Cinema India: Youth culture and the international arena

From the 1960s films began to look beyond national boundaries. The world outside India offered exciting possibilities for new filming locations. Paris, Rome, Switzerland and London, along with Tokyo, became exotic backdrops for romances.

A more international outlook also focused attention on youth culture. In the west, this was a period of economic growth which was accompanied by the spread of a new liberal culture. Britain saw the rise of consumerism, new music, new fashions and hairstyle trends and increased sexual freedom. India never appropriated this lifestyle, but the Indian cinema projected a sense of it through films such as Bobby and later Love Story which, for the first time, focused on teenage romance. Visually this was represented primarily through women's fashion, particularly bouffant hair styles and heavy black eye liner make-up.