Happy Birthday, Ritwik Ghatak! Born today in 1925 as Ritwik Kumar Ghatak, this noted Indian playwright, screenwriter and film director's cinema is primarily remembered for its meticulous depiction of social reality, partition and feminism.
This was along with Satyajit Ray ('The Apu Trilogy', 'The Music Room') and Indian film director and nominated Member of Indian Parliament Mrinal Sen.
Ghatak was born in British India (now Dhaka, Bangladesh). His father, Suresh Chandra Ghatak, was a district magistrate and poet. Ghatak and his twin sister, Prateeti, were the youngest of nine children.
Ghatak and his family later moved to Berhampore, Murshidabad and then to Calcutta. This was just before millions of other refugees from East Bengal began to flood into the city, fleeing the catastrophic Bengal famine of 1943 and the partition of Bengal in 1947.
Identification with this tide of refugees was to define his practice, providing an over-riding metaphor for cultural dismemberment and exile that unified his subsequent creative work.
The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, which led to more refugees fleeing to India, was to have a similar impact on his work.
In 1948, Ghatak wrote his first play entitled "Kalo sayar" ("The Dark Lake").
Afterwards, he participated in a revival stage production by prominent Bengali Indian theatre and film personality Bijon Bhattacharya.
Three years later, Ghatak joined the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) in 1951.
He later wrote, directed and acted in plays and translated Bertolt Brecht and Russian dramatist of Ukrainian origin Nikolai Gogol into Bengali.
After this, Ghatak entered the film industry with Indian film director and cinematographer Nemai Ghosh.
This was for the fifty-seven-minute 1950 Bengali black and white drama film 'Chinnamul'('The Uprooted') as actor and assistant director. This was the first Indian film that dealt with the partition of India.
Two years later, Ghatak completed his first film. This was with the 1952 Bengali black and white dramafilm 'Nagarik' ('The Citizen').
Both this and 'Chinnamul' were major breakthroughs for Indian cinema.
Ghatak's early work sought theatrical and literary precedent in bringing together a documentary realism, a stylized performance often drawn from the folk theatre, and a Brechtian use of the filmic apparatus.
Ghatak was a lifelong staunch communist and actively supported Consumer Price Index (CPI) in his earlier life.
He believed that the film was just a medium of his larger thoughts about the society.
He could easily have left filmmaking and adopt another form of art if that could better represent his unique vision of both the individual self and the society as a whole.
However, due to his independent nature, the CPI Calcutta District Committee expelled him on October 21, 1955.
Five years later, Ghatak wrote and directed the first film of which he is best known.
This was the 1960 Indian black and white drama/musical film 'Meghe Dhaka Tara' ('The Cloud-Capped Star'). The film is an allegory for the traumatic consequences of the partition of Bengal.
The film is based off of Indian Bengali writer Shaktipada Rajguru's 1962 social novel of the same name.
The film tells of a beautiful young girl named Nita (Supriya Devi) and her struggles to support her siblings and elderly father on the outskirts of the poverty-stricken city.
However, Nita's elder brother Shankar (Anil Chatterjee) does not care for the family. Rather, he only dreams of becoming a famous classical singer.
Despite this, Nita hopes one day to marry a young scientist named Sanat (Niranjan Ray), of whom appears to return her affections.
However, when it becomes clear that the young man is more interested in Nita's sister Gita (Gita Ghatak), she falls dangerously ill with tuberculosis, becoming a burden on her family.
'The Cloud-Capped Star' is the first installment of Ghatak's Partition trilogy, all dealing with the aftermath of the Partition of Bengal during the Partition of India in 1947 and the refugees coping with it.
Arguably Ghatak's finest work, 'The Cloud-Capped Star' captures the disintegration of a Bengali middle-class family as a result of dislocation, poverty, self-interest, and petty, internal division.
Also, beneath Ghatak's humanistic, empathetic portrayal of a woman being ground down runs a furious polemic about the lives the many who live hand to mouth.
The film is strongly melodramatic in tone, especially as concerns the sufferings heaped upon the protagonist.
As in many of Ghatak's other films, he also uses surrealistic sound effects, such as sounds of a lashing as the heroine suffers yet another tragic twist of fate.
Five years later, Ghatak wrote and directed the second and final film of which he is best known.
This was the 1965 Indian black and white drama film 'Subarnarekha' ('Golden River' or 'Golden Thread'). Ghatak appears in the film, credited as Music Teacher.
The film is based off of a story by Indian writer and producer Radheshyam JhunjhunwalaIt. The film was produced in 1962, but was not released until three years later.
After an old college friend offers him a job at an iron foundry, the upright and honest Ishwar Chakraborty (Abhi Bhattacharya) leaves a shanty town on the outskirts of Calcutta where he lives with a group of refugees from East Bengal.
With plans to forge a solid living for himself, sister Sita (Madhabi Mukherjee) and Abhiram (Satindra Bhattacharya), an orphaned boy he offers a home to, Ishwar is accused of selling out and deserting his people. Gradually, the humanity in him is crushed.
'Subarnarekha' is the third and final installment of Ghatak's Partition trilogy.
The second installment is the 1961 Bengali black and white drama/musical film 'Komal Gandhar' (also known as 'A Soft Note on a Sharp Scale'). The title refers to the Hindustani equivalent of "E-flat".
Ghatak's later years had been affected by severe alcoholism. Sometime after, he was hospitalized with schizophrenia in the 1970s.
A few years afterwards, seriously ill from alcoholism and tuberculosis, Ghatak passed in Kolkata, West Bengal, India on February 6, 1976. He was 50.
Although he was held in high regard by his directorial colleagues and students, Ghatak only received wider recognition after his death.
Of his eight-film oeuvre, there are only six films that are available in good 35mm prints.
According to Ghatak's ideologies, he was not only a film director, but a theorist as well. His views and commentaries on films have been parts of scholarly studies and researches.
As a filmmaker, his main concentration was on men and life and specially the day-to-day struggle of ordinary men.
Ghatak could never accept the partition of India of 1947, which divided Bengal into two countries. In almost all of his films, he has dealt with this theme.
Filmmaking was not only art for Ghatak. In his opinion, it was only a means to the end of serving people: It was only a means of expressing his anger at the sorrows and sufferings of his people as well.
The visionary Ghatak, along with prominent contemporaries such as Ray and Sen, is primarily remembered for the meticulous depiction of social reality within his cinema.
Despite that, Ghatak is still largely unknown in and outside of India. Fortunately, this is slowly changing as his films are becoming accessible again and can now be studied in detail.
Ghatak happened to Indian cinema during a time when Hollywood was engulfing the global cinema with its sheer magnitude and prolific productions.
In contrast, Bollywood was finding a parallel inspiration from the west to discuss box-office collection.
During that time, the film industry in India was slowly stooping towards commercial dividends. India’s theatre-going audience had immersed themselves into the newfound independence, of which overlooked reality and indulged in hyper-romanticism.
Ghatak’s maverick films, however, either flopped or never got to see the light of the day.
However, his conviction towards a socio-political responsibility that he mentioned in his numerous writings and interviews pushed him to diverse horizons.
While his films are now discussed, used as a text for film schools and showcased in various retrospective sessions of national and international film festivals, the man in his short-lived life of half a century hardly received any accolade for his integrity towards the art of cinema.
An auteur whose works signify the melancholy and disorder associated with the partition, especially in Bengal, and still finds relevance for his surreal realism – Ghatak is a genre unto himself.
Ghatak had been active from 1952–1976.
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