'This is a page-turner and a breath of fresh air. Written lucidly and clearly, well aware of contemporary debates in Indian and global film studies, which it both summarizes and takes forward, [this book] offers a new take on a much written area of film history, the popular Bombay cinema of the 1950s. While film studies have been preoccupied with ... Read morethe construction of the nation in cinema in this period, Wani suggests that this cinema was also simultaneously helping construct a modern sensibility premised on freedom, one built upon ideas of romance and erotic desire, not exactly congruent with the construction of a bourgeois and patriarchal nationhood. The insights she offers are so logical that one is struck at how we missed them so far.' Jyotsna Kapur, Southern Illinois University 'This is an original, rich and beautifully written account of Bombay cinema's preoccupation with romantic love, which draws on a wide range of archives, including little-known Marathi sources, as well as the author's encyclopaedic knowledge of the cinema of that era. This ambitious project brings genuinely new insights to our understandings of how romantic love - as the sign of the modern - was imagined and given shape in 1950s Bombay films, their songs and star texts. A pleasure to read.' Rosie Thomas, University of Westminster 'The originality of this delightfully written book lies in its focus on the relatively neglected 1950s as a pivotal moment in the evolution of Indian popular cinema, bridging the political event of Independence, and the technological innovation of colour cinematography. Identifying the theme of romantic love as the signature of modernity, the author cuts across conventional film genres to explore this conjunction in the three domains of 'urbanity'; of film songs; and through the phenomenon of stardom. It is rare to find a work that succeeds in stitching these separate discourses so elegantly together.' Patricia Uberoi, Institute of Economic Growth Show Less