90’s was the decade that marked the end to an era of world cinema. With the death of directors Kubrick, Ray, Kurosawa, Fellini and David Lean, cinema was left nowhere! Renoir, Welles and Hitchcock were already dead and Bergman had retired! Though Godard and Hou contributed significantly, as did Kiarostami, Rohmer, Angelopoulos, Rivette, Mike Leigh, Wong Kar-wai, Almodovar, Kusturica and Pialat, among many others. But the greats of world cinema were gone!
Hollywood suffered equally. The expressionism of ’70s and ’80s was gone. The ’90s started with Goodfellas in 1990 and ended with Bringing Out the Dead in 1999, both by Martin Scorsese- the most consistently passionate and committed of all active American directors. In between, Hollywood witnessed the meteoric rises of Tarantino and P.T. Anderson and the rebirth of Robert Altman. Clint Eastwood was summing up everything in his career into what turned out to be the last of the great westerns- Unforgiven. The Coen brothers were on the rise, with Fargo, Miller’s Crossing and The Big Lebowski under their flag. This decade witnessed the fall of Coppola, George Lucas and most notably, Steven Spielberg- who turned more into a business-headed producer than a director he was once! The decade ended with films like Matrix, American Beauty and Eyes Wide Shut- which showed some hope for the next millennium.
Coming on to the Bollywood of ’90s, I don’t find it even worth discussing. The list of Filmfare award nominees of the decade disgusted me. Readers will understand…
सौरभ राय | Sourav Roy 
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