Bruce Loeb on Piano. India under the Raj was a surprisingly rare subject for screen treatment during the silent era, and the formulas familiar to us today, whether such melodramas as The Jewel in the Crown (1985) or the adventure Gunga Din (1939), had yet to be created. In the wake of the "Sepoy mutiny" of 1857, a British literary wave created its own Indian mythology to explain how this South Asian culture nearly expelled a European colonial power. The influence of such tales is demonstrated in tonight's program. The Victoria Cross represents Indian rule through a dissipated rajah who rebels against the British so as to add Anglo women to his harem. Sessue Hayakawa plays a ruthless Indian insurrectionist. The Bronze Bell displays the other dominant motif, using India for a brief taste of exoticism amidst a predominantly Western setting, apparently believing that deeper immersion in the Indian milieu would alienate Western audiences. Not until 1934, with the production of the first box-office hit about India, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, would Hollywood's own evolving generic profile of India take shape, with the marketability of these movies in India itself becoming an increasingly determinant factor.-Brian TavesBrian Taves is the author of, among other books, The Romance of Adventure: The Genre of Historical Adventure Movies (University Press of Mississippi, 1993).The Program: