It is always fascinating to know what Hollywood filmmakers think about Indian films. In recent memory, we know what they feel about SS Rajamouli's RRR. Beyond that, they don't seem to care about Indian cinema.
But a legendary Hollywood filmmaker did praise two films in the past. Martin Scorsese, a champion of Indian cinema’s restoration, has praised the operatic quality of Raj Kapoor’s Awara (1951) and Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa (1957). He described them as “dreamlike yet grounded,” noting that “Indian filmmakers use color and music like painters use a canvas—bold, almost hallucinatory.” He found their visual language “strange yet intuitive” for global audiences.
That said, most others found Indian films to be too much to take. French filmmaker François Truffaut reportedly found Indian cinema overwhelming, describing it as "a cinema of excess" with its melodramatic plots and song-and-dance sequences. He famously remarked after watching a Bollywood film that it was like "being force-fed sugar syrup for three hours."
Bollywood cinema is Indian cinema for almost the entire Hollywood. For many decades, they didn't get to watch the movies made by Balachander, K Viswanath and Mani Ratnam.
