a major foreign influence was hollywood, where musicals were popular from the 1920s to the 1950s, though indian filmmakers departed from their hollywood counterparts in several ways. "for example, the hollywood musicals had as their plot the world of entertainment itself. indian filmmakers, while enhancing the elements of fantasy so pervasive in indian popular films, used song and music as a natural mode of articulation in a given situation in their films. there is a strong indian tradition of narrating mythology, history, fairy stories and so on through song and dance." in addition, "whereas hollywood filmmakers strove to conceal the constructed nature of their work so that the realistic narrative was wholly dominant, indian filmmakers made no attempt to conceal the fact that what was shown on the screen was a creation, an illusion, a fiction. however, they demonstrated how this creation intersected with people's day to day lives in complex and interesting ways."