the royalty of a fictitious, modern Indian kingdom. Nadia as Madhuri is the daughter of its righteous and generous, but weak and aging king. Early in the film, we see the king’s cavalcade of cars accidentally hit a ‘handsome’ beggar, Jaswant (Boman Shroff), on the streets.

The cause for his unusual handsomeness can be sourced to a 20-years-ago prelude scene, where it had been revealed that he hailed from a well-off family in his childhood. The kind-hearted princess rushes to the beggar’s aid but is held back by her prime minister, Ranamal (Sayani – a regular villain in all Nadia films), who we are soon revealed has a sinister purpose of his own. The beggar is treated and brought before the king, who offers him money as compensation. He refuses and wins the admiration of the princess as the stage is set for the duo to fall in love. But developing a romantic track between the newcomer couple isn’t the film’s prerogative.

In a quick coup undertaken during a hunting expedition, Ranamal kidnaps the king and officiates as the ruler. Madhuri is allowed to remain a figurehead sovereign as Ranamal pursues his ambitions of marrying her to naturally succeed to the throne. His every offer at marriage, however, is rebuffed by the princess with a laugh hinting at their age and nature disparity.

But once she is made aware of the growing incompetence and injustice of the new regime, in a dramatic moment of resolve to safeguard the rights of her citizens she decides to take on the role of a ‘benefactor in disguise’. Visibly moved by torture stories from her attendants on the atrocities heaped on her people, she walks in a huff to an ante-chamber and returns with a whip in her hand.

She asks: ‘Yeh kya hai?’ They echo: Hunter!

She asks again: ‘Aur main kaun hoon?’ They exalt in unison: Hunterwali!!!

When the Hunterwali Appears

Her first target is Ranamal’s bumbling, boozer commander. A haughty and rotund man, he is introduced with his soldiers in a pub singing paeans to drinks and drinking – Hamein pilaye jaa pyali pe pyali – in an innovative mix of a song peppered with shayaris.

The pub’s harassed young waiter warns them to beware of the famed justice of the ‘Hunterwali,’ who will punish them for their inaction. Bragging and jeering, the commander challenges, ‘Kahan hai woh Hunterwali?’ as if she was some God to materialise from thin air.

As his men start taunting and challenging the boy to call his Hunterwali for rescue, almost God-like (akin to the moment of Narasingh avatar’s appearance in the Prahlad story), she suddenly materialises from nowhere and asserts: ‘I have come to show you all who I really am.’ Provocatively laughing, she throws a barrel at the inebriated soldiers and starts fighting and thrashing them – sometimes 10 at a time!

The sari wardrobe of the demure princess is daringly exchanged for erotically tight-fitting Western-style shorts revealing muscular thighs above knee-length boots. A sleeveless blouse with a jaunty fluttering cape, topped with a black eye-mask under a Russian fur cap, complete her no-nonsense femme fatale persona. A sight alone of this ‘Hunterwali’ was enough to have the conservative audiences of the 1930s gasp for breath, but then challenging all expected conventions for the then female acts onscreen she also drives all action in the film – whipping and wrestling, lifting and throwing much stouter men all the time. Her swift fights are a fantasy to behold, with Nadia’s gymnast-like agility and stout physique lending believability to her superwoman power and prowess.

And begin a series of surprise adventures highlighting the one-time circus performer’s myriad stunt skills. Pub to forest, palace to village, vaulting across high walls to jumping down rooftops, racing wild horses or swinging Tarzan-like across branches, as she fights with anything at hand – swords, sticks, pole vaults and even bare fists – Nadia truly embodies and achieves director Homi Wadia’s chosen acronym for her, ‘Fearless!’

Escaping from one such onscreen adventure with the commander in pursuit, she steals Jaswant’s wandering horse by mistake that brings her to him again. The duo meet and in a romantic setup inspired straight from Krishna’s Brindavan stories and echoed much later in the Bol Radha Bol song sequence from Raj Kapoor’s Sangam, Jaswant teases and sings to the ‘Hunterwali’ as he chances upon her bathing ‘mask less’ in a stream (in a bra and a little slip), in the film’s lone showcase moment of its heroine’s feminine charm.

Revealed of the Hunterwali’s identity he swears by her cause and rescues her kidnapped father from a dungeon where he had been imprisoned by Ranamal. In a high-on-thrills elaborate climactic battle between Hunterwali’s motley group of civilian brave-hearts and Ranamal and his men, the Machiavellian prime minister is defeated and the old king is reinstated on his throne.

Incidentally, in spite of all the whips, swords and action play there is surprisingly no bloodletting except Ranamal’s murder in the climax, which too is not caused by Hunterwali or her cohorts, but a betrayed ex-love. The fight scenes might look hilarious today, but their seemingly Chaplinesque treatment isn’t unintentional – it’s rather a deliberate attempt to make the predominantly men-appealing ‘action’ genre palatable and enjoyable for a wide range and age of audience from women, kids and their grandparents in sync with the please-all ‘masala’ aesthetics of popular Indian cinema.

The concern for an all-inclusive family entertainer is further supported in the nature of the film’s dialogues. Even the villainous prime minister speaks in a sing-song way, which hints at the concern for melody even in an obviously high-on-action film. For instance, when rebuffed for the umpteenth time by Madhuri, Ranamal articulates his angst and resolve stating something like, ‘Baithne nahi deti yeh aurat apni nak par, Par main rehta hoon phir bhi uski tak par…’

A Hysteria Called Hunterwali!

Merging the noble intentions of Robin Hood with the bravado and costume of Zorro, Indian cinema’s first superhero and superwoman, Hunterwali remained a hysteria-generating phenomenon for long as the character’s attributes were showcased and reaped to cult collections by director Homi Wadia (who subsequently married Nadia) in film after film featuring the ‘Fearless Nadia’ as a stunt-performing daring heroine, who was nothing but daughter, sister, and even mother incarnations of the original ‘Hunterwali’ in different setups and circumstances – Pahadai Kanya and Miss Frontier Mail (1936), Hurricane Hansa (1937), Diamond Queen (1940), Bambaiwali (1941), Jungle Princess and Muqabla (1942), Hunterwali Ki Beti (1943), Stunt Queen and Himmatwali (1945), Toofani Tirandaz and Lady Robin Hood (1946), Tigress (1947), Carnival Queen (1955), Circus Queen (1959) and Khiladi (1968).

Recalling her experience of the much-delayed premiere of Hunterwali at Bombay’s Super Cinema theatre, Nadia had said, “My first appearance was in the second reel, fifteen minutes into the film… In the third reel I swear I’ll avenge my father’s abduction and free him from the clutches of the evil minister. Then I crack the whip and say: ‘From this day forth call me Hunterwali!’ At that point the audience went wild. They just didn’t stop whistling and applauding!” The too-risky film about a scantily clad blonde heroine fighting tough Indian men that had been turned down by many theatres for being too radical for its times had been accepted—and how!

According to Fearless Nadia: The True Story of Bollywood’s Original Stunt Queen, Hunterwali rapidly became the most successful film of the season and was shown all over the country for more than twenty-five weeks. And Wadia Movietone no longer had to bother with advertising. Hunterwali fever gripped the whole of India. In every market and bazaar there were whips, masks and miniature ‘Hunterwali’ pictures on sale.

Through Hunterwali, Wadia Movietone had gained a clear profile. The experimental phase of the early sound film days was over for the time being. Nadia’s monthly wage was most generously increased – while many of her acting colleagues of the traditional school were dismissed with a few kind words. The Wadia brothers had to build a new ensemble around the new star. And thus began a fevered search for bodybuilders with acting talent and trained animal stars.

She was, after all, totally different from any other actress or heroine the audience had seen so far. Her biographer Dorothee Wenner writes: ‘Nadia didn’t only look completely different to the dark-haired, meek beauties, her behavior on-screen was also in complete contrast to the submissive, weak, dependent-on-men ladies on the screen.’

Decades later, the premiere of a documentary on Nadia’s life by her nephew Riyad Wadia at the 1994 Berlin Film Festival, titled Fearless – The Hunterwali Story, had its European audience gasp in similar awe at this brazen celebration of fun and feminism, eroticism and progressive characterization in Indian cinema long before the feminist and women suffrage movements had even been conceived in the West.

They shouldn’t have been surprised; such an experiment couldn’t have been an oddity in a culture that had been celebrating the ‘evil-vanquishing’ Shakti form of the Mother Goddess for centuries.

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