Ritwik Ghatak - Rows and Rows of Fences (Edited)

Ritwik.
Ghatak
Rows and Rows

of
Fences
Original from
Digitized by Google UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Contents
••
Preface vu
•
Foreword IX
My Coming into Cinema 1
Film and I 3
An Attitude to Life and an Attitude to Art 9
What Ails Indian Filmmaking 16
Music in Indian Cinema and the Epic Approach 21
Bengali Cinema: literary Influence 24
Experimental Cinema 29
Experimental Cinema and I 33
Cinema and the Subjective Factor 35
Some Thoughts on Ajantrilc 38
Filmmaking 41
Rows and Rows of Fences 44
My Films . 49
The Film I Want to Make on Vietnam 53
Two Aspects of Cinema 57
Sound in Cinema 74
Interviews 80
Nazarin. 97
On Film Reviews: A Letter to the Editor 100
A Scenario 102
Documentary: The Most Exciting Form of Cinema 104
Appendix
About the Oraons of Chhotanagpur 119
A Biographical Profile 130
Ftlmography 134
Select Bibliography 171
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PREFACE
The Ritwik Memorial Trust was formed in 1982, with the aim of
preserving and disseminating the works of Ritwik Ghat.alt in the
several forms in which he had worked. When the original
trustees-Satyajit Ray, Bagishwar jha, Surama Ghatak, Sankha
Ghosh, and Ritaban Ghatak-took up the project, they discovered
that the negatives of all his films and most of his writing had been
uncared for, and bore the inevitable signs of decay. As a matter of
priority the Trust undertook then to restore his films. Over the
years since then, with support from various individuaJs, both in
the country and abroad, the Trust has succeeded in restoring the
majority of his films, including the surviving fragments of some of
his unfinished works. The Trust has restored six of his feature
films, using the facilities available at some of Europe's finest labo
ratories. The new prints have been released in France, th�
Netherlands and Switzerland, and featured in screenings at inter
national film festivaJs in Europe, America, and elsewhere in Asia.
Ftlm society audiences have had the opportunity of taking a fresh
look at Ghatak's works. The Trust has played its role in and con
tributed to the global 'rediscovery' of Ritwik Ghatak as a master .
. As storywriter, essayist, radical polemicist, Ghat.alt was a pro
lific writer. The Trust has collected and sorted out a substantial
body of his manuscripts and published writings, many of them
appearing in little magazines, now defuncL The Trust proposes to
publish the complete literary works of Ghatak, with neces.cary
introductions and annotations. A beginning was made with
Cinema and I (1987) in English, and a selection of his short stories
in Bengali (1987), with illustrations by some of Bengal's major
artists as their tribute to Ghatak. Both the volumes have gone out
ofprinL
The present volume includes several new items discovered
after Cinema And I had appeared, including a letter to the editor
and a selection of Bengali essays on cinema in translation; a con
siderably expanded biographical section; and a more
authenticated filmography. Two of the texts included in the main
body of this work are supplemented-in the appendices with
translations of
•
viii I PREF A cE
texts on the same theme, or may be variations, written in Bengali.

In a life of bitter struggle, Ghatak himself did little in the way
of preserving or organizing his materials. He was responsible for
the selection of the pieces for his first ever book of essays in
Bengali, ChalachchitTa, Manush Ebang Aro /(jchhu, published
posthumously in February 1976. It remains extremely difficult for
a scholar today to put all of his writings in order and draw a clear
biographical-chronological narrative out of them. Dates and
details often remain elusive , and one can only hope that the Trust
will be able some day to put it all together, with the .wistance and
cooperation of its wellwishers and admirers of Ghatak. The Trust
counts on all those who value Ghatak's life's work as a heritage to
be cherished.
Surama GhataJc .
Ri(aban GhataJc
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FOREWORD TO aNEMA AND I
In a career that spanned over twenty-five years until his death in

1976 at the age of fifty, Ritwik Ghatak left behind him eight fea-
ture film~ and a handful of unfinished fragment.a. Not a large out-
put if one considen him only as a filmmaker. But Ritwik was much
more than just that. He was a film teacher, doing a stint .1:5 the vice-
principal of the Film Institute at Punc; he was a playwright and
producer, identifying himself with the IDdian People's Thcattc
movement; he was also a writer of short stories, claiming that he
wrote over fifty which were published, the earliest ones being writ-
ten when he was barely out of his teens. Of these, a dozen have
been unearthed; the rest lie buried in the pages of obscure liter-
ary journals, many of which arc probably defunct.
What has come as a surprise is the extent to which Ritwik wrote
about the cinema. His Bengali articles number well over fifty and
cover every possible aspect of the cinema. The present volume
brings together his writings on the same subject in English.
Ritwik had the misfortune to be largely ignored by the Bengali
film public in his lifetime. Only one of his films, Meghe Dhaka Taro
(Cloud-capped Star) had been well received. The rest had brief
runs, and a generally lukewarm reception from professional film
critics. This is particularly unfortunate, since Ritwik was one of the
few ttuly original talent.a in the cinema this countty has produced.
Nearly all his films are ·marked by an intensity of feeling coupled
with an imaginative grasp of the technique of filmmaking. As a
creator of powerful images in an epic style he was virtually unsur-
passed in Indian cinema. He also had full command over the all-
important aspect of editing; long passages abound in his films
which are sttikingly original in the way they are put together. This
is all the more remarkable when one doesn't notice any influence
of other schools of filmmaking on his work. For him Hollywood
might not have existed at all. The occasional echo of classical
Soviet cinema is there, but this does not prevent him from being
in a class by himself.
Ritwik's writings in English on the cinema relate to most
aspects of his work. Some deal with his perso~al attitude to film-
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XI FOREWORD
making; some to the state of the cinema in the country; othen are
concerned with various aspects of film technique; yet others with
his own individual films. When writing about his own works, one
gets the impression that Ritwik was anxious to explicate them to
his audience. One feels the artist's anxiety riot to be misunder-
stood. He lays partic1dar stress on aspects which are not obvious on
the surface: such ~ what he derived from an early study ofJung-
the use of the archetype, the Mother image, and even the concept
of rebirth.
Thematically, Ritwik's lifelong obsession was with the tragedy
of Partition. He himself hailed from what was once East Bengal
where he had deep roots. It is rarely that a director dwells so sin-
glemindcdly on the same theme. It only serves to underline the
depth of his feeling for the subject
I hope this book, which in its totality gives a remarkably coher-
ent self-portrait of the filmmaker, will serve to heighten interest in
his films which, after all, are the repository of all that he believed
in as an artist and as a human being.
Satyajit Ray
[Foreword to the first edition of Cinema and I, published in January
1987.)
Original from
My Coming into Films
Initially, I was a writer. I have written about a hundred shon

stories and two novels since the beginning of my career, from way
back in 1943. I ha".e always been perturbed seeing the situation
around me of the then Bengal.
I then felt that though literature is a terrific medium, it woru·
slowly into the minds of the people. Somehow, I felt, there is an
inadequacy in the medium. To start with, it is remote, and at the
same time, limited to a very small readership, serious literature
being what it is.
Then came a revolution in our Bengal of that time. Came a
new wave of dramatic literature led by Shri Bijan Bhattacharya of
Nabanna fame. It revolutionized our way of thinking. I found that
this was a much more potent medium than literature and also : .
most immediate. So I started writing plays, acted in them,
directed them and did all the other incidental things around a
show. I became closely associated with the Indian People's
Theatre Association, in a nutshell, IPTA ·
Our colleagues and I roam~d extensively all over the place
and tried to rouse our people against the ills eating at the vitals of
our society. I have played and acted before an audience of ten
tho11sand persons also.
But I found this was also an inadequate medium. Then I
realized that to say your say today, film is the only medium. It can
reach millions of people at one go, which no other medium is
capable of.
Then I came into films. My coming to filins has nothing to do
with making money. Rather, it is out of a need .to express my
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2 Ritwik Ghatalc
pangs and agonies about my suffering people. That is why I have
come to cinema. I do not believe in 'entertainment' as they say it
or slogan-mongering. Rather, I believe in thinking deeply of the
universe, the world at large, the international situation, my
· country and finally my own people. I inake films for them. I may
be a failure. That is for the people to judge. . ·
Because all art work involves two parties. One is the giver, the
other is the taker. In the case of cinema, when an audience starts
seeing a film, they also create. I do not know whether it will be
intelligible within this little span of an article. But I know it for
certain. A filmmaker throws up certain ideas; it is the audience
who fulfils them. Then only does it become a total whole. Film-
going is a kind of ritual. When the lights go out, the .screen takes
over. Then the audience increasingly becomes one. It is a
community feeling, one can compare it with going to a church or
a masjid or a temple.
If a filmmaker can create that kind of mentality in his
audience, he is great~such as Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Bunuel,
Mizoguchi, Ozu, Fellini, Satyajit Ray, Cacoyannis, Kozintsev, John
Ford and others . . I do not know whether I belong to their
category, but I try.
Originally published in Film Forum, 17-20July 1967.
Original from
Film and I
I am coming to &mbay.
Fortunatdy, m, mtry into Hindi films is tlan,ugla the kind
e/forts of a progressive g,wp of film tntlawiasts who mean
business and wilJa whom I w eye to eye about naaturs of an.
They have the mJUisite badcground to maAe our joint vmtu,r
a significant one. I am really thrilled, the prospects are
exciting. Wit/a the ample facilities, technical and othm.uise,
that filmn,alcing in Bombay offers, one can rraJI:, have a go at
it.
Pitfalls arr t/am. But let us hope we shall find ways to gd
around them and amve wit/a h:ealllay, clean, wholesmM and
dramatically gripping film/arr. At least, I am fervently hoping
so. It is a turning point wilJa me, you A:now.
Such a situation naturally leaves one vaguely searching.
One lilres to formulate what one means IJ,y one's filmmalcing
activities. One tries to take stodc.
I am doing the same.
I 'WOUid liA:e to formulate my ideas about film.
Hmgoes.
Film is, basically, a matter of personal statemenL All arts are, in

the final analysis. And film seems to be an art. Only, film is a
collective arL It needs varied and numerous talents. It does not
follow that film is not personal. It may be, at one end, the case of
a collective personality, and at the other, may bear the stamp of
one individual's temperament upon all the others' creative
• • •
activities.
To be art, either one or the other must be the case. Any work
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4 lutwilc Ghatalc
that lacks style and viewpoint necessarily lacks personality and
thereby ceases to be art.
To my mind, this is the very root of the matter. Some
hodgepodge thrown together, stylistically divergent images stnmg
together by the device of intrigu~ and 'story matter', may be a
good evening's entertainment, but no sir, it is not art: Such
products abound all around us. One should resign oneself to
these sad facts of life. Sometimes one may get great pleasure out
of them, but not artistic pleasure.
That is why even a considerable artist such as John Ford
becomes considerable only at intervals. The rest of present-<iay
Hollywood, of course, does not count.
I accept that these very 'story matters' and intrigues and
howling good situations are raw materials of art. But raw meat is
not exactly 'Moghlai kebab'. A cook comes somewhere in
between.
A cook: that is, the artist's personality.
The moment the artist enten, things come throbbing to life.
From moment to moment, you realize with a sudden shock, that
it is your innermost feelings and unnamed emotions that are
being given voice to. You, in a word, have a revelation.
That is why the seen of the Upanishads are called poets. The
poet is the archetype of all artists.
Poetry is the art of arts.
The word 'art' in films is much abused, both by its friends and
its foes. But probably art is not such a bad thing after all. For
instance, whatev~r is pretentiously dull or breathtakingly
spectacular is not necessarily art. Art does not consist merely of
ambitious subjects or outlandish propositions or extensive use of
a newly available extreme wide-angle lens. It does not consist of
montage and manipulation of filmic time and de-dramatization
solely. Rather, it .consists of bursts of fancy. Whatever the genre,
art brings with it the feelirig of being in the presence of living
truth, always coupled with enjoyment.
Further than this the formulation must not go. Because it will
be dangerous. All aesthetic .theory tries to comprehend and
encompass reality. But all theory is, a priori, less than the sum
total of that reality. It is bound to fall far short of its aim. One can
have some guides to creative action-no more. Danger comes
from this inherent inadequacy. Because the next step in the
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Film and/ 5
career of a theory is its attempt at monolithic unity and
formalism. Llfe being varied, art being numerous in its possible
expressions, artists being gloriously dissimilar in their
temperaments, catholicism is the only possible approach from
now onwards, because film is just like any other art in its
functions, pundits notwithstanding. From the point of view of
final cons11mmation, the Tenth Muse is no mysterious maiden.
She cannot stand strait:jacketing,just as other arts cannot.
This is the reason why even the brilliant Dr Siegfried Kracauer
goes astray when he tries to impose his theory of 'Redemption of
Physical Reality' on all films. Hitchcock, to him, becomes a major
and significant artist and Olivier's Hamlet no film at all. 'The same
happens to Parker Tyler, when he tries to read exclusively and
intrinsically literary connotations out of all the films, in spite of
· his eminently valid 'Cult of Displaced Laughter'.
Film is not a form, it has forms. Nobody denies the speeial
privileges of the cine-camera, but one should not approach the
issue from that side at all-one should approach it from the
point of view of the emotions aroused and intellects sharpened by
one's end-product: the result that accrues, after all, you create
'for' the people.
That is why all the forms, from utter naturalism to extreme
expressionism, seem to me to be totally valid-if your thesis and
temperament demand it. Here I am reminded of Tagore. With
his vividly plastic imagination, Tagore hits the mark. One feels so
grateful to him. He faced parallel problems in his own sphere
and solved them in his inimitable way. Though Mr Eric Rhode,
the Sight and Sound reviewer of ~y•s Tem Kanya, calls him just a
formidable Guru, his was a truly transcendental vision, far
outreaching all the filmmakers of the world.
And what about Chaplin, who cuts across all theories?
I believe in committed cinema.
I mean, committed in the broadest sense of the term.
To me, the great Indian example is Pother Pancholi
because of its truth, its sense of beauty, its bursts of visuaf ecstasy
and of mental passion. I know I am being a bit old-fashioned, but
there it is.
Satyajit Ray, and only Satyajit Ray in India, in his more
inspired moments, can make us breathtakingly aware of truth,
the individual, private truth. The Indir Thakrun sequences of
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6 Ritwik GhataJc
that film remain for me the highest and noblest expreuion of art
in Indian films, somehow, Satyajit has achieved a link with
contemporary reality in those moments committed to that
contemporary reality, to the daily acts of heroism in that reality.
No important work can be created without this commitment I ..
am quite aware that this reality and this heroism can be aimed at
from the vantage points of past and future. That is also exciting,
to approach this India through· a story of, say, the India of ·
primitive buddhism because this commitment presupposes a
desire for change in that reality.
I am also aware that there are so-called 'eternal' elements in
art, eternal only from the point of view of a human existence.
That is the cosmic element AA playwright Ernst Toller expreued
it in one of his prefaces, it is 'The Silence of the Universe'
element But it always appears in contemporary relationships, in
the things of the moment No serious artist will ever deny the
position of this 'eternal' in the creations of man.
I have been experimenting on, in my films. These were the
thoughts behind them. To me, all my films are just completed
exercises-I cannot have any opinion about them. But when I
hear, for instance, that the nonrealistic cry of a consumptive
girl-'I want to live'-:just when she is at the point of death, is
horribly forced in the context, I truly wonder. I feel I have not
been able to convey the entire allegorical connection of Uma-
the wife of the Lord of D~struction, who is the archetype of all
daughters and brides of at1 Bengali households for tenturies-
with the protagonist. Or, for instance, when I hear that I am
guilty of expressionism in my latest film, and that expreuionism
and symbolism do not go hand in hand with reality, I tty to think,
then what are the things on which expressionism thrives? To me,
it is precisely contemporary reality, with its innumerable and
unwieldy patterns and crosscurrents of forces, that needs
abstraction, if I set myself the task of propounding certain
fundamental traits of that reality. I think much in modem art and
literature and painting have to be thrown out if we do not accept
this position. Picasso and Jamini Roy, for instance, will cease to
•
exist
This sort of theorization has exasperated people like Marcel
Proust·who declared film cannot be an art. He is the antithesis of
Dr Kracauer.
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Film and/ 7
This line of thinking one can understand, of course. Under
the shadow of the bomb, Western civilization is in the pangs of
death. These are but expressions, in film, of that crisis. When
learned men start ab11sing any abstraction, and blaming science
which is born of such abstractions for contaminating the minds
of men, one is reminded of the eighteenth and nineteenth
century yearning for the Noble Sawge. '.This pathetic clinging to
the superficial can make one feel merciful, but not partisan.
Trying to crawl back to the origins of cinema and exalting the
Still Camera plus Motion formula are ludicrous attempts. As
ludicrous, say, as trying to go back to Dionysiac orgies and satyric
mimes and the masks of Thespis would be today, in matters of the
stage. The same can be resolved with a sense of the
contemporary, of course, but in a synthesis on a higher level,
such as Stra~ Intmude of O'Neill or Strindberg's Drtam Play, or
more aptly in Brecht's experimentation. His Organon remains the
most brilliant attempt at such a synthesis.
And that is precisely what is happening in the hands of all the
masters of cinema, from Flaherty down to Fellini and Antonioni.
My first film was called a picaresque episodic film along the
lines of the eighteenth century Spanish novel Gil Blas De
Santi/lane; the second was called a film of documentary approach;
the next was a melodrama, and the fourth, nothing at all, just no
film.
To my mind, I am only groping. Groping to find the most
proper expression for the theme at hand. Sometimes I may have
connected, sometimes gone wide of the mark. I have tried to
experiment with forms of story, treatment, styles of making,
images, etc. Each one of my films is quite different from the
others, though I fear my personality and inclinations are in all of
them. From the compositional point of view, all the films have
divergent balancing principles, thought to be inherent to the
theme. In the sound tracks, including the music, I have tried to
weave different patterns.
It is the nuances I am after, the elusive, fleeting nuances. They
contain the life-spark.
. · Any story is good material if it contains scope for those
nuances. Even the songs and dances are not burdens around
your neck. They are creative elements with tremendous potential,
if the theme and approach call for them.
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8 Jutwilc Ghatak
There are so many genres. One accepts melodrama as one. I
do not believe in the filmic elements, even if one wants to catch
and poru·ay the very flow of life itself.
I do feel a quickening of heart when the camera shows the
instantaneous, the casual, the proverbial ripples in the water, the
everyday glory of a sunset, o.r an involuntary twitching of a
painstricken face. But I do not know out of hand the passions of
an Othello or a drunken clown's tirade about life to a ballerina
who is sick at heart..
I think a truly national cinema will emerge from the much
abused form of melodrama when truly serious and considerate
artists bring the pressure of their entire intellect upon it.
After all, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa and Kinugasa took the Noh
and Kabuki in their hands and squeezed supremely personal
statements out of them.
The prospect is exciting, is it not?
Originall:, publish«l in Montage, voL ii, ,w,J, 1963.
Original from
An Attit,ul,e to Life
and an Attitude to Art
Dr Kracauer is an eminent sociologisL The present book [ Theory

of Film: Redemption of Physical Reality] has, naturally, been written
from the point of view of a sociologist. It has raised certain
fundamental questions concerning matters about film.
NeceMarily, some pertinent assessment of the present-day social
fabric has been posited.
The book mainly outlines a historical study of the growth of
film through photography. The significance of film, its inherent
tendencies and leanings, are charted out with much erudition in
the book, and at the end Dr Kracauer takes up his own position
concerning his attitude to the present age, questions of art in
general and his theory of redemption of physical reality in films.
All his assessments stem from his own position as a socially aware
theoretician.
We must understand his fundamental concept concerning life
to understand his dicta concerning films. This review will mainly
concentrate on his social concepts as it seems that they need
closer scrutiny. And also, for persons in India today, detailed
instances from his book cannot be judged, as very few films that
he mentions in his book can be seen here. So no proper
judgement can be made upon this aspect of his book by any
reviewer here. And, strictly speaking, that is not necessary. The
core of this book is his above-mentioned assessment of reality.
So let us see what he has to say.
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10 Ritwik Ghatak
I
Dr Kracauer declares that Western civilization has come very near
to its ·end. He agrees with Spengler and Toynbee on this poinL
He rejects the possibility of any all-enveloping unifying patterns
of behaviour and reaction in the present age. Religion is out.
Freud is dismissed out of hand. Esoteric Eastern religions are
from an era which was before the scientific revolution. Marx is
not very important. Even Soviet fanaticism is bound to wane to
the same ideological exhortation as the liberal democr:acies the
moment it succeeds in achieving a state of well-being comparable
to America's. (Of course, it does not matter to him whether that
society in Soviet Union becomes classless or not by the time this
allegedly supreme target is achieved.)
So, civilization has reached an ideological void.
His other main contention is that, the more science becomes
all-powerful, the more it makes our thinking abstract. This drift
towards abstraction is enhanced by technological advancements.
So modem man sees a sunset-all about the sun and all about
the atmosphere and all about the rotation of the earth-but he
misses the radiance of the sunset.
Dr Kracauer's panacea is that we need concretion. We are
touching reality with our fingertips, but we must shake hands
with it.
On these two fundamental assumptions, Dr Kracauer bases his
material aesthetics.
Dr Kracauer has probably taken up this position slightly
hastily. H'.is theory of void needs careful attention. We, who do
riot belong to the same cultur_al milieu .as he does, do accept that
Western civilization, with.. its Christianity, classicism and original
sin, is doomed; we do believe that by giving birth to the
inoristrous weapons of destruction it is on the verge of collapse. .
We admit a breakdown of values. We agree with Dr Kracauer
about the volte-face of Spengler and Toynbee and the prospect of
annihilation. .
But we do not believe in the total void that Dr Kracauer
·arrives aL Freud's self-contradictory, disguised concept of original
sin Dr Kracauer has seen through. But why is he so strangely
silent about Jung's collective unconscious, the archetypal images?
As a sociologist we should expect him to ponder deeply on this
psychic study of social history.
Original from
An Attitude to Life 11
'Man's need to undentand the world and his experience in it,
symbolically as well as realistically, may be noted early in the lives
of many children. The symbolic, imaginative view of the world is
just as organic a part of a child's life as the view transmitted by
the sense organs. It represents the natural and spontaneous
striving which adds to man's biological bond a parallel and
equivalent psychic bond, thus enriching life by another
dimension-and it is tminently this dimension thal maus man what
he is. It is the root of all crtative activity and is not fed by repressions
(as psych~analysis believes), but by the power of the initially
imperceptible archetypes, working from out of the depths of the
psyche and creating the realm of the spiritual.' (C. G.Jung)
Man's spiritual make-up in Western civilization, and his needs,
are fundamentally misundentood in the book under review. The
above quotation needs deep thought, specially by any serious
student of the content in any art form.
The civilization of European peoples has come to its logical
end. Its moral superstructure, its unifying forces, are almost
totally disintegrated. But long before this civilization came into
being, the basic images were indelibly imprinted in the minds of
all men. This collective memory cuts across the present day, pr
more recent, boundaries of civilizations. The span here is much
br°.ader than embosomed in the visions of Spengler or Toynbee.
It is the collective unconscious memory from the primeval age. A
child, when he is born, carries with him sleeping primeval
reflexes and images. Dr Kracauer should have !!tudied Jung.'s
psychology of the unconscious. As the child grows up he becomes
heir to the values., or lack of them, of his milieu, and these
archetypes continue to guide his emotions, sentiments and
behaviour to an amazing degree.
To all artists (even artists engaged in film, a doubtful art), this
storehouse is an endless source of all creation. All appreciation
also is guided by iL All ripples on the leaves, all puddles reflecting
invisible house facades and a piece of sky, all these transient
things are included in the complex of reactions born out of the
social unconscious. All fairy tales, all fantasies, all tragedies, are
from the same source. It is the very meat of all art.
After all, the ruins of ancient beliefs are not the ruins of very
ancient archaeological remains.
The position of the unconscious in matters of all art should
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12 RjtwiJc Ghatalc
have been given much more, very much more, importance by Dr
Kracauer.
II
Now, the question of the conscious intellectual level. There also
the landscape is not as desolate as Dr Kracauer makes it out to be.
Of course, one concedes that Dr Kracauer's immediate
surroundings may be so.
To the author, the classlessness of society is not at all
important in human history. Dr Kracauer has dragged in the
Soviet Union (Marx is, of course, not as profound as Freud with
his egoistic fundamental theory of the individual man's sex
impulses). That is why a slight reference to the socio-political
landscape of today will not be out of place.
Dr Kracauer should have mentioned the beliefs (presumably
all-pervading) of Soviet Communistic fantasies. After presenting
the case he could have rejected their pleas. The silence, and a
casual reference to achieving a state of well-being comparab/.e to
that ofAmen.ca 's, seems like a dig.
Now these Communist fellows say that mankind today is in
prehistory, that history will begin with classlessness. The Soviet
space physicists claim that instead a whole new era is being
unfolded before mankind; by 1970 man will reach the moon, and
then the universe is before him.
That confrontation of man with his habitat, which is not earth
but the solar system and then the whole galaxy of the Milky Way,
will be of tremendously thrilling interest, these people claim. So
here is a possible alternative to Dr Kracauer's ruins, which may
unify on the conscious intellectual level all the human beings of
the earth, who will gradually come to the same level of
development within the course of a century or so.
Of course, the great God nuclear bomb permitting. That is
the latest hoodoo.
Dr Kracauer can get hold of the party programme of the latest
Congress of the hated Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
There in economic terms is charted out a future society, which, if
at all it comes about, will be of decisive importance in filling up
the void in the brains of the intellectual of West European
civilization.
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m
Dr Kracauer is very angry with abstraction because abstraction
culls the essential of the generally prevailing aspects of many
things and leaves out the individual traits of things.
Has man's 'brain ever done anything else? Is man's brain
capable of encompassing any physical reality in its entirety? The
object in reality starts in the human brain a subjective
cerebration, however rudimentary the case may be. Dr Kracauer
has in his preface let us know that he has adopted in the present
book the sensible procedure of disregarding the less essential
ingredients and varieties of film to get at its core, but in the body
of the book he attacks science and technology for doing the same
in their own sphere. Slightly contradictory, is it not?
The point.is, Dr Kracauer is betraying here another symptom
of the moribund nature of his civilization, of all that Western
civilization has contributed to mankind, I submit. The science
and technology which is the greatest, the best and the most
glorious part of one's own civilization is being rejected here,
however unconsciously, by one of its conscious representatives.
Because fundamentally the case is simply this: the breakdown all
around, the ruins, the mechanical contriv.u1ces, the hectic speed,
the purposelessness, have made Dr Kracauer sick and he is
apportioning the blame to science, reason, radical liberals and
technology.
As he has correctly guessed, the contribution of science and
technology will remain, and will continue to further complicate
modern man's everyday existence. Rightly and gloriously so.
There is a lurking anarchic trait in the author's mind when he
tries to cling to surface reality and momentary fleeting
experiences of life. It is a modern version of the eighteenth
century Rousseauesque clamour for noble savages.
The point is, man cannot think, feel or react without
abstraction. Not only science and technology-from the very first
day of his birth, man has continued to dwell in abstraction.
•
IV
The question of surface reality.
Dr K.racauer claims that the camera can and should record
only surface reality in order to be on its own.
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14 Ritwik Ghatak
This reviewer has not had the good fortune of having a whole
archive to himself or all the facilities that the Museum of Modern
Art, Film Section, New York, can offer. Very few films that Dr
Kracauer has mentioned in his book have ever come to this part
of the world. But the little that has been seen gives out an entirely
•
different picture. Let me ask the readers some questions.
When Anita Ekberg howls like a dog in the dead of night in
front of Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita, or when the night
club floor-show clarinet player plays Pied Piper of Hamelin and
beckons to Marcello, are they signifying only surface reality?
In Satyajit Ray's Aparajito, there is a shot where Apu stands
before a puddle in which some dots from the dark sky are reflect-
•
ed and Apu whispers, 'Orion'. Those who have read Bibhuti
Bandyopadhyay, who is the primary source, and in whose
numerous works this constellation of Orion recurs regularly-
and those of us who are.from the same cultural complex and who
•
know the implication of this constellation in our tradition-will
have a reaction which will largely be not understood outside, and
which is not just scratching the surface of ~hings. When the
convulsing protagonist in Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds lies
b.leeding on the burnt earth of Poland and dies, it is again the
'
same story. •
Examples can be multiplied endlessly. The point is, here also
abstraction starts operating. The moment an artist selects a
frame, lays out his plan of montage, he has already started
reshaping his raw material. His soul has entered there. A single
composition is as finite as.any Senecan tragedy. It is bound by the
conscious and unconscious of the artist. Any puddle anywhere,
reflecting anything, is meant as an instrument for channelizing
the spectator's reactions to a prearranged goal. Any sunset
caught by me and by you will be two totally different sunsets
evoking different reactions.
This is not to minimize Dr Kracauer's very valuable assessment
of the camera's ability to hold and perpetuate ephemeral reality,
but the privileges of cinema are being turned into fetishes and
jargons, this reviewer thinks.
Film will continue to hold such ephemeral reality, but Paul
Valery would be glad to find Anita Ekberg going on howling like
a dog. The involuntary twitching of a painstricken face will be
balanced by the high sense of doom of Rashomon. The admitted
Original from
crudeness of Hitchcock thrillers should not be valued for their
alleged showing of swface reality.
Dr Kracauer is totally right when he says that in films there is
an avenue for -g oing from below to above; but not the only
avenue, with so much of the gossip of surface reality for its own
sake.
V
Dr Kracauer's book is based upon a totally lo1>5ided thesis. His
fundamental assessment of present-day reality is a partial and
partisan assessment. It does not want to, or is not able to,
encompass the whole of reality prevailing today. His sense of
doom and hopelessness has made him despair. He wants to go
back to fleeting moments of tranquillity and peace. All his almost
poetic instances, which abound in the book, talk of peace,
freedom from care and worry and the feeling of being lost. This
would be understandable if Dr Kracauer were a filmmaker. It
would have been an admirable temperament, but these are his
private worries which he has tended to impose upon all of us as a
theorist.
Perhaps all theories of this nature are bound to be so. One's
own shortcomings, one's own surroundings are bound to
condition one's judgement. Perhaps one should not theorize.
Perhaps one should be aware of limitations that are imposed on
one. That is why Dr Kracauer is much more successful in the first
part of the book than in the latter.
Sometimes, one writes a book which bristles with quotations
and instances, but which does not achieve much more than an air
of pomposity.
A previously unpubluhed mnew of Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film:
Redemption of Physical Reality, Nn.v Yonl- Oxf<n"d Univmity fuss, 1960.
Original from
Jffiat Ails Indian Filmmaking
Even after an experience of over half a century and an enormous

output from year to year, filmmaking in India is still a gamble.
This is quite true. Although we have produced ace directors and
film technicians who can match in excellence the best the world
over. It is a pity that our financial roots are still unsteady.
In my opinion the gamble is in the nature of things as they
exist in our country. From the commercial point of view, our film
business is totally dependent upon the exhibition trade. But
exhibitors never gamble. They just make the cinema hall, and
they are not only guaranteed the value of their investment but
also a huge profit. It is quite strange that in this one business, the
state allows them to reap guaranteed profits. It is also worth
noting that there is no credit system in the show business. All the
exhibitors' earnings are in spot cash. And they never, or very
rarely, re-invest money in the film business. This is especially true
of Bengal. It appears that theirs is a case of a cistern with a leak.
Whatever finance comes into the industry is leaked out through
the exhibitors' cistern, never to return, and thus earnings are
never ploughed back into this business.
From an economist's point of view, this is the state of affairs,
and obviously this is at the root of all the chronic ills from which
the film industry in India is suffering. Black money, the star
system, uncertainty of getting back revenue, etc. are just compli-
cations of the superstructure, the roots of which can be traced to
this particular practice of business now being pursued in the
exhibition trade.
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What Ails Indian Filmmaking 17
Nmionalue t h e ~ 1rade
Nationalization of the exhibition trade is in order. I concede that
this is an issue which will need thorough airing and disctmion,
bolstered up by relevant data, but it is also a fact that attention
has never been drawn to this basic ill of the industry. Instead,
remedies in the nature of construction of new theatres,
proliferation of utility theatres all over the country and
discouraging the erection of luxury theatres etc. have been
suggested from time to time. But such remedies do not touch the
root of the malady. At best they can offer fringe benefits, and
even then there is a possibility that, if one does not touch the
vested interests, they _will give rise to another rackeL The vested
interests are, on the other hand, engineering the moral decay of
our youth, and glamour is the most potent weapon in their
hands. Glamour is inherent in the star system, and carries such a
strong impact on the susceptibilities of our youth that they are
maddened by a desire to become stars, neglecting all urge to
pursue a wide variety of other vocations through which they
could not only become useful members of society but also could
reach eminence by an extraordinary display of talents. The star
systein, with its glamour, is thus proving to be the bane of our
society. It can be eradicated only if we educate our filmmakers
and encourage them to make worthwhile movies, by showing that
such films can also pay. Simultaneously, we must also educate the
masses by affording them the opportunity to experience really
good movies of the world. But the success of all efforts will again
depend on how far we are able to tackle the fundamentally
unsound and immoral mode of exhibition in our country.
Good Films
My own experience in making good films which may also pay has
taught me that I am in a rackeL It sometimes rouses me to fight a
crusade. But I think that even in the present set-up one can make
worthwhile films and still make them pay their way. I say this on
the strength of my own experience. At the same time, the
example of so many other great filmmakers is before me. There is
another development which should not go unnoticed. Recently,
some of the big budget Bombay films have flopped. This
indicates that a formula film with huge.finances pumped in, is no
Original from
18 Ritwik Ghatalc
more a guaranteed success at the box~ffice.
People are changing. Things are changing. Times are
changing. If you go on showing trash ad infinitum, there is a
point after which people will not accept it. Besides this, people
are continuously having new experiences in their own lives and
they cannot be _satisfied with the old hash for long. So either one
should get rid of the set formula of hoodwinking the people,
which is extremely difficult and risky for unimaginative producers
or one should come clean, striking a harmonious chord with
contemporary urges, which can only be done by really creative
and conscious artists.
There are so many standpoints and theories hovering around
us about what should be called a worthwhile moyie, that one
simply feels bewildered. I am no critic. I have no panacea for all
the evils that beset a serious filmmaker, nor do I have the answer
to all the pet questions. I can only speak of myself rather than put
forward a well-computed guideline.
Arl Related "'Man

In my opinion, everything in this world is relative. One may take
this as my statement, or as Einstein put it in scientific terms. So all
should be relative to something. In my thinking that something is
man. For art cannot operate in a void. In our case it is the Indian
man and his environment which should be the focus of our
attention:. It is with this standpoint that I judge not. only cinema
but all works of art. That which helps man is valid, That which
does not is not valid, whatever trappings it may have. At the same
time, I am not a supporter of slogans. That would be an infantile
disorder, in my opinion.
Cheap slogan-mongering, or talking of high-flown principles;
will not make art. Art needs meditation, deep penetration,
humility,
.
awareness. of the magnitude of the task and a total
feeling of oneness with the prqblems at hand. All great art has
these in abundance.
It is often debated whether an artist should just pose a
problem and leave it at that or whether he should also indicate a
solution. I think that this a very immature way of looking at
things. If the artist feels the urge to put forward a solution, he is
welcome to it. But more often, he poses a problem and leaves the
- .
Original from
What Ails Indian Filmmalting 19
matter there .. Both these treatments arc equally importanL We
cannot mechanically dub one optimistic and the other pes-
simistic. That which grows naturally out of the material and out
of the mind of the maker is completely acceptable, but whatever
emerges must .co·mc spontaneously. The question is whether the
artist is partisan to life or man or noL ff he is, the problem never
occurs at all.
- Good cinema cannot be divorced from life. It must represent
the throbbing aspirations of the people. It must move in step with
the times; It must have its roots in the people .. The Bombay
cinema, in my view, has no roots. It must be admitted that India
has different cultures. This country is still far from being
integrated in that sense. ·c inema can be serious only if it
conforms to certain social conditions that the audiences arc
familiar with. I think the Bengali cinema is such. Marathi cinema,
.too, has a chance to be serious on this score.
I am sure that films produced with low budgets do have a
future in India, provided, of course, that they are good films
related to life. We have the instance of Mrinal Sen's Bhuvan
Shome. He has made a Hindi film aimed at the responsible
minority of the whole country, and he has shown that not only
can a good film be produced on a low budget but also that it can
succeed commercially. Such attempts should be hailed. ff more
and more people come out with such ideas, they can give rise to a
very vigorous trend in Indian filmmaking.
Though the use of colour by itself cannot be called extravagant,

in our . country
'
it is so only because it is used without much
thoughL There are subjects that cannot be expressed except in
colour. It should also not be .forgotten that our people are a
colourful people. It is a matter of using colour where necessary
and not just steeping a subject in gaudy colours without rhyme or
reason.
Young Talent
There is no dearth of young talent in our country. .More and
m~re are coming up with the right urge and aptitude. I know that
some boys trained at the Film Institute, Poona, have tremendous
Original from
20 Ritwik Ghatak
possibilities. But they need encouragement. It is a .sad story that
while the Fihn Finance Corporation can advance about 60 lakhs
of rupees to veterans, it does not advance even one lakh for
experimental films to young talent. I am sorry to observe that this
Corporation has become just a stronghold to encourage. black
money. If finances at its disposal are utilized properly, it is certain
that young talent can take up the challenge of serious filmmaking
in our country.
While the State should not hesitate to nationalize the
exhibition trade, it may leave the field of production and
distribution alone without meddling with them. Any attempt at
curbing the initiative of the artist through whatever means and
on whatever pretexts, will only spell disaster to the free develop-
ment of good cinema in our country.
Originally pubwhed in tM Amrita 'Razar Patrika,
Sunday Magm.ine, 10 May 1970.
Original from
Music in Indian Cinema
and the Epic .r11.-...
We, the younger generation of Indian filmmakers, hne

developed a tendency of fighting shy of the operatic forms of
•
cmema.
There are reasons galore, of course. The tradition of musical
film, specially as practised by Bombay filmmakers, is a monstrous
tradition. Moreover, it is a most unfilmic tradition. Over and
above that, this tradition directly stems from the corrupt,
inartistic and vulgar art fonns of jatras, nautankis, opera-plays, and
other hybrid stage productions. These fonns were holding sway
in our land just before the advent of talkies.
So, when the educated representatives of our bourgeoisie got
the tools of creation in their hands, they laughed this fonn of
entertainment off the stage of serious filmmaking.
An extremely logical develoment, this expurgation.
But now has come the time for fresh evaluation. (I am, of
course, speaking here only of Bengali cinema.) We are now slowly
realizing certain facts concerning our people and our art.
Ours is a naturally melody-loving people. All our emotions are
realized 'in our typical melodic note-combinations. With the
growth of our virile civilization of a mere five thousand years,
rnusic has entered our soul.
Also, we are an epic people. We like to sprawl, we are not
much involved in story-intrigues, we like to be re-told the same
myths and legends again and again. We, as a people, are not
much sold on the 'what' of the thing, but the 'why' arid 'how'. of
it This is the epic attitude.
Original from
22 lutwik Ghatalc
So, the basic folk-forms-forms which the latter-day vulgar-
izations developed, along with devastating and .epoch-making
social.and political changes, and which the early filmmaking aped
and further bowdlerized-are always kaleidoscopic, pageant-like,
relaxed, discursive, and their contents have been very well known
for tho11sands of years.
And always, music has retained a decisive part in them.
Here we find a direct parallel with Athens of 450 BC, the
Athens of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes. In
short, that age of Greece where artistes could and <lid draw from
the common mythic fund of the Homeric legends.
·Now the question is: Can Indian cinema come into its own
without assimilating this folk attitude, at least for ~ period?
It is extremely doubtful that it can.
Even Europe had to knock its head to find out a way in order
to be virile. Leaving aside Renaissance paintings, or literature or
even poetry (which in particular had to grope its way from
Elizabethans down to Cocteau) one finds that in dramaturgy and
films also this urge is manifest. ·
Bertolt Brecht is today hailed as the greatest visionary the
stage has produced after Shakespeare. His entire theory of 'epic'
theatre is based upon a reasoning similar to ours. And,
significantly, music, and specially folk-melodies of both the east
and the west, play a vital and inevitable role in his scheme of
things.
And, remember always that he had to build up this 'epic'
attitude in the minds of men through his theories of 'Alienation'
(Verfremdung).
In our. country, this epic attitude is still a living tradition, or
was, a short while ago, especially in rural areas-and by far the
largest of our cinema audiences reside in precisely those areas.
This convention of using melodies, in human voices even, at
places, using them as special song numbers-is this as crude and
un-cinematic as we make it out to be?
I shall cite only one example.
Michael Cacoyannis, that great Greek filmmaker, has recently
completed his latest masterpiece, Ekctra. Significantly, the subject
is from the old Greek master, Euripides-because the script is
strictly based on the Oresteian tragedy.
The whole film is a study in arrested motion. Nothing moves,
Original from
Music in Indian Cinema 23
upto a certain poinL As if we arc continually holding our breath
in apprehension o{ imminent matricide. The camera continually
hovers on desolate, blasted landscapes. The figures move
surreptitiously, we only glimpse them through long-shots, as if
alienated from them.
Then comes the fatal hour. Clytemnestra is murdered,
murdered horribly.
The camera stays outside, mercifully. And then the chorus
arises, a choral finale in true tragic manner according to the age-
old Greek .tradition
.
.
With the musical wail, the camera starts panning wildly. All
the arrested motion is unleashed now to shatter the suspense that
was built up so long. That grand chorus absolves us, redeems us
and takes us to a height only music can take us to.
This chorus was treated as a separate 'song-number' ... That is
why I always insist that melody and music as such have a place in
films, in their own righL
Especially in Indian cinema. .
But, of course, .we must orientate our entire creative
endeavour. along the channel, the channel of epic mentality.
Originally published in Artist vol. I, no. i, January-March 1963.
Original from
Digitized by Google UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ·- _j
Bengali-Cinema: Literary lnjluenct!
Today the Bengali novel is, in my opinion, in a moribund

condition. From among the thousands of books that have come
out in the last twenty years, I cannot remember more than five or
six that are worth mentioning. The rest have obviously been
written with filming in view. They are notably conspicuous for
their crassness and lack of sincerity.
: The relationship between the cinema and the novel has now
become a two-way affair. Literawre is cramming in all kinds of
cinema cliches and stock situations which authors think will
endear them to film producers. And films are based on such
stuff, thereby giving·a further fillip to such writing.
The result: the growth of banality and vulgarity in literawre
and cinema. Both are boring and slow and packed with
sentimental stuff. They harp endlessly on certain family relations
and complications which are non~xistent in reality. They mouth
the same kind of pedestrian morality. They strike poses which are
patently false, and even insulting to the intellect.
This was not the case with literature in the nineteenth century
and the first half of the twentie't h century. Authors then wrote
because they had an urge to express some inwardly-felt truth with
honesty and sincerity. Bengal achieved at that time a literature of
truly imposing stature. This was so up to the last war. Today's
pedlars were unknown at that time . There was dedication,
passion for truth and beauty, and a sense of responsibility.
Nawrally, when cinema came to Bengal, it was instantly under
the influence of this great body of work. From the very
beginning, cinema drew lavishly from the great novels and
Original from
Bengali Cinema 2-'
considered it an honour and a privilege to do so.
This gave Bengali cinema a goal and a direction. It was a
positive gain.
Decay t.f l;ie,atun

However, literature.soon started decaying. Yet we clung to iL The
more serious among us started looking into the past for exciting
filmic material. All the great novels talked of a Bengal of at least
forty years ago. The result was, we lost contact with present~y
Bengal. The throbbing reality around us was completely
bypassed. Writers like Sarat Chatterjee became our guardian
angels. And that tradition is still going strong.
Here we must take into account a cardinal factor-the
question of audience. From its very birth, Bengali cinema has
been a middle-class affair. To start with, the Bengali working
class, as a class, is of very recent origin. And all Bengali films, even
today, are patronized largely by the middle class.
This class indelibly imposed its philosophy and taste on
cinema. If I may say so, weeping is one of the pleasures of people
from the middle class. They like to have a good cry. They seem to
derive some kind of pleasure from such crying. No one knows
better than Sarat Chatterjee the sure film formula that invariably
tugs at their heart-strings. These people want bold words but
always shrink from a really bold social solution. A family
entanglement, with, preferably, a female protagonist who suffers
and eventually wins, has a tremendous fascination for them.
So, our filmmakers seek and film such works. This goody-
goody middle-class way of thinking still keeps our filmmakers in
shackles. Filmmaking is, by and large, merely photographed
story-telling. Technique is of the crudest kind. Any plastic
possibility that the medium may have is not taken into accounL
Of course, even in the olden days, there were some exceptions
to formula filmmaking. The name of P C Barooah comes to
mind. Here was a man who, in the late thirties, sometimes
explored the potentialities of this plastic medium. His Grihadaha .
marks some of the earliest successful and significant transactions
in films. In his Uttarayan, he utilized the subjective camera to
telling effect. Surrounded by mediocrity, he sometimes gave off
sparks of pure cinema. Though, in the ultimate analysis, he
Original from
26 .RuwiJc Ghatalc
remained a product of hi.• milir.u. .
The rqot cau.sc of the poor state of cinema was the utter
reliance on novels of different levels in quality. This is why, in my
opinion, literature was an evil influence on Bengali cinema. This
influence ~d not allow the film to come of age. Our audiences
were smugly happy in their ignorance and complacency.
This condition prevailed until some years ago. In the early
fifties came a b~eak. Some groups of young intellectuals started
considering cinema a serious art-form. This way of thinking
gathered momentum slowly and culminated in Path.er Pancho.Ii
and the emergence of Satyajit Ray. It is true that this film was also
based on a famous novel. But for the first time the story was
narrated in the filmic idiom. The language was sound. Artistic
truth was upheld. The fundamental difference between two art
forms was delineated.
From that time the trend towards serious filmmaking has
been apparent in Bengali.cinema, though the old school did
carry on happily. Unfortunately, both schools leaned heavily on
literature.
Why unfortunate? Because, the serious filmmakers, in then-
search for truly great works, had to turn to the past to find
something worthy of serious attention. The contemporary was
banished even from their work. But can cinema
. fulfil
. its function
without looking at its surroundings? It cannot and has never been
able to. Let us forget those celluloid storytellers, they are not film
•
men; even the persons who know what cinema is, and what to do
with it, are at the crossroads. On the one hand, they have to crawl
back to an earlier era, an era which does not exist any more, for
truthful material. This makes their films remote from life as it is
lived today. On the other hand, these men display a servility to
literature which is, to say the least, not filmic. How many great
films are being made out of material from a different medium? It
is the original vision and expression that are wanted. And mighty
few of our works belong to that category. ·
If we look around the world, we will see that modem cinema
is largely born out of original material. Also, that literature is on
the decline. Cinema is increasingly becoming aware of its own
power to express that which is inexpressible in any other
medium.
When I consider all this, Bengali cinema presents a gloomy
Original from
Bengali Cinema 27
picture indeed. Yet, I find a false sense of superiority, an
unjustified pride, in our cinema. This attitude is eating at the very
roots of the cinema in Bengal. .
Cinema cannot but be engaged, committed, to be worthy of its

mission. That is exactly what our cinema is not ~ the broad sense
of the term. It does not po1uay the burning reality around us.
What is the miMion of cinema? I do not mean the approach of
some filmmakers, operating both in Bengal and elsewhere, which
is uninformed, foolish and sly. They pounce and peddle
lc;>ngwinded words about big ideals and any recent national
calamity, grafting this so-called purposeful talk on to age-old
formula films. I mean the awarenea, the sense of reaction of a
truthful artist to the small things of life-literature today has
abandoned th.is approach completely, and seems to have no
intention of resuming iL Our cinema is toeing the line.
From the foregoing let it not be thought that I reject out of
hand all films and all literature being turned out today. There are
happy instances, even today, of truthful films based on novels,
and our literature is not all dead. But it is a question of
proportion, to my mind. And that proportion is becoming
alarming to me. Although the influence of literature on cinema
brings many positive gains, these gains are being neutralized by
other factor-s not so desirable.
It may be true that, considering that state of filmmaking in
other parts of India, Bengali cinema presents coherent,
consistent and logical fare, but that is not enough. Moreover, I
consider cinema to be something international and, in that
context, these shortcomings loom very large. We have to catch up
with the best of world
. cinema. .
There are heart-warming and welcome signs all round in
Bengal. Large sections of Bengali audiences are sitting up and
taking notice. They are being aroused. They are clamouring for
the ptesentation of reality in cinema. Scores of film societies are
springing up all over. They are organizing audience thinking and
reaction, educating the intelligentsia in film appreciation. ·
Seeing this rapid growth, I am reminded of things as they
were many years ago. College students liked to join a literary
Digitized by Google Original from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
- _,._.. . .: ,
28 lutwiJcGhatalc
circle and become poets. Today they join a film society.
Because, in Bengal, cinema has become the vanguard of
culture in place of literature. The youth, the student, the white-
collar worker-they are all yearning for true cinema, committed
cinema, pure cinema, from our filmmakers. They want no more
of those re-hashed stories and novels which speak of days gone
by.
They deserve it!
Originally publish«!. in Filmfare, 1965.
Original from
&periment:al Cinema
The word 'experiment' with reference to fihmpaking has become

almost a clichc. Experimentation in cinema is a vast and tricky
subject. Experimental films are also called, at times, 'art films'.
Experiment in any medium is the extension of the potentialities
of the medium itself. Experimental films are explorations in the
cinema, by people who seek self~xpression in art. Each of these
pictures is a personal expression of the artist and it is invariably
the product of a single mind.
Experimentation in cinema can be of two types:
( 1) Experimentation with the medium itself.
( ii) Experimentation with the medium for other purposes.
I
&pt, ifflffllation with tM m«liu,n itself
This son of experimentation can be classified into two groups:
(1) Mechanical-technical and
( ii) Artistic.
Mechanical-technical. You must be knowing that the National
Film Board of Canada has an artist called Norman MacLaren. He
continually experiments with the medium itself~ He goes to the
extent of creating sound by scratching the soundtrack. Sound,
you know, can be of two types, (a) varial>le area and (b) variable
density. The former has been used till now. McLaren scratches
the soundtrack and produces peculiar sounds which cannot be
produced in the normal way. He has been eminently successful in
his experimentation. This is experimentation in the mechanical
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Digitized by Google UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN --
30 Ritwilc Ghatak
sense. Similarly, all the wide-screen systems you have been
hearing about o_f late, like Cinemascope, Todd-AO and
Cinerama-all these are the results of experimentation in the
mechanical field. Abel Gance, way back in 1928, used the triple
!!(:Teen systems for his picture Napoleon. The anamorphic lens is
the basis of all wide--screen systems. Ultimately the developments
have culminated in Cinerama and 'total screen'. This is exper-
imental in mechanical-technical terms.
Artistic. When we talk of 'experimental films', we mean
artistic experiment, which is a tricky proposition. It .can be
experimentation with lines, circles etc. Psychologists have proved
that such kinds of experimentation
. have a tremendous impact on .
audience minds. If an artist tries to experiment with lines only, to
create certain emotional moods, then his experimentation comes
under the. 'artistic' category. The same applies to anyone who
wants to experiment with colour--colour has so many facets for
creating emotional moods. The same is also true of music (not
songs), which is the most abstract of all arts. Certain moods which
you ·cannot express through lines or colour can be created
through music. Let me recall in this connection Walt Disney's
Malce Mine Music, which is really experimental in the sense that it
is a collection of musical theme.s on 900 to 1000 ft. length of
films, and also his Fantasia, which is an exploration into the
abstract aspect of 'music'. Although Walt Disney has crudely
commercialized his innovations, they are very seriously done.
This sort of abstract approach to the medium can be truly called
experimental. It is really a joy to try to invoke certain moods
through abstract types of experimentation. .
Then there is the surrealistic approach, the school headed by
Salvador Dali and others-Luis Buiiuel was a surrealist in his
early film, L '.Age d 'Or ['Age of Gold']. This approach calls for the
abstraction of re.ality for its essentials, as the artist thinks fit. In
Bunuel's othc;r film Un chim andalou, in the rape sequence we se·e
abstract images in quick succession, such as the scratching of an
eyeball, dripping blood, a huge piano, two dead donkeys on the
piano ... etc. This is one kind of experiment. I am over-
simplifying the facts of experimental cinema. Whatever be the
experiments, all of them are trying to find the limit, the end, the
border, up to which the expression of film can go. This is the
basic approach of all experimental cinema. It is the concern of
Origi,nal from •
Experimental Cinnna 31
artists like Buftuel, Fellini, Eisenstein, Pudovkin-their concern
for man has given a lead to experimentation in the cinema. They
throw men into a situation and probe deep to find how much
they can realize. Their deep concern for humanity, for man and
his society, is the primary r~ason for their creative activities in the
experimental field.
La Dolce Vita is an experimentation in the sense that it has
summed up the whole 2000 years of European civilization, which
is decaying and dying, within the framework of a motion picture
of three hours' duration. Fellini took up a form of a peculiar
type-a structure of filmmaking never before tried by anybody-a
structure full of symbols. From ~e filth and dirt of Roman high
life and lower life to the absolutely frigid sexy film star all these
are summed up in a sea-monster writhing and dying. His hatred
for his surroundings and the pus generated within modern
society has been summed up in this symbol. Dr Steiner says he .is
afraid of the times in which he is living, and later, when he
commits suicide after killing his two children, the police
inspector asks the hero Mastroianni, who happens to know him,
me reason. Mastroianni says: 'He was afraid, afraid of the present
world.' These are gems, words which carry more meaning than a
volume of sentences.
Eisenstein experiments when he uses the intellectual montage
in October. Flaherty experiments when he puts the lone cajun boy
in the path of the onslaught of industrialization in peaceful
bayou country. In my own Ajantrilc, I have tried to experiment
with a strange love between man and machine. These are all
·attempts at experimentation. Eisenstein's compositions and takes
in &ttleship Potemkin were experimental in their time, but not any
longer. Experiment is an ever-living and never dying thing. 'How
can I do something new . ·. .' should be the attitude of anyone
wanting to make experimental films. Experimenters always have
to be alert.
In Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, for which Alain
Robbe-Grillet wrote the script, we are never introduced to the
characters. Resnais has tried tQ walk backwards and forwards in
time, just as in a dream. His justification is that, while you
experience a dream, you do not find anything illogical. You are
wholly immersed in it. In an inteiview, Robbe-Grillet stated that
· this is an attempt to catch the dreamlike quality of. the film.
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32 RitwiJc GhataJc
French artists have a reason for experimentation.
2
&.1-e• un,11latioa with 11N . . . . .for od,o-,,,,,,,_
You can experiment with the film medium to explore the
outside world. Just like in that fine documentary on the Todas,
The Vanishing Tribe. Tribals like the Onges of the Andamans and
the Anganagas of Nagaland arc a little stream in the development
of Indian life and culture. Films made on their mode of life,
customs, festivals, gods, have a wide anthropological and cultural
interest. These films can definitely be called experimental,
because their makers take their cameras to remote comers of the
world and endure heavy odds trying to record their experiences
as they find them . . .
Ta/Jc giwn at the Film and Television Training Institute, Pune,
16 &f,lnnber 1964.
Original from
&perimental Cinema and I
In India, there has not been much experiment in film. The few
which have been made have mostly been in Bengali. There have
been some stray attempts in other provinces, like the latest one by
M. F. H11sain about an artist's approach to the world. But all this
falls into that ambiguous territory called 'Documentary'.
It is only in Bengal that some feature films have been
attempted which may go by the name of 'experimental'. I am not
competent to speak about other people's work, so I refrain from
commenting on them. I can only speak of my little experience.
My first film, Ajantrilc., is normally called an experimental film.
I don't know how far that is true. But I have been asked from
different quarters for whom am I making this film. I always
answer that I am making it for myself and for nobody else.
This does not mean, to sympathetic people I say, that I have a
narciuistic approach to art. And films seem to be art. You must
be engaged to society. You must commit yourself t~ be for good,
against evil, in man's destiny. I don't mean like Roger Vadim,
who is interested in Napoleon's life because he wants to show the
contour of Napoleon's couch, where he used to enjoy women,
and not his historical role . . . the same goes for my opinion of
people like Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet-they
represent the decadent forces in Western civilization. I consider
them completely invalid as experimentalists. For instance, I have
had the doubtful pleasure of seeing Hiroshima mon amour and
L'annk dern~ ti Mmienbad. These films seem to me completely
hollow, gimmicky, ·and posed. I refuse to take them to be real
experiments in the b1le sense of the term.
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34 Ritwik Ghata/c
This brings up the question: what is experiment? Herc lies the
crux. As we all know, everything in this universe is relative.
Experiment in films, in relation to what?
In relation to man and his society. Experiment cannot dangle
in a void. It must belong.
Belong to man.
I have seen some films by Western filmmakers like Fellini,
whom Gerasimov condemned in Cannes as working out a drain
inspector's report in his film La Dolce Vita, but Fellini has
portrayed most boldly and most sincerely the life around him as
we saw it. It is a death certificate to Western civilization. In my
films, I have tried to portray my country and the sorrows and
sufferings of my people to the best of my ability. Whatever I
might have achieved, there was no dearth of sincerity. But
sincerity alone cannot amble very far. My ability limits me, and I
can operate within that limitation.
In my humble opinion, Komal Gandhar probably tried to break
the shackles that strait:jacket our cinema. It has a pattern and an
approach which may be tentatively called 'experimental'.
Subamardcha. Here is a film in which I tried to deal a straight
knock-out blow to the nose. It pulls no punches. It has been
called melodramatic, and probably rightly so. But critics should
remember the name of a gentleman called Benoit Brecht; who
dealt with coincidences and who developed a thing called the
'alienation effect'.
His epic approach to things has influenced me a lot. I have
tried in my little way to work out, with the tools of my profession,
some similar works: To me, this is experiment. It may be
justifiably said that it is not. I have no quarrel to pick with such
, opinions. And I end this small essay with a little quotation from
Tagore.
Tagore somewhere said that all art must be primarily truthful
and only then beautiful. Truth does not make any work a piece of
art, but without truth there is no art worth its salt.
We'd better remember this.
.
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Cinema•and the Subjecti.ve Factor
The symbolic-imaginative view of the world is just as

organic a part of a child's life as the view transmitted by
the sense-organs. It represents the natural and
spontaneous striving which adds to man's biological
bond a parallel and equivalent psychic bond, thus
enriching life by another dimension-and it is
eminently thi.~ dimension that male.es man what he is. It
is the root of all creativity.
C. G.Jung,
The Colkctive Unconscious
The two fundamental types of mind are
complementary: the tough-minded, representing the
inert, reactionary; and the tender-minded, the living
progressive impulse, respectively; attachment to the
local and timely and the impulse to the timeless
universal. In human history the two have faced each
other in dialogue since the beginning, and the effect
has been that actual progress and process from lesser to
greater horizons, simple to complex organizations,
slight to rich patf.C:ms of art work which is civilization in
its flowering in time ... there is a deep psychological
cleavage separating the tough-minded 'honest hunters'
from tender-minded 'shamans'.
Joseph C~pbell,
The Maslcs of God: Primitive Mythol.ogy
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36 Ritwik Ghatalc
The etymological relations between seizure, fury,
passion, spirit, song, ardour, being-outside-oneself,
poetry and oracle characterize the creative aspect of the
Unconscious, whose activity sets a man in motion,
overpowers him and makes him its instrument. The
superiority of the irrupting powers of the Unconscious,
when they appear spontaneously, more or less excludes
the ego and consciousness; that is to say, men are
_seized and possessed by these powers. But since this
possession causes higher, supra-conscious powers to
appear in man, it is sought after in cult, ritual and art.
Erich Neumann,
The Grtat Mother
I apologize for starting off in such a manner-with a barrage of

quotations. But, unfortunately, these are essential for establishing
the point that I am going to make. And there may be some
consolation in the thought that we have got rid of them once for
all.
Whenever one has to think of the subjective aspect in cint~ma
one has to trace it through all the arts; nay, through civilizat ·,n
itself, and through the very roots of all creative impulses. 1·he
matter cannot be taken up in isolation.
Since Depth Psychology and Comparative Mythology have laid
bare certain fundamental workings of the human psyche as ever-
recurring constellations of primordial archetypes, our task today
has become easier.
We now know, all that creates art in the human psyche also
creates religion; a medicine man, a 'shaman', a 'rishi', a 'poet',
and a 'village woman possessed by a seizure' are, fundamentally,
set in motion by the same or similar kinds of unconscious forces ..
. And these forces are the very ones which are continually
nourishing the subjective psychic bond, giving an inner subjective
correspondence to the objective creation around us.
It follows that all art is subjective. Any work of art is the artist's
subjective approximation of the reality around him. It is a sort of
reaction set in motion by the creative impulse of the human
•
unconscious.
The entire history of human civilization shows a peculiar
phenomenon. As William James has termed them-there are
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Cinema and the Subjective Factor 37
always two types of minds operating through the length and
breadth of human history: the 'tough' and the 'tender-minded'.
The tough-minded are always the 'honest hunters'. It does not
matter whether they hunt for mammoths, dollars, pelts or
working hypotheses. The tender-minded ones are the 'shamans',
the rishis and the poets, the seers and the singers, the possessed
and the inspired of this world.
It is the second kind of men who are eminently the vessels or
vehicles of that force of the unconscious through whom and
whose creations become manifest the images and symbols of that
dark deep. Objectivization of this essentially subjective element is
the task allotted to such men.
And thus the dialectics is born: the interplay of the subjective
and the objective.
As civilization progresses, Prometheus becomes Aeschylus.
From here branch off many theories. Sometimes there is no
theory, but practice.
What would you call Gorky's works, for instance? I personally
would like to call them 'Essential Realism'.
In what category could fall Fellini's La Dolu Vita? I do not
know. That sea-monster topples all logic!
In fact, I have neither the space nor the inclination for going
into all the schools and theories of subjectivism.
I find the subjective wherever the exaltation is, whatever the
inspiration is, on this level.
All art, in the last analysis, is poetry. Poetry is the archetype of
all creativity. Cinema at its best turns into poetry.
There is a saying in· Comparative Mythology concerning the
'blood revenge' psychology in primitive man. By a strange
alchemy in the human psyche, 'All that is killed turns father.'
In art, all that is subjective turns poetic.
And cinema. sometimes, seems to be an art.
Originally published in Chitrakalpa, voL2, no. l, October 1967.
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Some Thoughts onAjaotrik
For twelve long years, I had thought about this story before I
made it into a film. When it first came my way, accidentally, I was
a green boy, newly come to Calcutta and fresh from the
university. Ajantrilc caught my imagination and held it for ten days
at a stretch-for more reason than the alliteration with my name.
I thought about it for a long time in a vague and general sort
of way. Never concretely. What struck me most was its
philosophical implication. Here was a story which sought to
establish a new relationship in our literature the very significant
and inevitable relationship between man and machine.
Our literature, in fact our culture itself (i.e. the culture of
middle-class city-dwellers) has never cared .very much for the
machine age. The idea of the machine has always held an
association of monstrosity for us. It devours all that is good, all
that is contemplative and spiritual. It is something that is alien to
the spirit of our culture the spirit of ancient, venerable India. It
stands for clash and clangour, for swift,· destructive change, for
fermenting discontent.
I am not a sociologist. I cannot explain the phenomenon.
This apathy may be due to the fact that all change and the very
introduction of the machine age was the handiwork of foreign
overlords. It might have more comprehensive causes,
encompassing all the pangs of Western civilization. But the end-
product of all these causes seems to be an ideological streak
which is doing immense harm in all practical spheres of life.
This attitude is hardly compatible with the objective truth as it
obtains in present-day India. Or in our future, for that matter.
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Some Thoughts.on Ajantrilc 39
With all our newly achieved technology, we have yet to find ways
of integrating the future into our heritage. The order of the day
is an emotional integration with this machine age.
And that is precisely what A.jantrilc, the story, has achieved for
the first time in our literature. It has achieved it in a unique, and
in my opinion, typically Indian way. It contains that quaint
indigenous flavour in its plot structure, its characterization, its
very style of narration.
Also, it rings true. It rings true in every line of it. I have seen
such men (I have had the doubtful pleasure of meeting Bimal
himself in real life) and have been able to believe in their
emotions. There lies the greatest source of power of the story.
I had a chance and made the film. It was fun all the way
. through-it is still fun while grossing exactly nothing at the box-
office.
There were other points of atuaction for me.
FU'Stly, the story is laid in a terrain which is one of the least
known to normal Bengali film-goen. They have no emotional
attachment with it. Try however I might, I could not peddle in
nostalgic sentimentalism, which is the curse of many a fine
worker in this country. I had to create new values, all within the
span of the film itself. On the other hand I could cash in on the
novelty of the landscape. The different planes and levels are
rcfieshingly unusual to the plainsmen of the Gangetic delta.
Secondly, the tribal people. They are the people who own the
land where the story is laid. Without them the landscape would
lose its charm and meaning. I cannot manhal my camera on any
spot without integrating them into my composition.
· Also, it is a silly story.
Only silly people can identify themselves with a man who
believes that that God-forsaken car has life.
Silly people like children, simple folk like pea.cants, animists
like tribals.
To us city folks, it is a story of a crazy man.
Especially the fact that it is a machine. Had it been a bullock
or an elephant or some other animal object, it would not have
been so difficult. We could imagine ourselves in love with a river
or a stone. But a machine there we draw the line.
But these people do not have that difficulty. They are
constantly in the process of assimilating anything new that comes
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40 Ruwilc GhataJc
their way. In all our folk art the signs of such assimilation are
manifesL
This pr~ess is even more marked among the tribal people of
Central Ind,a. The tribe I chose-the Oraons are very culture-
minded and have this tendency in a pronounced manner. I had a
nodding acquaintance with them, having been among them as a
documentary filmmaker for about five years. And I wondered
again and again at their vigorous imagination. They would fully
undentand Bimal, for they themselves are like him.
The Oraons have the same attitude to externals which i,s the
emotional thesis of this story. I found an affinity between their
pathetic ·fallacy and Bimal's. For this reason they provided the
ideal setting for this film. I could utilize their many significant
customs. The different moods created by their high-flying
bairoMis (flags) tilted at different angles and dangled in diff~rent
tempos is an expression of the most artistic temperament. I admit
that these and many other things were too specialized in their
meaning to have any general significance. But if I could go on
integrating them into my pattern of things in a consistent
manner, I could hope to arrive at a cumulative effect which
would be a major contributing factor beyond just local colour.
Thirdly, the story has a ramshackle car as its central character.
This very fact threw up so many plastic and dynamic potential-
ities. I could always fall back upon mechanical speed what with
opportunities of bringing in the time-honoured mechanism of
the chase and hair-breadth escapes and breakdowns at judiciously
chosen moments!
Fourthly, we had to work with the poorest possible materials
and that, too, on a shoe-string budget. This film threw us a
challenge at every step. Every shot taken was every shot achieved.
This seemed to me to be really invigoratj.ng. It is a situation in
which one curses oneself at every step and likes iL
All these considerations drove me to Ajantrilc, and I jumped at
the first opportunity to make iL
Originally publish«!. in Indian Film Review, Deambn- 19.58.
Original from -
Filmmaking is not an esoteric thing to me. I consider
filmmaking-to start with a personal thing. If a person does not
have a vision of his own, he cannot create. People say that music
is the most abstract of all the arts. Though I am a disciple of one
of the greatest -gurus of India Ustad Alauddin Khan-I think
that filmmaking can be and is more abstracL
I am not going into the df'taih of filmmaking. That is for the
audiences to sec. But I can talk of something else which no
filmmaker ever talks about. That is the people's co-operation,
without which nothing could ever have been made.
I can cite certain examples. I think that will help our
countrymen to undentand how great our people are.
While I was making my latest film, julcti Talclco ar Gappo,
['Arguments and a Story'] I had to go to a village and had to stay
there for a few days. _
The persons with whom I had to stay were a poor peasant
couple, victims of my exalted didi, Indira Gandhi. I was at that
time oozing blood, as I had six cavities in my left lung, that, too,
at a very advanced stage of pthysis. Before every shot I would start
vomiting blood. This peasant couple looked after me and fed me
(though I had enough resources with me). One night I asked the
lady (the wife), 'How do you live?' She said, 'Rice, wheat, bafra,
bhutta. everything is a dream to us. We have a small plot of land
from where we bring some Mindi which we sell in the market ten
miles away, and buy a little mustard oil. We cannot buy kerosene.
So we cannot afford the luxury of a lamp in our huL'
They eat almost poisonous herbs from nearby jungles once a
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42 RuwiJc Ghatalc
day. The whole night they live in the dark.
She said, 'The authorities have not yet been able to steal two
things from us, God's air and the sun. But they will.'
I am supposed to be a hard-boiled nut, but believe me, tears
came to my eyes.
Such is the condition of my people, and what kind of films do
we make!
Then let me tell you about another incident. In I 972 I was
making a film in so-called Bangladesh-Titas FJcti Nadir Nam ['A
River called Titas']. I was shooting seventy-two miles away from
Dhaka town. I had a stint of about fifteen days there. I shot my
film both in a Hindu village and fifteen Muslim villages by the
side of the river Padma. On the last day of the shoot, the village
chief of the Hindu village asked me to ferry across and have
lunch with him and his family. When I told my unit members to
have their lunch they thought that I was going to a booze party.
Because I am well-known as a drunkard. So I drove them away
and relished the very simple food that the chiefs wife dished out
to me.
While I was going back to my launch, I had to pass through
the Muslim village where I had also shot the film. The chief there
accosted me and said, 'You have to eat with us tomorrow.' I told
him that my work there was complete, and I would go back to
Dhaka and then to Calcutta. He said, 'Insha Allah agar Khuda ne
chaha to tu:mhe saJcnahi padq;a, aur mat sath lt.hana padega.'
I smiled. Then I went back to the launch. My cameraman told
me, 'Dada, I think there have been some error in the use of
filters. If you allow me to take your car to Dhaka, I will proce§
those shots overnight and bring back the re~rt by dawn.' And
the long and short of it is that he came back and said that all the
shots were NGs. So I had to stay on.
Next morning, when I went to the Muslim village to shoot, the
chief of that village told me, 'Sala, didn't I tell you yesterday that
you would have to eat a meal with me?'
I had to sit and eat with that rascal, and he fed me like
nobody's business!
Then I remember, in 1956, I was making a film A.jantrilc in the
deep interior of Ranchi District in Bihar, forty-six miles away
from the nearest railway station. I had to shoot a dance sequence
with a tribe called the Oraons. They had many peculiar social
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Filmmaking 43
customs. One of them is called Dhumkuria; it is a kind of village
club. I had to put up there, though my unit stayed in a nearby
forest bungalow. But because I had to be intimate with these
people, I had to stay, drink and dance with them every evening. I
suddenly became feverish, running up a high temperature.
Prasadi, an aboriginal girl, looked after me and nursed me back
to health, like a ·mother. Mind you, there was no doctor at all
within a thirty or forty mile area. It was deep.in the jungle. I shall
never forget that village girl. The memory remains. I wish I could
know her whereabouts.
I can enumerate incidents like this a hundred times more
interesting because I have spent thirty-two years of my blessed life
in the bloody game of ~aking.
In conclusion, let me I give you a beautiful example of what
we city folks are like. Some months back I was in New Delhi,
staying at a Bengali guest house which is just off the end of
Anand Parbat. Some friends of mine also reside there, in the
nearby jungle, who appear to be better than us homo sapims
(human . beings). They are golden-haired monkeys.· Every
morning some rich fellows used to come in a car with a bunch of
bananas and throw the fruits to the monkeys.
One day a poor vagabond boy came to one of those fellows
and begged for one banana. He was beaten mercilessly and all
those bananas went into the stomach of monkeys.
Such is life and what films we make!
There's no gainsaying it.
Originally publish«l, posthumowly, in Chitrabeekshan,
vol. 9, nos. 4-7,Janw:ny-April 1976.
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Rows and Rows ofFences
You might have been a bit more indulgent towards us if you only
knew how many fences we have to cross to make a film.
We could begin with our minds. It would be wrong to assume
that we arc all ready with a rich storehouse of clear and beautiful
ideas. As a matter of fact, we are all busy groping abouL We are
yet to sort out all the stuff in our minds, and all the possibilities
that lie buried in this medium called film, that we have chosen
for ourselves. Moreover, this whole business of filmmaking is such
gruelling work that once we get on to the job, a lot of our
fantasies seem to slip out of our minds. The· still, quiet setting
then gives way to an enormous sacrific~al arena, glowing with
heat, with hundreds of workers and hundreds of jobs caught up
in a glorious festive dance.
Only a small part of the little that had been thought out
initially gets realized at the end.
All this has to do with one's own incapacity. Imagination will
always take a beating like this from reality. But over and above,
there is that ceaseless passio~ of ours to feel the pulse of the
people and measure how it beats. Our means to measure the
pace of the pulse is woefully inadequate. A mistake there takes its
inevitable toll: But anxiety and uncertainty over the ultimate
impact of the film goes on shaking every bit of self-confidence all
the while that the film is being made. It is reflected in the work of
art itself and produces a different result.
Painful speculation over what people will accept and what
they will not can be terribly agonizing, as every sufferer knows for
himself.
This is one row of fences that comes to mind. Then one can
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Rows and Rows ofFmces 4,
think of criticism. Private criticism or face to face criticism or
collective criticism have just properly begun in our country. All
the criticism that has some influence appean in the ncwspapcn.
The artists in their tum, however, arc not benefited to the extent
that they should be. The main reason being that whenever a film
is criticized, it is approached in total insulation, divested of its
connections with time and people. There is a serious lack of
undentanding of pe1spe(tivc, of the background that a work has
in its indigenous culture. It is the absence of such an
understanding that drives us again and again to sick courses.
Behind every film there arc a few men who have done
something earlier, and have been showing signs of doing
something more in the future. Any attempt to point out to these
people the direction they should take would be meaningless
unless the critic takes care to point out which virtues and failings
visible in their earlier works have been dropped in the present
one, and what that indicates. The main point about the film
remains unsaid if the critic does not indicate the mainstream
against which the film appears and what trend it comes to
strengthen. The film under consideration represents a particular
wave in the larger current of filmmaking at a given point of time;
hence it is the critic's obligation to underline what force the film
strengthens in the given political setting of the country. It is also
essential to take into account what place the particular film
occupies in terms of the achievements in the other arts, for film is
now slowly coming to be judged by the parameten of art.
The aesthetic and emotional evaluation of a film can be
accomplished only when all these aspects are drawn into the orbit
.-the concerns of the people of the country, the achievements of
this particular .film in terms of several achievements in several
other wonderful works of art, and the social value of filmmaking
here. It is only an evaluation on these terms that can measure
correctly the errors and visions and blindness of the artisL
Only if this is achieved will the artist draw lessons from
criticism. But that is something that never happens. Criticism
only serves to erect a further fence of egotism around the artist,
who develops a foolish streak of obstinacy; and plunges him into
the game of hurling stones into the darkness.
Now take a look at another aspect, that of business. We can
make a film only if some people are prepared to shell out some
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46 Ruwilc GhataJc
cash. And they would naturally like to get their money back with
some profit in the bargain. They would naturally invest their
money in a proposition -about which they are persuaded that
their profits are assured. That is yet another difficult fence to
cross.
Let us leave the producen ouL For, after all, they are not the
real investors. It is the distributors and the exhibitors who
constitute that chosen race. There has been a lot of writing about
and laughing over what the distributon and exhibiton have had
to say, but that has not annihilated them. Their ideas still rule the
roost. For they have always called the tune with their money
power.
Sounds scary. But that's the truth. It does not help at all to
ridicule it away. One has to take it in all seriousness. And only
once one does that can one build towards a protest strong
enough. But the protest has to take recourse to their own
arguments to beat them down. As long as that does not seem to
be forthcoming, all that we can do is to try to make them
understand and try to work with them on the basis of that
'!ffldentanding. The only other way left is to stop working. And
since that makes no sense at all, we come face to face with the
issue of stepping over the fence that this problem represents.
And we are left with no option but to follow the ancient principle
of wisdom that advised the learned man to give up half of
anything rather than lose the whole of it. All the assaults we
direct against this system are bound to be futile, for the economy
itself sustains iL
That can be no excuse, for all excuses are hateful, and there
are differences between men. It would be a betrayal of the
struggle if the excuse is treated as absolute. And that would be
positively nothing short of obscene. Filmmaken like us will be
gratified if people just accept the fact that we are fenced in.
It often happens that there is a film that could get a fair run
with a little bit of enthusiasm and hard work going into
promoting it. But an attitude that begins with the assumption
that it must be an odd fish, and therefore without prospects, so
send it to hell, is enough to send it to the rubbish heap. This is
the one line of business where loss is synonymous with not being
able to make the highest possible profit, and that, too,
immediately. There is no consideration of future prospects in this
" Original from

Rows and Rows ofFences 47
busineu. Dreamen dreaming of immortal an are total misfits in
this paradise of literalncu.
Those who run like race horses in this field live in a state that
one does not feel like discussing at all. An account of the
arrangements within which these tradesmen of cinema operate
would make for a tome that could compete with the best mystery
and adventure stories. ·
Now we can come to you, the spectators. You are the real
support of the busineumen. The goat can fight only from the
strength that it cao draw from·its support. You get wh~t you like.
You don't like the new kind of films. You like a complete work of
art like Pather Pandaali, the kind of work that appears only once in
an age. Otherwise you go for things that are not worth making.
You could never accept A.pamjito. The lou was more youn than
the artist's.
If the more aware of the spectators cannot arouse the
conscience of the common people through setting up film clubs
or by any other means whatsoever, then you deserve your Bat-tala
and you do not have any right to cry over the fact that there is no
Rabindranath Tagore for you any longer. I am totally convinced
that the loss is youn. It does not concern the filmmakers, really.
They are staking their private lives and family lives alike. But that
leaves them with a mad joy, the joy of a passionate meditation.
But you are left with very little, and soon there will be nothing for
you.
And yet it is all in your power. You are all-powerful. You have
the final say. Why don't you attack, hit out! But let us live, if you
find any reason why we should live. If you do not find a reason,
scream it out. Write to the newspapers. Gather a crowd at the
nearest street crossing. Shout in your clubs. ·A dead Bengali
culture is clinging desperately today to this new medium. Why
don't you prove once and for all that you do not want it, and let
that be the end of it all! Then we can move on to make the
blockbusters with a clear conscience, and sit bare-bodied puffing
at our hoo~s. It is time to decide which side you are on.
You are a fence younelves, the most ominous, perhaps.
Our country has produced the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata. The philosophy that our peasants carry with them
is something rare in the rest of the world. We love our misery. We
love our joy, too: But we shall not give you up till we are entirely
Digitized by Google . Original from

48 RjtwiJc Ghatalc
sure. The world of cinema throbs with the certainty that
something will be born.
Try to feel our presence. Try to undentand that we are sailing
through a flowing river. What we are right now is not our
consummation. We shall grow, we shall become large and cast a
large shade around us. We are waiting for water.
You should have been able by now to recognize that we are
professional filmmakers, who have to move within the stern
constraints of the trade and have to make commercial films.
Shakespeare created a great character called Falstaff. We are
his descendants. A critic called John Palmer had something
wonderful to say about Falstaff whom he described as 'the most
vital expression in literature of man's determination to triumph
over the vile body. He is the image of all mankind as a creation of
driving intelligence tied to a belly that has to be fed.'
To fill our bellies remains the main problem-the •
problem
that leads to all the degradation, all the sins.
And yet the right to fill the belly is one of man's birthrights,
which has been denied to him ever since he left behind the phase
of primitive communism. He will return to that state again once
the communism of the future envelops his life. But spread
between those two points of time lies a nightmare of reality.
There will be a time when the drudgery of survival that has
covered for ever all the good that man is capable of will be
suddenly lifted, allowing the will and capacity of mankind the
freedom of hydrogen, and then we shall not come whining to
you. The memory of primitive communism itself is the guarantee
that there will be a time like that again. That was a time when
everyone had food. But it needed a lot of labour to create this
new world which brought civilization into being and made it
possible for man to catapult to the fiery dust of the surface of the
moon.
There will be a time again when there will be no firing on the
streets, and no weeping mothen. And we shall be making films to
our hearts' content. For then many of the fences are bound to
fall to the dusL
Originally published in &ngali as Sari Sari Panchil', in the ptriodical
Chalachchitra, 1959. Translated by Sami/c Band-,opadlryay.
Original from
My Films
We were born into a critical age. In our boyhood we have seen a

Bengal, whole and glorious. Rabindranath, with his towering
genius, was at the height of his literary creativity, while Bengali
literature was experiencing a fresh blossoming with the works of
the Kallol group, and the national movement had spread wide
and deep into schools and colleges and the spirit of the youth.
Rural Bengal, still revelling in its fairy ·ta1es, panchalis, and its
thirteen festivals in twelve months, throbbed with the hope of a
new spurt of life. This was the world that was shattered by the
War, the Famine, and when the Congress and the Muslim League
brought disaster to the country and tore it into two to snatch for
it a fragmented independence. Communal riots engulfed the
country. The waters of the Ganga and the Padma flowed crimson
with the blood of warring brothers. All this was part of the
experience that happened around us. Our dreams faded away.
We crashed on our faces, clinging to a crumbling Bengal,
divested of all its glory. What a Bengal remained, with poverty
and immorality as our daily companions, with blacltmarketeers
and dishonest politicians ruling the roost, and men doomed to
horror and misery!
I have not been able to break loose from this theme in all the
films that I have made .recently. What I have found most urgent is
to present to the public eye the crumbling appearance of a
divided Bengal to awaken the Bengalis to an awareness of their
state and a concern for their past and the future. As an artist I
have tried to remain honest, and it is for the future to decide how
far I have succeeded.
I began work on Subamare/cha after I had completed Meghey
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Digitized by Google UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN •
50 Ritwilc GhataJc
Dhalra Tara and Komal Gandhar. It was not so simple, however, as I
put it now. I have known extreme anxiety, hassles, physical
debility, after completing every film. It is impossible to explain to
an outsider, to one who is not in the business of making films,
how intolerably difficult it has become to make experimental
films in Bengal. The situation is most critical now, with the cost of
filmmaking almost doubled. How can one expect a producer who
has invested three to four lakhs of rupees in these days to go on
supporting experimental films, if as a businessman, he cannot
recover even his investment?
In spite of all this, I took on Subarnarelcha after I had
completed Komal Gandhar. Let's not get onto the question of all
the hurdles that I had to cross to make this film.
I would rather recall an episode from when we were shooting.
We were camping at the time on the bank of the Subamarekha. I
did not have a clear plan of the narrative sequence to be followed
in the film in my mind as yet, and was doing outdoor shooting
out of sequence. One morning my younger daughter ran up to
me to tell me how she had been scared by a Bohurupee who had
suddenly appeared before her, while she was walking alone on a
mud road in the fields, and had chased her in his horrible guise
of Kali. In a flash I could see Seeta, the central character of my
film, as a child of today, screaming out in panic, maybe in the
same way, as she suddenly confronted Mahalrala.
I sought the Bohurupee out. I did not know how exactly I
would use him, I had no clear idea as yet; still I carried out the
shooting. I do not know how credible it has appeared in the film
to the viewers, but for me it has been vitally significant. In the
film, I have drawn on this theme of Mahalcala in several ways to
underscore the hollow values of modem life rent asunder from
its moorings in the pumnic tradition.
I have used _the· pumnas in ·the same arbitrary manner in my
earlier films too-in Meghey Dhalra Tam and Komal Gandhar, for
example. The traditional songs that circulate in Bengal at the
time when Uma is supposed to return to her in-laws' home have
been used as part of the music in Meghey Dhalca Tara, just as
wedding songs are profusely scattered throughout Komal
Gandh.ar. I desire a reunion of·the two Bengals. Hence the film is
replete with songs of union. When the camera suddenly comes to
a halt at the dead end of a railway track, where the old road to
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MyFilms 51
eastern Bengal has been snapped off, it raises (towards the close
of the film) a searing scream in Anasuya's heart.
Such a use of Mahalcala offers certain advantages that are
associated with th~ use of mythology in art. On the bank of the
Subarnarekha I have seen an abandoned aerodrome sprawling
over a large area. A little boy and a little girl, fascinated with
wonder and lost amidst the ruins of that aerodrome, have gone
searching for their forgotten past. The two innocent creatures
would not know that it is several such ruins of aerodromes that lie
behind the disaster that looms over them. Still they play in the
midst of destruction and ruins. How frightening their innocence
isl
Subarnarelha is not a flawless film. The story chosen was
screamingly melodramatic. I have joined the differe~t phases of
the narrative, one to another, to make it a story of fateful
coincidences. There are several novels that offer parallels for
such plotting, e.g. Gora or Naulcadubi or Shesher Kabita, all by
Rabindranath, where the author is not concerned exclusively with
telling a story but more concerned with attitudes as they evolved
with the events. Such coincidences, even if they occasionally
appear incredible, would not really jar as long as there is a
verisimilitude to it all.
The death of Abhiram's mother or Ishwar discovering Seeta in
the brothel would not appear incredible if I have succeeded in
projecting the problems of Abhiram and Seeta, and Haraprasad
and Ishwar authentically.
The divided, debilitated Bengal that we have known for days
on end is in the same state as Seeta in the brothel. And we who
have lived in an undivided Bengal survive in a daze after a night
of orgy.
There has been such a spate of talk and discussion around
Subamarelha that one need not add to it. And yet I am most
surprised to find audiences failing to accept Komal Gandharwhich
I consider to be my most intellectual film. I have a hunch that the
film will come into its own maybe after twenty or twenty-five years.
It deals with a problem that may not have become intense
enough for the Bengalis as to endanger their very existence.
Anyway, in both the active and inactive phases of my life as an
artist, I have realized that it is imperative for the artist to live in a
state of daily struggle, struggling against a wide range of
Original from
inhibitions. Once in a while a crisis may overpower an artist
temporarily, but that should not be allowed to drive him to
compromise. In other words, we should never surrender to a
crisis, and abdicate our conscience, our wisdom, our being.
Originally published in Bmgaa as ~ar Chhabi', in the pe,iod.wJJFtlm,
Autumn wue, 1966. Tronslal«I /;,J Samik Band.~.
Original from
The Film I Want to Make on Vietnam
For any filmmaker today, it would be a grave and sacred thought

to think of making a film on Vietnam. It would be audacity and
even a sin to talk about it lightly or without deep involvement. or
without a serious study of all the facts about Vietnam. But that is
the sin I will be committing in the course of this piece.
Whatever I know about Vietnam I have gathered from the
newspapers, a few pictures and features in some reviews. I have
never been to Vietnam, and have never been able to feel its pulse.
Still I have somehow got the impression that the event itself
amounts to the turning over of a page of history. I have the
feeling that Vietnam will give the course of world history a new
. tum.
. There is something else. To make a film I have to confine
myself to Calcutta or to Bengal at the most. I do not consider it a
hindrance. I would rather find it promising as a precondition for
creativity in the arts. For the little that I have realized about
Vietnam tells me that the fight in Vietnam is being fought here,
too. For Vietnam stands as a symbol of protest against
exploitation all over the world. It would be wrong maybe to take
it for a symbol, it would actually stand for the ultimate extension
of that protest. All the miseries and lamentations of our country
have found a magnification in the war in Vietnam. That is
someµung that the American ruling cla.s.1 has never realized, and
tJ:iat is why Vietnam has stunned them. Or maybe turned them
into a pack of rabid dogs.
I have heard of filmmakers in the countries beyond the ocean
who have planned to make films on Vietnam, and some have

..
,4 Ritwilc Ghata/c
made them already. I am not speaking here of the journalist
filmmakers who have recorded the war in Vietnam with great
power. I am s~aking of those who live far away from Vietnam
and have sought to be a part of the war there through the
exercise of their intellecL They are bound to fail, I think. I have
had the privilege of seeing a couple of films on Hiroshima inade
by groups of the same kind. That experience has led me to this
speculation. Yet another thing co~es to mind. A well-known
French director has expressed his desire to make a film on
Vietnam. Some years back he was offered a chance to make a film
on Napoleon. The gentleman said that it was not Napoleon on
the battlefield, nor the battlefield itself but the couch on which
Napoleon slept with his women that carried the greatest meaning
and artistic suggestion for him. Hence he would begin his film
with that bed. It gives me the shivers to think what would happen
if directors like him take on the theme of Vietnam.
For Vietnam today has become a fad along with many more
such issues. So-called intellectuals have jumped on to the
bandwagon already. They can never feel or capture the cry that
rises from the bleeding heart of Vietnam or her burning
commitment. For like the American ruling class, they, too, will
never feel the pulse of Vietnam. Like lkebana or the Bishnupur
horse, Vietnam is one more toy that helps them remain modem.
They can use it to identify with the dangerous trend of glorifying
so-called human relationships. Let God take good care of them.
Let me now share with you my thoughts on how my film
sh<?uld progress. The thoughts will naturally be somewhat
chaotic.
A Calcutta slum.
A room, one of the shabbiest.
A mother, beside a sick child. A voice from outside. The
mother draws some country liquor from a vessel in the corner.
The sick child cries out.
The smoke from a newly lit oven outside. The mother .hands
the bottle of liquor over to a man.
A police whistle rises over the child's wailing. A m.w of people
run in from all sides and make a circle.
The police whistle ... the child wailing ...
The sound of a rocket taking off.
An American bomber. Split into two in mid-air. It will drop
Original from
The Film I Want to Ma/u on Vietnam 55
now. (All this in stills, for I would like to bring in the real war in
Vietnam all the time only in stills. Against the stills I shall play out
rhythmically the images of a living, moving country.)
Beginning from something like that I propose to project the
crimes of helplessness that the poorest people of our country
indulge in, a tendency that we would not normally show in our
passion for the struggling faces of the people that we project so
gloriously most of the time. It will be my mission to reveal the
entirety of the truth, for these so-called crimes in their meanest
manifestations are part of the cold reality of our struggling
people. I propose to reveal at the same time the interplay of
cause and effect that lies behind these. The images of Vietnam
will serve as a commentary on these.
Then I propose to move on to a phase where I would project
the dreams of the downtrodden as dreams, a phase that will be
conceived entirely in musical terms and to a certain extent
choreographically, with no trace of realism at all. This phase will
be illuminated by flashes of scenes of attack launched by .the
brave young men and women of the national liberation front of
Vietnam. For they will appear to be determined to realize those
dreams. The phase will come to a close with a scene of musical
celebration with thousands of little children in a mad frenzy of
dancing. Their dancing will be rhythmically joined to the scenes
of the liberation armymen jumping from trench to trench in
their progress.
In the last phase I shall concentrate on upholding the
militancy of the masses. Against a poem by Ho Chi Minh in
translation being recited loudly there will be a sequence of scenes
showing the struggling, working masses in a wild abandon of
activity. I propose to try to capture the pulsations of the life of the
common masses that remain a mystery to the exploiters. I would
like to embody in my film the spirit of life that sends its roots
deep down into the earth and draws from its sap, the spirit that is
born of hard steel and the sweat of the body, the spirit that
breathes through the depths of contemplation where lies the
profoundest peace. ·
I do not know whether I would be able to capture it all, but I
shall still try.
This is how I propose to end my film.
A young man hit by a bullet. He may be a student, or a

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN -~
56 Ritwili Ghatalt
The young man will fall on his face on the ground with
pca.1ar11.
his scream, a combination of agony and ecstasy, ringing through
the air. Even as he crumbled into death he would snatch at the
earth again and again with both his hands. My camera would
reach beyond his hands to fix on the mu, of blood with the earth
sucking it up slowly.
That is where another Vietnam is being born. A Vietnam that
is immortal.
'Vietnam niye je chhabi kane chai', pubushed originally in &ngali in a
bnx:huTtfortM West Bengal Youth Festival, in 1968.
Tromlaud by Samik Bandyopadhyay.
Oigib,ed by Google Original from

UNIVERSITI OF MICHIGAN
1wo Aspecb of Cinema
The Mind: Dajd,aanlifff

Daydreaming!
Birth of Art!
A reckoning of it all.
No aesthetics, no pompous theory, only an attempt to get to
the roots of aesthetic creation entirely in terms of my personal
experience. When I turn to all those artists and thinkers around
me, I have a feeling that it was perhaps that touch of the
im~atioil that adds a glow to the vision that lay behind their
greatest achievements.
I am not going for the present into philosophy or anything of
the kind. I am merely hinting at the sheer magic of those flashes
of illumination that all of a sudden ~ts off something ineffable.
And that, too, I'll convey primarily through my experience in
•
cmema.
It is part of the obligation of every artist to keep, ever watchful
and evergreen within himself, a capacity for wonder. Without that
capacity there is no way a big task can be accomplished. The
subtle secret .underlying an act of creation is ultimately a matter
of staring in silent wonder at whatever it may be, or being
overwhelmed by something ephemeral, or losing oneself in the
fullness of pleasure, and then at a moment of tranquillity long
after, drawing that private feeling out of the storehouse of the
mind, to deck it up and breathe life into it.
Every artist somehow manages to carry his childhood with
him, tucked into his pocket, right into adulthood. Once that
eludes him, he is left an old fogey. He ceases to be an artist, and
Original from
.58 RjtwiJc Ghatalc
becomes ·a theorisL This childhood is an extremely fragile mental
state, a state of folding into oneself like.one of those shy delicate
creepers that wilt at the slightest touch. At the gross touch of the
workaday ~orld it shreds into a hundred fragments, withers and
loses its sap.
All artists must have had this experience.
And it is one of those stabs of wonder that set the mind flying
on a voyage of conquest astride Subachani's lame duck in the
Aban Thakur story [Abanindranath Tagore (1897-1951), painter
and writer, who in his Bu.do Angla ('The Thumbsized', 1920-21)
had his thumbsized hero flying through spaces on the lame duck
of his neighbour Subachani, literally 'she who has the gift of the
word'].
Subachani's lame duck.
That first sudden emotional thrill that sounds on the chords
of the hearL
It has been like that so many times in my life. Even before I
first began to think of making films, I often suddenly stopped in
my tracks for no apparent reason. I watched clouds piling upon
clouds above the river Padma, and imagined a myriad houses up .
there ... I could hear a hub of human voices . .. and a tremor
ran through my limbs. My mind set off at once along the course
of that feeling till it lost itself in the land washed by the empyreal
Ganga, where there was such a lot happening ... where joy and
misery were woven continually into intricate patterns . .. and
consequently an endless succession of stories and images came
into being.
As I looked at Gagan Thakur's Dwaralrapuri [Gaganendranath
Tagore (1867-1938), painter, cartoonist and writer] I had a sense
of an alien current of life flowing beneath those layers of roof ...
and there began a story. Images crowded upon me, strange
combinations of sounds swirled in the head, a state of semi-
madneM tore one away from the immediate world.
Death, 0 My Death (an illustration for Rabindranath Tagore's
Maran, He M<W Maran) by the same Gagan-babu evoked fqr me
the image of a mother, her face in semi-darkness, indistinct, and
yet so inten~ly true, rocking her child ceaselessly its vibrations
pulsated within me.
On a rainy day, drops of water course along the telegraph
wires, rushing towards where the wire slopes; one of them spills,
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Two Aspects 59
while another joins yet another to roll with it for a while before
abandoning the security of the wire to fall to the earth. It has
rhythm, a story, an image, and music.
Peasant women come down to the roadside along Jagubazar
froi:n villages not so far away, to sell vegetables. Buying and selling
continues throughout the day; the dark, naked, little boy, carried
by the mother, roams around the whole day, a ·chain with a bell
around his waist, fighting battles with the water flowing in the
drain or out of a rotting tubewell, for the better part of the day,
and the rest of the time indulging in the luxurious pleasure of
crying and being a real nuisance to the mother, till he seeks
shelter in her lap, utterly exhausted, and half asleep, as night
falls. The mother herself is tired after a long day's buying and
selling. On her makeshift stove made of bricks, she lights a fire
with straws and twigs, and sets a pot of rice and lentils boiling on
it, and, her chest bared, stirs it with a wooden ladle, as the little
boy, lying in her lap, sucks at her breast and throws his legs
about. Now and then one hears the dismal tinkle of a rickshaw
bell, or sees a car or two whizzing pasL As I watch the scene, my
imagination wafts me away to the woman's home. My mind goes
on weaving an ineffable design made of the land, the paddy field,
the fishery, fights, poverty, humiliation, tongue-lashing,
deprivation, anger, affection and love. The night scene in
Calcutta opens out at once to accommodate this other scene,
which now occupies a large part of it, and the mind goes on
building the structure of a whole film. It is a resource that waits to
be put to use some day somewhere. ·
Close to my house, at the stop for buses and trams, there often
waits a plain and ordinary young woman, bearing the mark of the
sheer exhaustion that comes at the end of a whole day's work and
a load of papers and bags. Her tousled locks form a halo around
her face. Some of them stick to her forehead with sweat. I can
read history in the lines of subtle anguish that have gathered
around her lips. I follow my imagination into the ordinary but
'
unforgettable drama of a life that is strong, determined,
inflexible and yet delicate, sensitive, and capable of infinite
endurance. To every artist his own life is perhaps partly at least
like the Seem Life of Walter Mitty. Whatever he sees strikes him, his
mind stirs to respond, and daydreaming, he moves into all those
lives, and becomes part of them. For that fragment of time, he
Original from
. T 'I
60 .Ruwi1c GhataJi
loses all sense of his surroundings, and his physical bearings, and
draws those lives into himself, making them an organic part of his
being. ·
. The process is akin to those transitions envi.cagr.d in Yoga-
passing from Dhyana to Dharana to Samadl»-or the transcension
to the Phana, that ultimate state of the soul, as the Sufis conceive
iL Then you really feel the state of 'Suyahang, anal hale'. One feels
one has become 'Insan ul-lramif, that is, the pure and the true
and the holiest of men. ·
All these are mischiefs perpetrated by Subachani's lame duck.
The artist cannot survive without Sahanubhuti [liL 'feeling in the
same manner with, or feeling with', but translated as 'sympathy']
in its etymological sense. There is no end to all the various
conditions in which one has to locate oneself in imagination, the
range of the seen and the unseen into which one has to plunge
and lose oneself, and the sheer variety of the creatures that one
has to encounter. One has to tell on~self, 'I have done this, and
have done thaL If I had been so and so, and there had been a
situation like this, how would have my character been moulded
by it?'
In a word, to be an artist one has to gloat over one's triumph
over the rulers of men. The lie is what gives life to art.
And pride. There can be no creation without pride. But it has
to be the creator's pride, not pride in the mundane .sense. The
automobile of the imagination needs for its petrol the confidence
that nobody in the world has ever done what I have done, nobody
is doing it now, and nobody will be able to do it in future .
Without that input, it gets stalled. No sir, you cannot make a film
without pride, infinite self<onfidence, and the stem capacity to
dream infinitely.
When one comes to make a film, in the midst of a tho,,sand
odd .mechanical and out-and-out bodily harassments, one has to
shelter and nurture and nourish one's discreetly treasured
childhood, however hard it may be, for that is the primary
condition.
Film is not like any other art. It is something totally for
drudges to make. When you are engaged in making, there is no
scope for the luxury of dreaming. In fact, there is every chance of
making a hash of it, with, on the one hand, the sheer physical
strain and the hassle of chasing a whole medley of people with
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Two Aspects 61
the most diverse dispositions to run willy nilly towards the sam~
goal; and on the other hand the financien baring their fangs at
every point; and on yet another hand, the responsibility of
completing the stuff on time. Unlike other arts, there'll be too
much to lose if one chooses to get moonstruck and stay agape.
There is all the likelihood that the film will get entirely mucked
up in the process. .
One has to smuggle one's vision in, through this process
surreptitiously. How can one do it unless one has a lot of conceit?
A few of my learned and distinguish~d friends have taken me
to task for saying such things from time to time. They have read
sentimentalism, delusions, averseness to struggle, and contempt
for class consciousness in this attitude of mine, and have
castigated me for being guilty of this sin. .
I have several questions for them, quite a few in fact, but I'll
confine myself to a couple or so for the present. Haven't they
been in love? Hasn't a lover or the wife (obviously not the lover!)
ever bunt in on them with a load of drivel at a point of rapture?
Haven't they ever felt. waking up all on a sudden on an autumn
momi~g. dazzling in sunlight sparkling on the shiuli flowers
scattered on the grass, the thrill of the body hy itself, like a
youthful, healthy animal, bucking like a Turkish colt in the sheer
glory of being? Haven't they ever felt a profound contentment at
the sight of the quiet grace of a daughter's face or the wild
turbulence of a son?
The poet who is fascinated by 'a face in the demonstration'
_also loses himself in 'my Bengal' [a reference to a poem
celebrating 'a face in the demonstration' and a collection of
short pieces on suffering and protest in Bengal-Amar Bangla, lit.
'My Bengal', 1951, both by Subhas Mukhopadhyay (b. 1919),
major Bengali poet] . Is it something new to them that all this
takes place, consciously or unconsciously, within a scientific
design, in a class society? What is more significant- is that she _w ho
cooks also tends her hair! A million clenched fists rise to the sky
militantly asserting their existence, even as the beams of a
fledgling sun fall aslant on a cluster of paddy stalks, touching
their edges and turning them into shimmering lines. The film
reports from both the frontiers, fights at both. I do not belong to
those who would abjure the company of men and build their
castles on the clouds. However glamorous a progress away from
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62 Ritwilc Ghatak
humanity may appear, it is a movement towards a rupture from
humanity. The more an artist absorbs himself into such a state
and devotes himself to creating beauty, the more he revels in the
presumption of having made original contributions, the more he
grows deaf to the wails of mankind till there comes a time when
he is ultimately found out! Then people are revolted by him, and
come to despise him.
One has to remember at the ·same time that favourite
sentence of Lenin's: Art moves in an unending line!
A rev9lution in the arts does not erupt out of the blue. It is
through a different chemistry altogether that one genre of class
art grows out of another genre of class art. One can find a
consummation only by studying the past, absorbing its best
elements into one's heritage, and then bringing one's .vision to
bear upon it. There is no other way to reach consummation. All
other ways I find puerile, stupid and sick. There was a time when
people forgot this and from out of such an attitude they
proclaimed that Rabindranath Tagore was a poet of feudali.s m, of
semi<olonial, religious mysticism, and hence of no account.
This was the attitude at work when literature, the arts, theatre
and cinema were chained in iron. fetters to a particular political
ideology ( or rather as an appendage to the immediate
programme envisaged).
Yet another brand of stupid superciliousness!
Yet another theme comes to mind. 'Human relationships' is a
new cliche surfacing a lot these days when one talks about films. I
find it all an infantile spider dance, a squirming affair, from the
notion that personal relationships between human beings must
be a hermetically sealed matter. There can be no such thing in
the world. Even in the most intimate impulses of an individual,
not to speak of the collective unconscious, there is the
continuous play of a common socio-political class consciousness.
Those who uphold the opposite in the manner of a slogan, must
have been bought up by someone and forfeited their judgement;
or have been bewildered by the apparent confusion of the reality
around them and rushed to an easy solution of the plea that
since these problems would continue anyway, it is best to cater to
the need for entertainment; or from sheer ignorance or the
wrong kind of knowledge, are simply unaware of the fact that
such a responsibility remains not only the primary obligation of
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an artist of national or international standing, but his foremost
duty.
They deseive to be pitied. The cheek!
But the intriguing part is that, however one may try, the class
society will impinge on every such act. One can, of course, make a
name and some money by putting blinkers on people's eyes
under the false pretensions of worshipping the beautiful. But
what about the test of time? There's food for thought.
There is yet another $ing to bear in mind. I would advise all
those who seek to measure the arts by the norms of a scientific
attitude to draw dialectical materialism out once again from their
store, clear it up, mull it over, and set it out for use in their
brains.
Even a few of the wise and the sagacious have clean forgotten
that creation always is in a state of constant flux, something
always germinating, something decaying.
To capture phenomena out of that continuous flux, the artist
has to have the roguishness of the naughty little boy, and the
capacity of dreaming secretly. Art lies in snatching at something
that has just happened, has never happened before, and will
never happen exactly in the same manner again, and conserving
this happening of an extraordinary moment for ever as an
example. It is for art to keep its eyes and ears open to snatch like
· a hawk at the ineffable at its core and illustrate the forces of
growth operating within it so that a route to the future defines
itself, however partially, and a golden line is somehow charted
·ouL
. Hence Subachani's lame duck. Where is the potbellied
Ganesha, to turn us into thumbsized wanderers?.
But there, right there, there's daydreaming.
Different implements come to use at different times w_hen

making a film.
Let us start with the camera, and to make things clearer still,
let us begin from the still shoL
'Composition' is the English word for the organization of
demonstrable materials within the frame of the image. ·we shall
come later to how several statements can be made by means of
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compos1t1on.
One has to begin from penpective; in other·words, from a
consideration of the direction to which we would like to draw the
viewer's attention, which is instinctively drawn to the centre of a
composition. Perspective is a matter of manipulating that
attention, directing it in various_ways to the intended object.
There are a few more such instinctive impulses in the human
mind. Take light and shade, for example: The attention is
naturally drawn to the part of the image that is illumined. And it
is there, in permutation and in combination with perspective,
that various designs can be improvised. But what beats all of them
is motion. The eye instinctively darts to a point of the least
motion in a moving picture in the dimly visible part of the frame
barely illumined by a little light. It is bound to happen.
Hence there is a difference of kind between the problem of
organization for a still shot and that for moving images.
Motion.
There are categories of motion.
Firstly, the motion of visible objects and creatures in mobility.
Secondly, the motion of the camera itself.
Thirdly, the suspension of motion.
Fourthly, mental motion.
Let us take these up one by one and discuss them generally.
The motion of visible objects.
Whenever a table or some other object begins to move in a
picture, the eye is rivetted on it. But the camera remains
immobile. One of the .advantages of such immobility is that the
mind generally does not become conscious of the presence of the
camera. Thus it becomes easier for the viewer to enter deep into
the visible events and bear witness to them.
The motions of men make us intent in the same way. It should
be useful to put it on record here that while all those terms like
the vista shot, the long shot, the mid shot, the close up or the very
big close shot that we use are most of the time indicative of a
primary scale of distance, they are quite often not used so
mechanically. There is one kind of motion when a person sits at a
point and waves a finger or turns his face, but when people move
closer to or farther away from one another, or cross one another
or when other patterns are devised, a person's distance from the
camera varies from one point of time to another.
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It is in such cases that the focus becomes particularly wcful. I~
is useful in any situation anyway. For it is a particularly effective
means to draw the attention of the viewer. But in a composite
shot of the kind I have described, it is the focus that determines
for you what object will draw your attention. In a shot with five
people placed at diff,.rent distances, one is brought into focus to
say something or CanJ out a piece of busines.,, while the others
are left in semi-darkness; and once he has said or done his bit, he
is either sent back or pushed forward, and somebody else is
brought into focus and prominence. At times the entire
backdrop is dimmed out and a focus illumines only the heroine's
face. There are times when the camera remains immobile, and
the focus keeps pace with the motion of the various characters. At
other times one can take recourse to technical resources or the
use of particular kinds of raw stock to keep everything in focus to
convey something special. For such a shot, everything from the
distant horizon to the waving gras., right in the foreground can
be retained in equal focus.
It may be necessary to draw the viewer's attention to some
other character, after a character has said something. Nobody is
moving at this particular point of time, there is nobody saying
anything~it is just the focus that shifts in a flash from one spot to
another. One can impart motion to an immobile camera by
manipulation of the object in view and the focus. The use of the
zoom lens is not relevant in this context, for it amounts to a kind
of motion of the camera.
In the film Meghey Dhalca Tara, people were made to move
almost throughout the film, and shot in long-stretched shots.
Thus this film of mine had far fewer shots than any of my other
films. I made every character move a lot-logically within the
same shot to ensure that there would be no strain on the sight
and no chance of boredom. There was one person present in
most of the shots, forcing me to devise different patterns, and
change the focus in many ways in the same shot. At other points I
had to shift the focus on two characters even when they
themselves did not move at all.
The point calls for some clarification. Normally when one
turns to another, or stretches one's hand out to lift something,
we take advantage of such a mobile change of position to change
the focus. As a result, viewers do not become aware that there has
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been a shift of focus. They accept it naturally as part of the
sequence of the story. But there arc times when it is important to
underscore a shift of focus, and the focus is shifted either fast or
slowly, without moving a single ch~cter, and making it obvious
to the viewer.
In Meghey Dhalca Tara, Neeta takes refuge in the drawing room
in the scene where she learns that· she has tuberculosis. Her
mother enters the scene, stands leaning against the door at the
back, as Nceta,- extremely close to camera, lies on her stomach,
coughing. At a question from her mother, Neeta, taken by
surprise, hides the blOO<Htained piece of cloth before answering.
The focus remains fixed on the mother, even when Neeta
answers. (Normally, the camera stays on whoever is speaking at a
point of time, for people would like to see the face of a speaker
clearly. But in this case there is a deliberate reversal.) Then the
focus is shifted to Neeta's face, even though it is the mother
continuing to speak. These departures from the norm were no
stuntmanship, they were born of a desire to make an observation,
from a deep sense of pain. I considered such a use of the camera
obligatory to the main thrust of the film.
I made a totally different use of the camera in Subammdcha,
where for ninety per cent of the extent of the film, I used
universal focus, so that everything from the horizon to Seeta's
face extremely foregrounded appears almost always clearly,
sharply defined, to bring into focus Seeta's bitter wrath and fury.
To achieve this effect, one had to choose with great deliberation
particular technical devices and shoot on a special kind of raw
stock.
Those who have seen the film will recall the scene where in
the shal wood a seated Seeta and a standing Abhiram come to
recognize each other's feelings.
H one watches carefully that scene where Seeta mischievously
rubs her nose against the back of her hand, a teasing twinkle in
her eyes, one will notice that the camera remains steady, taking in
everything from Seeta's locks like drops, the row of shal trees, the
wide open plains beyond them, the clouds in the sky farther away,
all of them adding up to convey the spirit of that innocent first
love. The whole of nature bears witness to this beginning of a new
Kumarasambhava, and thus naturally deserves a seat of honour.
Hence all this use.
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I have something to say now on the motion of the camera
itself.
The pan, or the camera, stationary at a point, turning to the
left or the right; the tilt or the camera turning upwards or
bending down; the track or the trolley, or the camera set on a
mobile vehicle moving forward or backward, the crane or the
camera either physically rising upwards or descending-<ommon
people have by now formed a notion of these. Hence there is not
much to say about these mechanical means of motion. The real
joy lies in the use one makes of these. Used judiciously, these
motions are unremarked, but wherever they are used out of
place, the viewer, whether consciously or not, feels a positive
discomfort.
The shutter blade of the camera moves clockwise, i.e. from
left to righL Hence a pan or a track from right to left, particularly
done in haste, causes a distortion. A clear undentanding of these
mechanical features enables one to make effective use of them.
Similarly the use of the zoom lens. People normally use the zoom
when there is little scope for tracking, and one has to come fast
from far to close, or go fast from close to far. But the zoom is no
substitute for tracking. The zoom has its own qualities, and is
capable of achieving several effects optically. Imagine someone
coming up, and the camera receding, keeping him in the same
magnification, or at the same apparent distance. This can be
done by tracking, or by zooming. But there is a strange difference
discernible in the experience of the background moving. Those
who have handled it themselves will know at once what I am
pointing to. There is the same interesting effect in the reverse
movemenL
That is why I was saying that the apparent distortions
themselves can be put to use as artistic weapons. Camera in hand,
we often run about like mad, making the camera mobile, without
rhyme or reason, running helter skelter with the camera, like a
race horse. That's how the uninitiated would behave at a rich
feast. Such behaviour not only annoys the public, it also takes
away considerably from· the artistic value of the work. The motion
of the camera needs to be regulated according to the most
fastidious calculation.
In this context, too, I would cite an instance from one of my
own films. In my Subamarelr.ha I make only a single use of the
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68 Ritu,i4 Ghatalc
crane. This film is made of many shon shots, the exact ~erse of
Meghey Dhaka Tara. No other film of mine baning Ajantrilc has
such a large number of shots. But I keep the crane out for the
rest of the film only to underscore that single use where Ishwar
comes drunk to Sceta's house, and Sceta kills herself. Ishwar
comes out, staggering drunkenly, with the carving blade in his
hand, with all the witnesses to the act, including Binu, struck
dumb in panic, Ishwar's background lost in a dense patch of
darkness. It is only Ishwar's face, beaded with perspiration, that is
lit up in a flat white lighL The moment he suddenly crumbles to
the ground, after having raised the blade upwards, to a growl of
animal sounds, the camera cranes up fast to a great height, and
then leaves Ishwar in his wild throes to come straight down on
Binu's face, bis eyes wide agape, staring into a wilderness.
It is Binu who bears the burden of the tragedy. From that
point on he is the target of my quest, everything else is irrelevanL
That is what I sought to convey through that motion of the
camera.
Now let us come to the suspension of the motion of the
camera.
This can be effective as a means of contrast, and also as a
pointer to the motion of the camera and other motions that have
preceded or will follow.
A suspension can be achieved within· a shot without any
recourse to technical gadgetry. This belongs to the calculations of
motion. At a point when we are emotionally craving motion, the
director can deny us motion, and thereby expose us to something
far richer. One can recall any number of such situations from
good films. Take the case of the young man who at last speaks out
to the young woman all that he had held bottled up within
himself for a long .time, and now everything rests on the young·
woman's reply. But the woman remains silent and motionless.
The man waits with . bated breath. After this has continued for a
while, the woman draws a deep breath. The camera stirs to
motion at once. The man and the woman come to life, the leaves
on the tree behind are aflutter, the clouds in the sky start wafting
away. In this case the suspension of motion has contributed to
enhancing the significance of the motion that follows.
There are several technical devices to achieve this end. The
freeze frame is one. Many of you have seen Truffaut's Four
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Hundred Blows, and you are bound to recall the wonder of the
breakers of the sea frozen to a crystal. You cannot have forgotten
the last shot of Satyajit Ray's Chan.data or similar uses in Mrinal
Sen's films.
Placed at the proper point, such a shot can convey the
memge of the maker, along with a fresh evocation.
I cannot help bringing in at this point another issue which
may appear to be irrelevant; for the subjective use of the camera
is, after all, partly at least, a matter of the motion of the camera.
There is an excellent instance of it in Barooah's Uttara,an,
when the hero, in a feverish s'-'te, enters his house and staggers
along till the camera leaves him and plummets on to tJ?e bed; in
other words, the camera turns into the character.
There is a wonderful instance of such a use in David Lean's
Oliver Twist, when Oliver, now in Fagin's hands, makes his first
attempt at picking a pocket, is detected in the act and chased,
and runs into a narrow lane only to ·be confronted by a man
waiting with clenched fists to hit out at him. Oliver has_no way to
tum around and escape. The camera leaves Oliver and charges
straight towards the clenched fists, letting a fist hit at the lens and
crack it up. Fade ouL Oliver is seen lying in a bed in a hospital.
In Ajantrilc, when Bunal drives Jagaddal along a hill road to
reach the abandoned young woman at the next station, the
raro~ra leaves Bimal and the car to bring into view tbe receding
scenery of trees and hills through which the car rushes, in an
attempt to express the state of Bimal's mind. There are effective
uses of this device in Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar too. All these
instances of motion are actually uses of mental motion, the
product of the creative artist's dream vision accomplished
particularly through the use of the camera and by means of
editing, with considerable inputs in the form of music and other
sounds.
All motion, in fact, has the same origin. The camera moves, so
· do men, then everything comes to rest, or various integral
compositions made out of these create a whole design born in
that dream. Once this happens, the instruments cease to be
instruments, they tum into weapons in the hands of the artist,
like the sarod in the hands of the sarod player, or the chisel and
the hammer in the hands of the sculptor.
Editing should occupy a large space in any detailed discussion

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN '
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70 Jutwui GhataJc
of this topic. Hence I would not touch on it as such while we are
concerned with the camera. & a matter of fact, every section is so
integrally related to every other section that one cannot talk of
one without referring to the other. In my Komal Gandhar,
following on the conversation between Bhrigu and Anasuya
against the song in the background, the fast-moving camera
charges along the railway track that represents a sign of rupture,
to burst upon the buffer. And at once darkness descends. This
may be a case of the subjective usc of the camera, but could the
scene be really effective, or my statement come clear, without that
sound of everything being tom apart?
Besides the proper usc of the camera, there are several visual
elements, described as special effects. I will not go into them for
the present, for that would land us into a more technical
discourse.
I would rather add a few lines on composition in general
terms and about the usc of different lenses fro111 different spots.
I have briefly touched on composition already. It is an
extremely powerful component of filmmaking. Through
composition one seeks to convey the central tone or essential
flavour of a film. Any thoughtful director would try to present in
a particular style all the images that coine to his mind from a
story or a fundamental idea. A director would have his special
style, but within that extremely true general matrix, the particular
statement of a particular film will assert itself boldly enough to
define its specific beauty and grace.
A composition in general terms serves the primary obligation
of maintaining a balance and the perspective, but finds at the
same time the greatest joy in breaking all those rules. But beyond
it all, it becomes imperative to seek out a code universal enough
to carry the message. And that can be realized by the ·artist only
through the profoundest sadhana and upasana.
The set-up, i.e. where and at what relative height the camera
should be located and what lens should be used where, is yet
another consideration, besides the composition, that helps in the
process.
The common textbooks tell you that if the camera shoots an
object from a low level, it conveys greatness; if it shoots from the
top, it slights or derides the object; if it shoots from the same .
level it shows it as it is. Thus, the 50 mm lens is supposed to
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register the standard or the norm; if you go below it or above,
there will be some special significance to it. While all this may be
generally true and useful when one begins shooting, it becomes
something more complex once different creative persons come
to handle iL
The choice of the set-up and that of the lens are organically
related, and they arc both essential to underscore composition
and motion.
I'll confine myself for the present to a few features of the set-
up. To decide on the set-up, we have to take account of several
considerations. Firstly, several directors and cinematographers
spend sleepless nights racking their; brains to determine the set-
up and the angle which should present the features of the heroes
and leading ladies of the commercial films at their charming
best. Directors of experimental films take the same pains to
convey their messages through the faces of their men and
women. In La Dolce Vita, Fellini shoots the young girl in the
seaside cafe from the side from a particular height again and
again to connect the image with that of Michelangelo
Buonarroti•s 'Umbrian Angel'.
At places in my Kamal Gandhar, in a few close-ups of Anasuya, I
tty to evoke images from Botticelli. When ·we decide to change a
pariic,dar set-up, we are often directed by considerations of the
sequence of shots envisaged. For example, as a young woman
goes through a tempestuous experience, we may begin with a
very big close-up from a low set-up, but may rush in a flash to an
extreme top long shot. Any worthwhile film will have such
instancesthroughouL
The use of lenses. One should know a lot about this. There
are constraints of space. But what needs to be mentioned here
(as we have said already, in fact) is that the 50 mm lens is the
common constant. Lenses of 75, 100 or even more move
gradually towards the short focus or the telephoto, i.e. tend to
bring distant objects closer. When the depth of focus is low, the
object has a buttered look. They have oth~r uses too. The
telephoto lens flattens the image and somehow lifts the
background upwards to a point of distortion. You will notice this
distortion when watching the newsreel of a cricket match or some
other game. Several films have put this effect to dramatic use.
It can offer you yet another kind of fun. Used at a particular
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angle, such a shot can give a movirg object the look of what
Sukumar Ray described :
The king sat upon
A pile of bricks, burning red in the sun,
with his packet of fried nuts,
Munching them, but not swallowing a thing.
In other words, you see, say, the _wheels of a tramcar turning
round and round on the track-obviously the tramcar is running
fast along the track-but you have the impression that the
tramcar is stationary, with its wheels whirling round and round.
I have made several uses of this effect in my Badi Thelcey Paliye.
Lenses below 50, e.g. 40, 35, 32, 18 or even lower, tend
gradually towards the wide angle. They are of a different kind
altogether. The more you go down the scale in terms of
millimetres, the more close objects move farther away; a single
step forward or backward will appear as five steps backward; an
object standing close will undergo the distortion known a.s
foreshortening; the ,range of the focus will increase considerably;
objects on the edges of the frame will tend to tumble down to the
centre; at the slightest movement of the camera the two sides of
the frame will give the impres~ion of a slight swaying; the
composition will give an impression of strength.
I would say that it is the 18 mm that is my favourite lens. I have
used it in almost all my films, but in Subamardcha the most; the
reasons being the advantage of achieving a universal focus, and
the scope of bringing the materials themselves to a firm gesture.
When I was at Pune, I made some use of the 10.05 lens. There
is no lens of a lower dimension available in this country, and even
that one will not be available anywhere else in the country. It is a
lens capable of extreme foreshortening, and has all the other
qualities in equal proportion. I have heard of lenses of even lower
dimensions available in Japan and Europe, but I haven't seen any
of these.
All these facilities contribute to the manipulation of mental
motion.
The job of organizing and co-ordinating men and objects and
materials, and moving them all according to a predetermined
scheme, is a necessary part of a director's obligation, but can be
mentioned here, since it has to do with motion ultimately.
Every scene has a central core. Shots are cut and the various
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devices of motion are used in accordance with iL The director is
doomed to fail if he fails to identify this central core; for then he
will go for a surfeit of de-tails recorded in ~y number of short
shots till the mes.,age loses its own value and is Jost in the lot, and
the scene flags.
On the other hand, there are instances in any number of films
of a scene left without any cutting and irredeemably spoilt in the
process, from financial pressure, or lack of time, or sheer
ignorance. Where a single significant detail could have raised the
scene to a different level, the scene slumps and the maker's
message remains unsaid. ·
While thinking of motion, one has to identify the mainstay of
the scene, and hold on to iL The goat can fight it out if it has a
firm enough post for supporL But one, of course, has to keep in
mind the direction of the film when choosing the mainstay of a
scene.
I face all these practical problems when I come to arrange my
narrative and direct my casL And perhaps every filmmaker has to
face these.
It may sound quite strange, but in this matter I have learnt the
most by rummaging through the works of Konstantin
Stanislavsky. .
People will not believe it, but that is the truth.
Originally publishtd in &ngoli in Chalachchitra, Ashwin, 1376 B. s. (1969]
Tmnslaud by Samii Band,opadlrJay.
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Sound in Cinema
With our common habit of describing cinema as a visual art, at

times I have the fear that maybe we are tending to forget
altogether the importance of the world of sound by itself. As a
matter of fact. sound is just as important in cinema as the visual.
Sound plays an enormous part in conveying the essential appeal
of cinema. At least that is what it has done for me in all the films I
have seen.
And that is why one comes to write this essay.
There is yet another point to make. We tend to take the silent
cinema and the sound cinema to be the same. That is not quite
correcL The silent cinema is a different art form altogether. Its
motion, nature, codes, vocabulary, conjunctions, follow other
calculations. Iron-dad Potemlun or The Passion ofJoan of Arc is in no
sense a progenitor of Path.er Pancholi. The sound film has evolved
out of it; but if you come to think of it. cinema has evolved out of
still photography. But just think of the revolutionary
transformation that has come with the mere addition of motion
to all the qualities that had been inherent in the still shot.
Similarly, it was only sound that was added to all the resources
inherent in the silent cinema. And the fundamental position
itself was changed at once.
What are the elements registered on the married tape that
runs continually along with the picture through the projector?
There are five of them.
Words or dialogue, music, incidental noise or sounds
complementing the events appearing as visual on the film, effect
noise or suggestive sounds supporting a scene, and silence.
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Sound in Cinema 75
There is not much to say about the dialogue, which is anyway
only too obvious. It serves to carry the story (if there is any) of the
film straight along with the events as they come into view. It
operates at the primary level.
Music. It is a formidable weapon in cinema, at times
omnipotent.
Through music, we seek to convey the messag~ of the fihn on
a parallel plane. There are various ways of doing it. Take for
instance the way in which we conceive the entire structure for the
whole film before putting in the fint piece of music. We seek to
provide an overtone to the film as a whole right on the credit
cards. Then the different events, different characters and
different observations call for p;uticular tunes or compositions.
Music is highly suggestive. The suggestions are my own, and
that is why they are put to use, and all from a conscious design.
Let us assume I use a bandish of the raga Kalavati for a love
scene towards the beginning of a film. It would not be from the
consideration that it is delectable at that particular point in the
given contex~ What would be revolving in my mind all the time
would be the _thought that I would play the same piece of music
for the scene of final disaster and ultimate separation at the close
of the film. Only then will the music make its point.
The main note of my Komal Gandharwas set on the unification
of the two Bengals. Hence, throughout the film we played the
tunes of old wedding songs, with the same note of concord
playing over the scene of a harsh separation.
Take the instance of an extraordinary suggestion in Satyajit
Ray's Aparajito. There is one particular piece of music playing
again and again over the scenes of Apu, Durga and rural Bengal,
throughout Pather Panchali. It can be described as the leitmotif of
the film. Whenever you have the piece, maybe even on the street,
the greenness of Bengal, stretching right up to the horizon, will
skim before your eyes. And Satyajit-babu has done something
remarkable out of that. In Aparajito, once Sarbajaya and Apu in
the train have crossed the railway bridge of Banaras, there is the
first sudden glimpse of the sheer beauty of the green landscape
of Bengal. And at once the leitmotif of the earlier film rings out
fresh and clear. For that once only in the entire film. And it
serves its purpose. A single observation, a single suggestion of
continuity is enough to strike you with the full charg_e of
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76 Ritwilc Ghatalc
Nishchindipur and Durga and the leash groves.
There are times when a tune used in 'a film by someone else is
used to make an observation, the way I have myself done. The
music that flCcompanies the scene of orgy at the end of La Dolce
Vata, where Fellini lashes out at the decadence of the whole of
Western civilization, is known as Patricia. I sought to make a
similar statement in my Subamartliha about my own land, this
Bengal, so sparkling with intellecL So I used the same music in
the bar scene, to make a suggestion. Was I influenced? Not at all.
It merely helped me to say a lot with that single sign. · .
A particular character, too, can have his leitmotif. If a few
specific notes are played to precede every appearance he makes,
or after or during an appearance, there will naturally be an
observation whenever those notes are played in his absence or
when he is not likely to appear.
The director often keeps a piece of music up his sleeve, to
_draw it out only to make the ultimate statement. Take, for
example, Bufluel's Naz.arin, which has not a bit of music in it
throughout till that last scene where tho11sands of drums burst
upon the sc_e ne. Those who have seen the film have known in
their gut what it can amount to.
A short article is not enough to show the range of suggestion
music can evoke. Hence it will be best to stop here.
There is not much to say about the sounds that rationally flow
along with the visible events. But they too can create meanings at
times. Then they are no longer merely accompanying sounds, but
rise to the level of evocative sound.
Evocative sound constitutes a large universe. Sounds can be
evocative in two ways: through something which is part of the
visible, or by bringing in a sound that is not part of the visible.
Imagine a scene where a young woman is in a pap.ic, growing
minute .by minute, in fear of the appearance of an undesirable
person. She is seated on a bed. Suddenly there comes the news
that the person is coming. The young woman rises to her feet,
shaking with fear. The bed gives a squeak, which can be used as
suggestion of the shock that runs through the woman.
Or take the situation of two men talking to each other on the
roadside. A car passes them honking loudly, exactly over the most
important part of their conservation. And such other instances.
Time and again we make creative use of sounds that do not
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Sound in Cinema 77
belong to the visible. A young man and a young woman sit in a
closed room in silence, with not a word to exchange. There is a
birdcall from a distance. Or as one walks along with the dream of
a place in his look, there is the sound of a languid whistle from a
a
train, wafting in from distance. A young woman stands by
herself at a moment of utmost distress. At a distance there are
people rehearsing for the role of Shakuni in Kama,jun, awfully
out of key.
Metaphoric sounds, too, can be extremely effective in certain
contexts. I had used the sound of whiplashes to go with a young
woman in the throes of excruciating desolation.
There is yet another well calculated use of sound described as
design by inference, a lively affair. An old man is seated on a
bench. Suddenly from quite close there is the sound of a train
locomotive shunting, and along with it all the usual incidental
sounds of a railway station. You will have the feeling of a railway
waiting room, with the camera never leaving the face of the old
man.
Or think of the face of a young woman, with the sound from
somewhere nearby of people dragging a collapsible gate together
and putting the lock on it. You will have the impression of the
woman having been put behind bars, though the shot has not
shown anything of the kind.
Design by inference allows one to keep a whole film confined
to a single room and yet convey the precise movement of
whatever is happening outside.
A single sound can be given an evocatory dimension in a
scene and then put to imaginative use. In one of my films a
mother would not like her elder daughter to fall in love. And yet
she sees her in just that state. She is seen standing before the
kitchen when she first notices this, with the sound of the oil
simmering in the pan on the oven. We see her once again much
later in the same position, but this time the kitchen is not behind
her. And yet I used the crackle of the oil simmering, to convey
the sense of her mental state. There is no point in piling
instances upon instances;
Silence. That is what I consider the most evocative elemenL
There is no end to the ways in which we can play with silence.
Silence can be usually used before introducing a suggestive piece
of sound. Silence can evoke any emotion, .determine the scale of
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78 lutwilc Ghatalc
any scene, evoke a state of absolute absence of emotion. All this is
effected by the positioning of sounds before and after.
· If you desire to create a shock with a powerful explosion of
sound, you will have to precede it with a few moments of silence.
Or if you would like to have a sudden stillness in the midst of
lively motion, silence is the only means you can have recourse to.
In a scene you would like to capture the indolence of an
afternoon. It is silence alone that can convey it. To skip a few
beats to slow down the rhythm of a scene, you need silence, just
as you need silence to get to the intensity of an extreme momenL
Hence whatever you think of the sound tapes for a film, it is
the design of silence that you have to chart out firsL
Now comes the question of creating the complete aesthetic
experience out of a combination of all these elements.
First, designing, iiomething that I have touched upon already.
The designing begins right with the conceiving of the film. At the
point of the very conception of the film, a design takes shape in
the mind, weaving words with music, with sounds, with the gaps
of s~lence. The design changes in many ways, as the film is in the
making. Even when all the elements are brought together, the
design keeps changing through unthought-of concatenations.
It is only then that the music, the dialogue, the different
sounds and silence find their own place. .
Then it is time to mix the sounds. The different sounds have
to be played at different levels to bring them to their proper
point. Some will be played louder, some have to be at the level of
the bare feeling, to get the effect.
The point about the different levels of loudness has to be
made a little clearer.
The same sound-of whatever kind it may be-can evoke
different feelings at different levels of loudness. An extremely
fast, happy piece of music, played at an extremely low level,
evokes a feeling entirely different from what it can evoke when
played loudly. If an extremely sad note is played at an ear-racking
level of loudness, it will evoke no sadness, whatever else it may
evoke. The most important consideration at the time of mixing of
sounds is that of identifying a level in perfect accordance with the
context of the scene. Under a certain level the human ear finds it
unbearable. It is the filmmaker's personal taste that guides him in
his decision either to fill the room with sound or keep it at a level
..
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Sound in Cinema 79
where it is taken in unmindfully. For this is the most vital time,
the time when the. film is born fullgrown. The filnucript written
long ago finds its full shape at this moment itself. From this point
on, the film is no longer something personal-it has set forth and
belongs to others. From this point on, I have no further apologies
to offer.
This is the point of time when the design stands clear, and the
narrative that runs discreetly beneath the apparent narrative now
becomes obvious. The flow of .sound offers observations,
footnotes and evocations in endless continuity, repetition, and
variations, to articulate the message of the film on a different
level. For every serious film is articulate at different levels
simultaneously. One of these levels-and one of the most
potent-is accomplished now.
That is why I said that the still photograph seeks liberation in
motion, the dumb cinema has sought to be eloquent. The sound
film has extended its scope, even as it has plunged into a search
for something else, maybe into sadhana to reach the unspeakable,
intense unity that belongs to music-the ultimate art.
But without an ambience of its own no art becomes an art.
The film provides an ambience a total design-to sound.
The quest for that is fulfilling, even as it helps us to
understand and measure a film .
•
Publish«!. originally in BmgrJli in Parichay, vol. J5,no.6,January 1966.
Translated by Samilc Bandyopadhyay.
Original from
Interviews
Ritwik Ghatak, the man who created a stir with Ajantri/r. and
Subamardcha in Bengal, is known to Hindi film fans as the writer
of Bimal Roy's lyrical offering Madhumati .
Tall and tense, Ghatak is an intellectual. He combines vivacity
of expression with tenacity of purpose. He talb brilliantly on a
wide range of subjects. There is a charm, too, in the way he
expresses his ideas.
Ghatak was in Bombay in 1964 to finalize the terms of a
Bhojpuri film, which was never made. According to him, what
really matters in a film is not the construction of particular
episodes but the 'integral vision', which gives the film charm,
vitality, realism.
Ghatak concedes that the New Wave directors have made a
great impression on Bengal's filmmakers, but he does not think
this influence will go beyond the State. Neither are Bengal
filmmakers obsessed with the nouvelle vague.
Ghatak rejects the philosophy of art for art's sake. Art, in his
opinion, should have an aim and purpose. He explained that he
did not say so from a moral viewpoinL 'As an artist, I have no
moral values. I do not see things as good or bad, decent or
indecent. I see them only as relevant or irrelevant. I am an
observer. My job is to record the reality around me. I only record
certain phenomena. So, from that point of view, there is nothing
profane. I cannot have an attitude towards things.'
Does human decay interest you. 1
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Interviews 81
In a way. Through decay I see life, growth. I believe in the
continuity of life. A character in my film cries: 'Let me
live!' She cries for life, even though she dies. It is not
death; it is life's assertion. Nobody wants just to die.
Art grows very slowly. It cannot change society. That is the
job of politicians. Perhaps science and technology may do
better. Many institutions are already working on the
sociological aspects of citizenship and society in the
modern age. In our own country, the Tata Institute of
Social Sciences is engaged in this kind of work. As an artist,
I can only record time. It moves slowly, subconsciously.
Fellini charts hum~ life. Rajen Tarafdar did it in Ganga.
,·
Talking about the transition of Indian social life, Ghatak
recalled with bitterness the havoc wrought by the Second World
War on Bengal's socio-economic structure: especially in eastern
India, it broke the backbone of the society, economically and
socially. Many evil practices were witnessed. People became rich _
overnight and it was ill~otten money. And there were those who
charged Rs 10,000 for a studio floor and Rs 1500 for a roll of film.
Extinction of the working class was total.
What about films,
Pre-War films, such as Aadmi, Aurat, Achhut Kanya, and
Jhoola, had a purpose. At least, they did not flout Indian
tradition as films do today. I see a lot of vulgarity and
crudity in our films these days.
The Partition led to a h~ exodus. unnmunal disintegration and
lumi.fJing·viol.ence followed. "'7iat do you thinA of these events as
material for films,
You see, I was a refugee myself. I can never forget it. The
Partition and everything that followed come to memory
most vividly. But I am not eager to take up this subject,
because I have not suffered myself. A person who has
suffered can do bettt;r justice to it.
Should Bengal venture into t!,e production of Hindi films-not
just to ease the economic crisis, but to fill the void created l,y its
· oum voluntary exit from the field'
It should. Economically, Bengal's film industry is dying.
For every director employed, there are five unemployed

.J
82 IutwiJc Ghatalc
ones. But they are not prepared to compromise. I have
been offered the direction of a Bhojpuri film. It has a
down-to-earth subject. A Bhojpuri film is economically
. feasible. Hyou make a film with sincerity, you will succeed.
Good Bhojpuri films may even improve Hindi films,
ultimately.
The conversation turned to our rural life. Ghatak was soon
talking about folklore, folk dances and folk music.
Our folk music is very rich. It can be exploited to great
advantage. H one or two attempts succeed, it will be accepted by
others. Ravi Shankar and I went round tape-recording folk songs,
some of which Ravi will use in my films. I once used folk songs in
my film-including a ballad said to be six hundred years old.
Sachin Dev Burman, too, has used folk songs. It will be rewarding
to draw from this forgotten treasure. ·
Talking about our dramatic traditions, Ghatak remarked
'Indians are epic-minded. Every year, thousands of Indians flock
to see the Ramlila. They know every word spoken in the scenes. It
is not to see what is presented that they go there. It is to see how
it is presented. Our mythologicals are promoting the epic
tradition in cinema. I am all for epic films and in Bengal there is
no dearth of such subjects.'
How are you disposed towards songs in films 7
I feel that music is innately related to drama. Music' is part
of our life. Hence, I am not opposed to songs in films.
However, songs should not be imposed on the story, but
should flow from it. I have used a beautiful fisherman's
song in Meghey Dhalca Tara (1960), and as many as eight
songs in Subamardt.ha. Sometimes, a song sequence speaks
very powerfully.
What are the new-horizons for fresh entrants 7
City life and 'real' people offer a rich harvest of themes. I
have told the students of the Film Institute to collect
whatever money they can, take their cameras into the
streets, and shoot there. Bombay is a big, beautiful city,
throbbing with life. They may be doing better than those
who made Portrait of a City [ 1961].
Will you p~ estimate the contribution of Bombay's ftlmmaltrrs 7
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Interviews 83
After 1947 I have not seen many Hindi films. However,
Bimal Roy, B. R. Chopra, Raj Kapoor and Mehboob
[Khan] are my favourite filmmaken.
Bimal Roy is one of the very few filmmakers in India who
understands the film medium thoroughly. He is my guru.
B. R Chopra is a maker of serious films. From Naya Daur
onwards, his films have been purposeful ones. Raj Kapoor
now goes in for spectacle, but his Aah and other movies of
that period will long be remembered. He is a man of
undentanding. ·
In New Delhi, Mohan Saigal had a purposive theme. You
have very good technicians in Bombay, like·Achrekar and
Sudhendu Roy. They make earnest efforts to improve their
work. Their difficulty is that they have to create something
out of nothing.'
H<IW would you evaluate SatJajit R.ay1
Satyajit is a national artist. He is the only director of
national stature. But in what manner he will use the film in
future remains to be seen.
H<IW do you explain Ray's conviction that he can make films only
. ..-.,og
an n-,,_.,.,
.... ,
Ours is a multilingual country. Unless one fully knows the

nuances of a language, one cannot do jµstice to a film in
that language.
What impact have Ray '.s films made1
He has given dignity to ·the film medium in India. Many
filmmakers in Bengal have been .influenced by his work.
But my own approach to films is different and has
remained uninfluenced by him. Since his films have
started a new movement, they have made the problems of
off-beat filmmakers in getting sponsors, etc. less acute.
That, I feel, has helped me, too ..
HamMtluddin Mahmood, Kaleidoscope of Indian Cinema, New Dellai:
Affiliaud Easi-West Pms, 1975.•
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84 Ritwilc Ghatalc
Two
Mr. GhataJc, what inspired you to tum to filmmalcing?
You could say that I strayed into films down a zigzag path. H
my father had had his way I would have been an income-tax
officer. I got the job but left it to join the Communist Party of
India. If I had stuck to it I might have become a Commwioner or
the Accountant General by now. But now I'm only a street dog!
After quitting the job I tried writing poetry, but found myself
singularly incapable of it. I shifted my interests to writing short
stories and won a bit of fame. More than a hundred of them were
published in Desh, Parichay, Shanibarer Chithi and other leading
magazines of Bengal.
That was when I found that literature delves deep into the
soul of man, but it works slowly. It takes a long time to grow roots
inside. With typical adolescent impatience I wanted to make an
immediate impact, because I felt the people should be roused
instantly.
Then a miracle happened-the IPTA [Indian People's
Theatre Association] . First came Jabanbandi (1943], then Bijan
Bhattacharya's bombshell Nabanna (1944]. They showed me that
in terms of immediate and spontaneous communication, theatre
is much more effective than literature. So I gave up writing stories
and turned to writing plays and organizing theatrical groups.
Then came ano"ther bit of heart-searching. It was after my
greatest success on stage a prestige performance staged in the
Jadavpur University campus in 1950, to coincide with the
convocation inaugurated by President Radhakrishnan: I
produced Tagore's Bisarjan, in which I also played the-leading
role. More than 8,000 persons attended the show. It was fantastic!
But this also showed me that I could only reach a maximum of
10,000 people through such a show. And so much collective
labour had to be expended just for that! Then I decided to make
films.
Did you realize your ambition through the film medium?
Looking back I can say that there is no love lost between me
and the film medium. I just want to convey whatever I feel about
Original from
Interviews 85
the reality around me and I want to shouL Cinema still seems to
be the ideal medium for this because it can reach umpteen
billions once the work is done. That is why I produce films-not
for their own sake but for the sake of my people. They say that
television may soon take its place. It may reach out to millions
more. Then I will kick the cinema over and turn to television.
Can JOU recall an, particular influenu that inspired JOU to ht a
ftlmmalcn?
Well, there were films like Eisenstein's Battkship Pottmlcin,
Pudovkin's Mother, Kralcatit, the Czechoslovakian film, Nema
Barilcada by Otakar Vavra and books like Eisenstein's, Film Form,
and The Film Senst, Pudovkin's Film Technique, and Film Acting, Ivor
Montagu's collection of film articles in the Penguin series, and
Bela Balasz's·Theory of the Film, all of which threw up a completely
new world before my eyes.
Most of the films which I have mentioned were banned in
India at that time. We could only see them clandestinely. That
also gave a romantic aura to the whole experience. And then
came the first film festival in India, which introduced us to the
Italian neo-realists. This was yet another completely new and
fascinating world.
. All these films and books helped to develop my tastes, but
they did not influence me directly. I did not become a part of any
school.
Tlwe persons JOU have mentioned, are they the grratest cineastes in
'J')Ur opinion?
They are not cineastes and they are not dilettantes. They are
more or less pioneers in exploring this exciting medium.
Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and, in a way, Dovzhenko discovered a new
artistic language in films. The first two were not only filmmakers,
they were also among the first film theorists of the world.
Filmmakers anywhere owe a debt, especially, to Ei~nstein. He
gave us a whole new medium of expression.
Films art still, perhaps, the most exciting of the mass media in the
world toclay; but few dirtct<m have cared to explore their vast possibilities.
Which directors or schools of filmmalcing, in ,our opinion, have bten
exaptionally successfal1
In my opinion Sergei Yutkevich and Luis Buiiuel are the very
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86 Ritwilc Ghatalc
greatest. But Yutkevich died recently and Buiiuel, in disgust, has
stopped making films as a protest against the commercialization
of this great art form. Jean-Luc Godard says that as long as
filmma.king is not as cheap as pen and paper in this bourgeois
world, good films cannot be made. I last heard about him a few
months ago from a French journalist. He has stopped making
films and whiles away his time on the boulevards of Paris and in
doing party-work.
Then there is a Japanese school. I am not talking about expon
quality film directors such as Akira Kurosawa, but of directors like
Mizoguchi, Ozu and Tanaka. Now there are some promising
young directors among them, such as Nagisa Oshima.
In South America we have Leopoldo Torre Niwon; in Greece
tllere is Michael Cacoyannis and, of course, in Sweden there is
Ingmar Bergman. I don't set much store by the so-called
underground cinema of America, or by the British School, or by
the clinically disinfected realism of poverty produced by directors
such as Satyajit Ray. There is also a wave of pornographic films,
which makes me furious. ·
There may be other notable filmmakers; but since the scope
for seeing the latest works from abroad is almost non-existent in
our country, I may have missed many remarkable works of an.
I n-otice that you have not included the Italian school or the
controversial ',wuvelle vague' movemenL
Well, the Italian school seems to me to be a spent force. After
the Italian spark of neo-realism, which ultimately turned into
fantastic realism in the hands of great masters like Federico
Fellini, [Michelangelo] Antonioni, Luchino V1seonti and others,
it has had very little to offer. The same is true of the Polish school
led by Andrzej Wajda and others. In the hands of people like
Roman Polanski, it tended to go towards a sort of neo-
existentialism. Polanski has rightly found his heaven in
Hollywood.
About the nouvelle vague, the F~ench have a peculiar
fascination for giving a label and a name to anything and
everything. To me the term nouvelle vague, is a very vague and
fuzzy label to attach to films like Truffaut's Les 400 Coups [The 400
Blows] and the Resnais-Robbe-Grillet production L 'ann« demiirt
a Marien.bad [Last Year at Marienbad] both in the same breath. ·
They are as different as can be. So I cannot accept this as a
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Interviews 87
school. But many of these filmmakers are most powerful, there is
no doubt about that. I do not know what the East European .
countries are doing.
Well, you an aware of what Indian filmmakers an doing. How high
would our films rate as mative worlcs?
I am a very bad cinema-goer. I rarely see films. Yet, from the
few that I have seen, I would say that Bengali films have stopped
making any progreM. Our new filmmakers are wallowing in the
mire with maudlin tears and horse opera.
But in the other parts of India, including Bombay, a new
generation of filmmakers are showing signs of promise. I can
think of people like Shyam Benegal, Kumar Shahani, and Mani
Kaul from Bombay; Satyadev Dubey from Pune; Sathyu of
Kamataka, and John Abraham, among others from Kerala. There
is a movement in Bengal as well, but it is being stifled by
commercialism.
But what about acting potential.1 Has the Indian film industry never
produced actors and actresses with the lcind of calibre that .merits
international recognition?
To be very candid, apart from matinee idols and some names
who are a momentary craze, nothing has come up in the Indian
cinema by way of acting. We cannot conceive of a Bondarchuk or
of a Toshiro Mifune, or of a Giulietta Masina for that matter, in
our country's context.
To begin with, film acting is born of a deep rapport between
the director and actors, which is sadly missing in India. Secondly,
film acting is completely dependent on the placement of camera,
lighting and, above all, editing. None of our actors and actresses
has ever evinced the slightest desire to master these arts, without
which film acting in the true sense is just not possible.
When I see our great actors and actresses plodding through
yards of celluloid, I am reminded of an elephant in a snow drift
trying to dance. They come here to make money, and by jiminy,
they make it! This is the be-all and end-all of everything. This is
notACI1NGI
Apart from the acting, which you dismiss as thoroughly gross, and the
incmiibly superficial pwt structu~ of most of our films today, one of the
~ vehemently criticiud features of our commercial films is the peculiar
trait ofour matinee idols of breaJcing into song at the sughtest pretext.
Original from
88 JutwiJc Ghatak
Yes, that's true.
But with all your anti-philistine contnnpt, how do you jwti/J the use
of the same technique in almost all 'J"Ur films?
.
You see, I agree with Jean-Luc Godard that anything which
seems to an artist to be capable of conveying his message is
entirely valid-be it song or dance or newspaper headlines or
commentaries or just about anything! Artistic validity is the only
criterion.
Besides, in our country from time immemorial songs have
played a very imponant part in all our creative arts. If these
dream-merchants misuse them today, that is no reason why I
should refrain from using them in my films. In fact, I have a
script ready based on a Bengali folk tale in which I have
discarded all dialogue and have used about 25 songs, apart from
several poems. I have also gone to the other extreme in another
script, which I propose to film in Bombay. This will not only be
'
devoid of songs, but will have no dialogue either-only distorted
noises and background music. It is the story _o f a deaf-mute girl-
child of the Koli tribe of Maharashtra.
So I have no particular fascin·ation for songs. In my first
released film, Ajantrili, there were no songs. I did not feel the
necessity for them in that film. But wherever I have felt the
necessity, I have never hesitated to use them.
You have eight feature films and over ten slwrl films to your credit.
Which of these have you personally found the most satis.fJing and why?
This is difficult to answer; but till date, four films of mine have
satisfied me most: Ajantrilc, because of its brevity of expression
and for certain technical achievements; Subarnarelcha, which I feel
is my most philosophical film; Titas Elcti Nadir Nam, which is an
essay on the lyricism of the Bengali countryside, especially its
m<_>nsoons, and because I thi_nk I have been able to portray
certain hefty labour-class characters who are intensely Bengali;
and Komal Gandhar because in it I have tried to discard the
normal story line and propound my proposition on four levels at
the same time.
But you have now made a come-baclc in the theatre. After all these
satisfacwry experiments with the film medium and your plans for some
rather unusual ventures, and after your initial switch from the s~ to
cinema in order to reach out to a larger audience, how do you justify 'JOU'
. .... Digitized by Google Original from

Interviews 89
· mumtotM~
Well, let's say this reversion is a kind of intellectual
exercise in my old age. It gives me a kind of human pleasure
and human warmth. The theatre helps to establish a mutual
give-and-take between the audience and the writer that is not
found in any other media. This is the secret of my inspiration.
Besides I want to sound my people, so that it can enrich my
future contribution to the cinema.
You have worlt.ed both in films and in the tMal'IT. ~ do JOU
find tM grtatest difjtrma between tw two media?
The two are widely different media. One cannot equate
their idioms, though the~ sometimes tend to merge.
The secret of good fihnmaking is editing. This calls for an
uncanny sense of timing. Satyajit Ray is the only director in
India who has it.
Filmmaking is a highly mechanical process, where sudden
bursts of imagination or inspiration are virtually non~xistenL
It is ve~tably a matter of emotion recollected in tranquillity,
that is, .everything ~s planned out long before the actual
process of filming.
In this sense, a film director is almost a dictator. But this is
not so with theatre. A 'regisseur' (stage manager-director)
can only lay down the guidelines for his artistes. Once the
curtain goes up he has no part .to play any more. It is the
artiste who creates the performance, while the stage director
only sits in the sidelines.
Have JOU never considered the immense possibilities of
experimenting with an artiste's acting potentiat as Grotowslci and his
follnwers art doing, with rtmarlcab/,e results?
.
I have had no contact with drama for over nineteen years,
apart from producing a fe~ radio plays. Frankly speaking, I
have never thought about theatre during this span of time.
Now that I have decided to return to the stage, I think I
have been much influenced by Brecht. I have translated some
of his plays from the English translation to Bengali. I have
only seen Brecht's production of •Mother Courage in a full-
length documentary film of the Berliner Ensemble's stage

....
production. I have read a few of his articles, and of course, his
most important theoretical writing, the Organon.
Since I have never been outside India, I have of necessity
only this second-hand knowledge, but whatever I have learnt
has moulded my way of thinking. I must add, however, that
when I get down to producing a play, I naturally do not mean
to bog myself down to a particular theory. When I get the
chance, I will experiment and evolve a form of my own.
What, in your opinion, an tM ~ Jruitfal theam _movements in
India today?
On a national level, India has no theatre movement as .
such. There arc stray attempts by people like Tcndulkar on
the Marathi stage, and there are vigorous movements evolving
in Karnata4, Patna and Delhi. A new generation of Hindi
writers and artistes is emerging with several novel and
exciting ideas.
Only in Bengal is there a distinct theatre movement of
sorts. Socially-conscious young men and women, and
proponents of the so-<:alled absurd theatre are experimenting
extensively. The Bcngalis are a very self-conscious people and
the most hopeful point about this movement ·is that it is no
longer confined to Calcutta. It has spread to the districts and
industrial towns, and even to the villages. The professional
stage has had to sit up and take notice. It has reacted in two
typical ways. One is with sex and cheap humour. Every second
play now contains a cabaret scene or more, and stops just
short of nudity. The other includes experiments with new
theatrical ideas. It is only outside the plane of commercial
theatre that very exciting attempts are being made.
Do you thinJc that any of these attempts have been particularly
suecessfu'lr
In a way Sombhu Mitra had made a breakthrough. Bijan
Bhattacharya has attempted remarkable plays, but he needs a
good producer. Then there is Utpal Dutt, of course. For me,
whate".er his faults, Utpal remains the best stage-producer
Bengal has seen to date. He is also a good satirist; his plays are
well received, and he himself is an actor of no mean order.
All these people are of our generation. I cannot really
Original from
Interviews 91
assess individuals of the present generation, but, as I have

said, some of their plays and productions arc. very good.
You tallc rather contemptuously of how the professional
tMQ,trt has gone in for the exploitation of se:c. This evolus another
controversy about whether sex, nudity and lcissing are justified in
droma and on the celluloid sc,w,i. What would you ·say to this as a
writer, actor and diTtcum
I neither support nor discard it. It is a very infantile
question. I do not understand why people arc so worked up
about this.
In art, everything is valid. The important question is
whether the people who vehemently support things like
nudity and kissing do this out of consideration for art. (?r do
they want to make quick money? At the same time I would
like the fiercely orthodox keepers of our Indian culture to
visit our ancient caves and temples and see for themselves
how our forefathers treated the subject.
The crux of the matter is that, in this profit-making
society, all those who are for or against, have their ·own
individual axes to grind. None of them is either a
disinterested critic, or a true lover of art. So I do not want to
get involved in this rat-race.
You obviously feel that ftlmmaJcing for pecuniary gain OT atulima
entertain,nent is absolutely heinous. Do you thinlc this powerful mass
medium should be used instead for -reformist propaganda and activt
proselytizing, in the way some of our rather welUnoum ftlmma/cm
have dmu---<Jften at the cost of aTt 7
I am quite old-fashioned about this. Tagore once said, art
has to be beautiful. But before that, it has to be truthful.
Now what is truth? There is no eternal truth. Every artist
has to learn his own private truth through a painful personal
proc;ess. And this is what he has to convey.
'
There is no such thing as yet in the world as a classless art.
The reason: there is no classless society. Every work of art is
relative, and it is in relation to man. All art worth its name
must work for the betterment of man.
I do not believe in any rigid theory, but at the same time I
am quite amazed at those so-<:alled 'great' filmmakers, who
Original from
92 Ritwik Ghatalc
are fundamentally nothing but dilettantes who clamour about

the art of human relationships. It is a very clever way of
evading one's social responsibility. What they practise only
goes to serve the purpose of their establishmenL They are as
partisan as can be, but wear a mask of non-partisanship. I
detest this kind of slogan.
Whal is your privately-eam«l truth that has inspirrd your stories,
films and plays?
There is no particular message as such. But I try to react
vigorously to the social phenomena I see around me.
Being a Bengali from east Pakistan. I have seen untold
miseries inflicted on my people in the name of
independence-which is fake and a sham. I have reacted
violently to this and even in my last film, (Juk.ti Ta/r.k.o Ar
Cappo) which is yet to be released, I have tried to portray
different aspects of this. I am also aware of a complete
breakdown of moral values around me, especially among the
younger generation of today. My next film, which will be
called Shey Bishnupriya, deals with this problem. My recent
play is also based on the same theme.
This interview by Kalpana Biswas was publish«l in 1M journal Lekha,
2nd year, nas. 7-8, September 1976.
Whal, in your opinion, is the role of an artiste. particularly that

of a cinema artis~
I am not an artiste, nor am I a cinema artiste. Cinema is
no art form to me. It is only a means to an end: that of serving
my people. I am not a sociologist, and hence I do not harbour
illusions that my cinema can change the people. The people
are too great. They are changing themselves. I am not
changing things, I am only recor~ng the grea~ changes that
are taking place. Cinema for me is nothing but an expression.
It is a means of expressing my anger at the sorrows and
sufferings of my people. Tomorrow, beyond cinema, man's
Original from
lnlerviews 93
intellect may probably rear something else that may expres.1

the joys, sorrows, aspirations, dreams and ideals of the people
with a force and immediacy stronger than that of the cinema
That would then become the ideal medium.
Sina your films refl,ect an intense politi.cal at.tltJfflUSS, is it mu to
say that you are the first politi.cal filmmaker in India?
'
I don't know. Why do you ask me this type of question?
'
How can I test myself in this position? It is for my audience to
decide whether I am a political filmmal(er, it's all up to them
to decide. In a broader context, all films are political, as all art
is, as all artistes are. It is either of this or that class. One
filmmaker may give it the name political, another may not,
but ultimately it all serves the same purpose. Cinema, being
what it is, also serves politics through its varied forms and
genres.
Mat is your opinion about the modem tendencies in the cinema,
particularly the view that emoti.onal identification with the film 's
characters is a bourgtois pasti.me, th4t the director should breaJc this
illusion ofreality, and come out and speaJc to the audienr.e?
'
There is nothing modem about this. This has existed from

time immemorial. Have you read Aristophanes? He was born
and died 2500 years ago in a city called Athens. He did it.
Therefore there is. nothing modem about it. There are many
forms. This is one kind of form and somebody like Jean-Luc
Godard is practising it. Don't forget there is nothing modem
about it. Many of our epics are full of this-of their authors
·coming out and talking to the people. This is also the very
purpose of our Jatras. ~n art nothing is modern, yet
everything is modern. If someone takes credit for having
done something very 'modem' he is a fool, and he lives in a
fool's paradise. Art eternally goes on changing forms, and all
kinds of forms have been applied, experimented with and
exhausted, we are only re-inventing it, that is all.
How have our mytho/,agical and dramatic traditions influenced
you in particular and the Indian cinema in generalt
There is an epic tradition which dominates the Indian
mentality. It has seeped into the Indian subconscious. It is no

-
surprise, therefore, that India is attracted to mythologicals. I
am a part of it. I cannot think of myself without the epic
tradition. I am all for it. It is in our civilization since time
immemorial. In my films I rely mainly on the folk form. The
great mother image in its duality exists in every aspect of our
being. I have incorporated this is Meghey Dhalca Tara and also
in Juliti Taldeo Ar Cappo.
Whic~ filmmalter has injluenad you mosO
Sergei Eisenstein. He has not only influenced me, but all
filmmakers worth their salt. He is the father of the cinema.
There is Griffith, of course, but Griffith was a mild affair. It
was Eisenstein who theorized the whole thing. It was he who
gave us this language. Before him there was Edwin Porter
[director of] The Great Train Robbery, and then Griffith. But
these two were blind filmmakers. Sergei Eisenstein first
caught hold of the damned thing and tried to teach us the
rudiments of filmmaking. He found out what film is, what this
damned camera thing does. He is the Kalidasa of the
cinema-the theoretician and the creator. There are
filmmakers galore. There were, are, and will be great and
excellent filmmakers all over the world but they are just
derivatives from Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein stands above all.
Anywhere there is film, the filmmaker is only the child of
. Eisenstein, for he is the guardian, the father-he is Adam, the
primeval Adam of the cinema, the first man.
Rabindra Sangut has an important functional role in most of
your films. Could you explain your affinity to Ralnndranath Tagore?
I cannot speak without him. That man has culled all my
feelings long before ·my birth. He has understood what I am.
In spite of the amsiderabk influence of Ralnndmnath Tagore on
you, we find that there is a qualitative differenu between the worlcs of
Tagore and your films. Don't you think that he was excessively
romantic?
Romantic! What do you know about him? Rabindranath is
not a romantic, his is a completely variegated affair. He is the
performing monkey of Bengali literature. And you call him a
romantic! Have you read Chatu.mnga, He is a mystic, agnostic,
Original from
everything. He was also a great rogue and a great one for
using vile language. He also wrote in the language used by
street urchins. So do not try to sidetrack him as a romantic.
Read the full range of the man's work. The structure of his
writings is extremely tight. He is, as I said before, the
performing monkey of Bengali literature. You must have seen
the toy which has a ladder·and a small monkey on the top.
When you hold this toy upright the monkey rolls down. When
inverted it slides down again. Rabindranath is like this toy
monkey. He can get to the top, step by step, and climb upside
down as well. So, it is a great blunder to label him a romantic.
There are some people who want to sell Rabindranath, and
that is why you have this image of him impressed on your
minds. You people have not read Rabindranath. You are yet
to know of his anger. From the lowest rung of society to the
highest he spared none. You may call me a rogue, a rascal,
but he was a greater one. Maybe he knew more four-letter
words than I do. Do not have a distorted notion about him.
The ~ problem has btm a recurring theme in most of your
films. Do ,ou think this problem has a direct Ttlevana to the film you
have made in &ngladesh calledTitas Ekti Nadir Naam?
It doesn't affect me directly. It does in a broader sense, in
an indirect way, in a subliminal way. Filmmaking is a question,
you know, of your subconscious, your feeling of reality. I have
tackled the refugee problem, as you have used the term, not
·as 'a refugee problem'. To me it was the division of a culture
and I was shocked. During the partition period I hated these
pretentious people who clamoured about our independence,
our freedom. You kids are finished, you have not seen that
Bengal of mine. I just kept on watching what was happening,
how the behaviour pattern was changing due to this great
betrayal of national liberation. And I probably gave vent to
what I felt. Today I am not happy, and whatever I have seen
unconsciously or consciously comes out in my films. My films
may have been ridden with expressive slogan-mongering or
.
they ma:y have been remote. . .
But the cardinal point remains-
.
that I am· frustrated with what I see all aroupd me, I am tired
ofiL
Original from
Do ,ou thinlc ~ is tm'J ta/mt among the ,oung Jilmmalfers in
this rountry, or is the Indian New Wave only a lot ofnoi.sti
Yes, there are some talents, but I think they are misguided.
I am not talking of c.aicutta. c.aJcutta, in my opinion, is totally
barren. I cannot point out a single boy in c.aJcutta and say
that he is doing something. But in Bombay, in Kerala, in
Kashmir, even in Assam, there are young boys who are ·doing
something. Satyadev Dubey has potential but he did a very
foolish thing. He took up a good scripL But on a flimsy set-up.
I told him: Why waste so much energy and money on a loafter
(sic). Why Shantata C,ou,t Chalu Ahe? Why not something mo.-e
basic to the people's life? I pin my faith on Kumar Shahani
and John Abraham. Mani Kaul is there too, but he has a tilt in
his brain, slightly astigmatic, just like boys like you-always
falling in love with words. Kumar Shahani is my best studenL
When he comes out with his films, it will be staggering.
Originally pu.blish«l in Film Miscellany,
Film & TMJision Institute of India, Pune, 1976.
Original from
Nazarin
From collaboration with Salvador Dali to Viridiana, Bunuel's

progress is arnazi11g. He has continued to change. That is a sure
sign of his vitality. He has grappled with the most significant
problems of his milieu and age valiantly and constantly.
Nazarin is one of the major films that I have had the good
fortune to see. Here Bunuel is dealing with some problems of
primary importance in the culture that he belongs to. On the
level of sheer filmic construction it is a very competent film. But
the level of competence achieved is not beyond many other good
filmmakers.
Certain interiors and exteriors-especially in the slum
sequence are not as evenly matched as one wishes them to be.
My point is, the film is positively shabby at places: as if the maker
does not care to be scrupulous on the elementary level. He seems
eminently able to afford such shabbiness.
The actor in the part of the central figure, though admirable
at many places, seemed to me to be inadequate in his conveying
of the maker's intentions. That became particularly and painfully
clear to me in the last shot of the film. That way, handling of the
sound-track is much more exciting. The incidental noises fulfil all
tasks of a musical score extremely well. Use of drums to bring in
the sudden feeling of exalted revelation at the end has a literally
stunning effect. It leaves one's music-:hungry ears, with its sudden
appearance, completely breathless.
But these factors are not of prime consideration to me. To me
it is a considerable film because of the theme and the exposition
of it. Because of this masterly handling of one of the most basic of
Original from
98 Ritwik Ghatalc
human themes, the film attains a height which is seldom scaled
by many a more pretentious film.
The universal theme of the 'Persecution of the Fool', whi.c h
recurs throughout human history and human thought has never
been allowed in the film to reduce itself to the level of allegory.
The cross-reference to Jesus of.Nazareth with this film
'concerning Nazario' is oblique and never vulgarly simple.
The idea of the 'itinerant priest' (friars, druids one can
elongate the line from the middle ages to the age of the
Stonehenge) is taken up in the film and the substratum of
Mystery and Miracle is interwoven with it with truly artistic
sensibility which never allows anything to be carried to its logical
conclusion or to be too schematic or obvious. One is reminded of
Joan of Arc, that archetypal heretic, at many places-specially in .
that typically medieval scene of the plague. And Bwiuel, with a
sharp sabre-thrust, juxtaposes it with the dying lover's repeated
call for her 'Juan', a profoundly human touch. The Inql1isition
also brings in that medieval atmosphere.
The figure of Beatrice brings in the necessary theme of the
Possessed Woman, who has transferred the urge for the Divine to
a very natural urge of a healthy normal woman for her hero,
including sublimated sexual overtones. When her real
attachment is revealed to her brutally, she reconciles herself-
after a burst of hysteria-to the inevitable as a natural catharsis.
The harlot<um-murdcress wins the race. She is actually one of
those chosen few who arc really and completely detached. Her
secret lies in her natural reactions to objects of love and hate, her
'everyday-ness'.
These three figures romp through the film as in a medieval
pageant. And Buiiucl achieves one of the most successful frontal
attacks on the established order to persecution of the minds of
men in his part of the world-the Roman Catholic Complex. But
he is blessed with an adversary too solid, too organized, too
palpable.
India (specially, modern Bengal), though notoriously
religious-minded, does not offer such a sitting duck.
That does not mean Buiiuel has not achieved a film which is
deeply satisfying aesthetically, and challengingly stimulating
intellectually. The amazing thing is, he has done it within the
framework Qf an emotionally stirring film in which the human
Original from
Naz.arin 99
relatio~ships are highly sensitively portrayed and significantly
touched off into newer and newer constellations ever and anon.
I ~hall not forget that night in the ruins with the priest sitting,
Beatrice
. sleeping,. leaning on his shoulder, the prostitute crying
out of human jealousy, and the toad crawling on the back of the
priest's palm. A serene height has been reached there. And a
· sense of peace which probably was the quest of this man~r is
it Buftuel himself? Bwiuel, the uncompromising, truthful man.
OriginaUy publish«l as a film mJiew
in Kino, vol. 1, no. 1, January 1964•
•
Original from
On Film Reviews: A Letter to the Editor
With much pain and hesitation ·I am writing ·this letter to you.

Though it apparently concerns your view of Akii Angey Ato Rup,
the issue seems to me to be of a mtich larger nature. The way
films in.this country are reviewed is atrocious.
Why should one review a film at all?·The aim should be to get
at the intention of the author and judge whether it has been
brought out fully -in the film in order to make the audience aware
of its value. The critic should -not impose his own viewpoint or
make caustic remarks about extraneous and irrelevant matters.
For instance, your critic finds in A~ii Angty Ato Rup many
technical defects of a childish nature. There are childish things,
no doubL In my own AjantriJc, there is a sequence in which in one
shot a character appears wearing a shirt and in the very next shot
the shirt is not there. Or in Satyajit Ray's Apamftto there is a long
top shot where the hero moves through a deserted Harrison
Road, and a sizeable Ultorath crowd is seen at the right hand
corner of the film_with the production assistants trying franticaliy
to push it back. To date nobody has complained, though these
films have been seen all over the world.
Why such faults creep in, specially in a first venture, is known
to the makers themselves. They are no less aware of them than
others. But I maintain that these things never detract from the
pleasure of seeing a well-made film. Many of the productions of
Ray, Bunuel, Antonioni, Bergman, Fellini, Resnais and others
contain such slips. To watch a film hawk-like to find this kind of
slip is, to my mind, slightly puerile.
Your critic reminds us more than once that the maker of A~i
Digitized by Google Original .from

On·Film Reviews 101
A~ Ato Rup is a documentary film director of much eminence.
I fail to. understand what bearing this has on the film under
review except a personal one. I have not seen those
· documentaries nor do I want to see them. And even if I saw them,
it would not have qi•alified my approach to the film at hand.
When one writes only a column or two about a film, the
making of which involved so much pain and money and labour
(not to speak of heartache), one tends to become trivial and
ultimately ends up in mere journalese. Filmmakers in this
country have been the victims.of this kind of writing for a pretty
long time in the so-called national newspapers. That similar stuff
is making inroads into the more intelligent papers also, is not a
very happy developrilenL All this is not a very adult thing, you
know.
Published originally in Now,
14 January 1967, as a letter to the tditor.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN •
AScenario
1. A cinema show ends. It is the opening nighL The assistants

and colleagues of the director watching the audience with
anxious faces. The faces of the audience bewildered. Then the
whole audience bursts into abuse. They have not understood a
single frame of the film. They shout, shaming the makers of the
film.
Cut to
2. Exterior of the cinema house. Opening night decorations
are visible. Crowd comes out of the show. A fat lady with some
ladies and girls crosses the road and comes near a big car parked
on that side. Lady opens the door of the car and confides such
a brilliant director has gone completely mad.
Camera pans to the right as she shuts the door with gusto and
reveals the director himself standing in the darkness. His eyes
glisten once, he puffs at his cigarette and departs. The crowd
noise mounts. The noise of abuse.
Mix to
3. The director's home. His wife and children. The ,director's
quiet attitude. His assistants come, some burst into weeping. The
director consoles every one of them as if nothing has happened.
All of them depart one by one. ,
4. Deep night. The director gets drunk. Then the pain comes
· out. From now on we have to establish the director's own
shortcomings and defects along with those of the environment;
specially
.
the cliques
.
of distributors, exhibitors, the Government,
Original from
A Scenario 103
the so-called profeMional intellectuals in film and other circles,
the international festival peddlers etc. and also the callousness of
an utterly callous and ignorant nation.
The director should feel isolated from his medium of
expreMion. At the same time, we should show him as completely
honest in his artistic committnent, though he has so many faults
which are unpardonable and which.create huge difficulties in his
• • •
arnsuc expreM1on.
We should have one or two incy:ients which will prove that this
man is also responsible in so many ways, jeopardizes his own
work.
At the end the man should emerge as a hero with all his
fallacy.
When he is absolutely alone and on the verge of suicide he is
offered an alternative.
He has to leave all art work and go away into some lonesome
spot to earn his living. He accepts.
He goes to the spot. Nature is beautiful around him and he
falls in love with iL
It seems that a happy ending is in view. But that is not to be.
He tears up the landscape with his own hands, literally.
And then there is the atomic explosion turning the seawater
into a huge mushroom.
Published originally in Drishya, no. 18, July 1974.
Original from
Documentary: The Most Fxciting
Form of Cinema
It all started with an explorer-a geologist. A French fur-trading

company, way back in the 1910s, used to send expediti_o ns far
into Eskimo territory to hunt for and collect rare furs in those
Canadian Arctic wastes. The man who became the 'father of the
documentary cinema' was attached to such an expedition. More ·
for fun than for any serious purpose, he took a hand-cranked
movie camera on one such expedition in the wilds.
Thus was born Nanook of the North [ 1922], which revolu-
tionized the concept of documentary cinema and the very life-
pattern of its maker.
The documentary, the recording of actuality moulded in an
artistic whole while bringing in an insight into the matter at
hand, was crying for expression from the very beginning of the
career of this new art medium. But documentary, in the modern
sense of the term, was made for the first time by Robert J.
Flaherty with this film, which was released in 1922.
All over the world, many films were made along these lines,
following Nanoo~films like Moana [1926], Grass [1925], Eve
Africaine, Voyage au Congo [1927], Au Pays du Scalp [1931],
Kuleshov's experiments in the Soviet Union, The General Line
[1926], Turlcsib [1929], Rien Que Les Heures (1926], Berlin:
Symphony of a Great City [ 1927]. .
But the realistically-oriented social documentary on specific
problems got an impetus and formed itself into a movement
when, in Great Britain, a sociologist called John Grierson made
the film Drifters [1929], a record of the lives and problems of
Original from
Docummlary 105
deep-sea fishermen of the eternally storm-tossed and bitterly cold
North Sea.
Flaherty was an isolated phenomenon in America. He was a
lonesome figure till after Pare Lorentz joined him with Tiu Plow
That Bro/ce the Plains [1936]. But not so in Great Britain. John
Grierson brought over Alberto Cavalcanti from France and
gathered around him men of talent-men like. Paul Rotha, Basil
Wright and othen. The G.P.O . Film Unit was born, and then the
Crown ·Film Unit. Films like Song of uykm [1937], Night Mail
[1936], North Sea [1938], Housing Problnns [1935], Industrial
Britain (1933], Contact [1933], started pouring out from these
organizations.
In the thirties, the British school led the world in this sphere.
All that was best in cinematic Britain was expreucd through the
documentary. .
Though, as I have said earlier, Flaherty was a lonesome figure
in America, he becamf' an institution to himself, with the pusage
of time, as probably no other figure in the history of cinema ever
became.
When he started work on his Nanoo/c, he did it almost
spontaneously. Long afterwards, in 1950, in a recorded
conversation published in one of the Penguin Annuals edited by
Roger Manvell, he explained the reason and the motivation
factor of his filmic efforts: ' ... when I saw these men around me
[the Eskimos], I fell in love with them, and I felt I must talk of
them, talk of my love for them, show them to others so that
others may share my feelings.' .
As I am quoting from memory, I am not absolutely sure of the
text, but I am perfectly certain that these were the sentiments
expressed.
And they formed the kernel of his life-long held creed.
When he brought to civilization his invaluable footage, one
day the whole material went up in flames from a chance-thrown
cigarette in the editing room. The result of years of gruelling
labour turned into ashes before his very eyes. Flaherty, with a
characteristic shrug, went back again to the Tundra to reshoot
the whole film. In h~ opinion, the destroyed footage was no good
anyway and it was good riddance.
The release of Nanoo/c had a history by itself. Flaherty most
amusingly talks of the dodges and tricks that he had to employ to
Original from
106 JljtwiJc Ghata/c
release it, in his diary (to be found in Richard Griffith's The World
of Robert Flahmy). It was ultimately released in 1922.
And it was an instantaneous succeu. Flaherty found himself, at
first, in fashion in polite society, and then, an object of blind
•
veneration.
Inevitably, Hollywood woke up to him. Of course, from seeing
the gross return on the film. No less a law-maker of Hollywood
than Sam Goldwyn himself gave a carte blanche to him to make a
film.
Flaherty went away to the South Seas with raw stock, a camera,
a bath, some chemicals and a portable screen. Goldwyn was
happy that no crew of 200 or giant equipment and the attendant
paraphernalia had to be sent with him. But his sense of bliM was
to be short-lived, as it eventually turned out.
There is an amusing anecdote mentioned by Lewis Jacobs in
his book The Rise of the American Film. When Flaherty came back
with the finished film, Moana,· sam Goldwyn eagerly arranged
projection at the studio theatre. He was geniality itself to
Flaherty. Puffing away at his famous cigar, he put his arm around
Flaherty and ordered the show to start. He must have been
thinking of the meagre budget on which this man had presented
him with this latest spectacle. The show was on. When the lights
went up again, Goldwyn sat on with a puzzled face for a moment
or two, then turned pathetically to Flaherty· and exclaimed, 'But
where are the blizzards?' .
This remark was not completely insane if one follows the
man's thinking. According to the calculations of film tycoons,
Goldwyn must have analysed Nanoolc for its amazing box-office
records, and must have come to the brilliant conclusion that the
popularity of Nanoolc was due eminently to the stunt-scenes of
snowstorms or blizzards. Blizzards brought in the money.
Naturally, he expected Flaherty to repeat those snowstorms,
no matter whether or not they generally occurred in a tropical
island·: he felt positively betrayed. That was the end of Flaherty as
far as Hollywood was concerned. Later, he once collaborated with
the great German director Fred Murnau on a film called Tabu
(1937], but the whole thing ended in a fiasco.
After this, Flaherty did not get a chance to make another film
in America for a pretty long time. The next film he made was
Man of Aran (1934].
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The islanders of Aran, which is not more than a hundred
miles (as the crow flies) from London, earn a precarious
livelihood which is almost unbelievable. J. M. Synge has
immortalized these great, sturdy people of picturesque speech in
his one-act play, Rulers to the &a.
Flaherty turned out no less great a work of art. One's credulity
is strained when one remembers that a husband-wife team have
taken those physically impossible sequences with a silent hand-
held camera specially that fantastic sequence of the canvas-boat
(carragh), struggling against the formidable, storm-tossed sea
where waves 500 fL or more high are coming all the way acros.,
the Atlantic from the Americas, and are dashing against the high
cliffs of the Aran Islands. This film is a supreme act of courage as
truly as the lives of its subjects are. The physical presence that one
feels while witnessing the film is more than sufficient to unnerve
a normal, city-bred audience. This film has to be seen to be
believed.
This is the first film in which Flaherty could use the sound-
track. And what a use he made of it! The use of incidental
noises-the endless groaning of the sea-waves, the howling wind,
the clatter of a chance-thrown rock-brings life into the images.
The use of inusic is also extremely exciting.
After this film, there was the sad interlude of Elephant &,y,
. when Flaherty came to our country. One gets excited when one
thinks of the really worthwhile subjects concerning our country
which could have been handled by Flaherty if proper sponsoring
was allowed to him.
Then the old man was contacted by the New Deal
administration of his own country, and Flaherty, for the first time,
concentrated on a social problem of general validity. The film
was on the agricultural questions of the United States, and was to
be called Earth. But the warlike preparations among the
European nations and the hostile bureaucracy in his own state
successfully saw the demise of the film.
The common criticism held against Flaherty, that he always
involved himself in backwater civilizations, photographing
romantic and exotic ways of life of some groups of men in remote
parts of the world-building up a sort of ideal about them-
could have been judged in a proper light if this film were allowed
to be completed and released.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN -
108 Ritwilc Ghatalc
Just after the war, I think it was Standard Oil Company of New
Jersey who approached him to make a documentary on oil-
drilling operations. He was given complete freedom, and was not
pressed to ·trumpet the sponsor's name loudly either within the
film itself or in the titles. The result was that one of the most
magnificent films ever made, Louisiana Story [1948], also turned
out to be his swan-song
Set in the swampy bayou country of the state of Louisiana. a
French dialect-speaking Cajun boy, Napoleon Ulysses, is the hero
of the film. He and his small raccoon (a type of small amphibious
animal) used to paddle through the peaceful swamps and lakes of
this quiet land. The only enemy was the alligator. Breaking the
peace of this landscape, one day, came speedboats, followed by
steamers and derricks and tugboats and strange men.
The tenor of the boy's life is shattered. New interests dawn,
new friendships crop up. The boy has wonderful visits to the
mysterious boring machine-and there is that blow-out in the
well one night-then the men leave. The derrick stands and
peace descends again to the bayou country of Louisiana.
The film has influenced so many filmmakers and films all over
the world that enumeration of their names will be tiresome.
Flaherty made only four films, for all practical purposes, in his
long career. But that was sufficient to engrave his name in the
Hall of Immortals in Cinema. The partisan criticism of his
romantic inclination has been toned down with the passage of
time into insignificance, and his influence is now discernible in
the works of all the schools of documentary filmmakers. That is
why one has to refer back to him to get inspiration again and
again. Without a thorough study of his works we cannot under-
stand the development of serious and creative documentary films.
In the mean while, all ove~ the world, the documentary came
into its own. In France, films like De la cherche [?], The Rotter[?],
Taris, [Taris, roi de l' eau, 1931, dir. Jean Vigo] De Milk un
Monastere [?]-started coming out one after another. In other
countries of Europe, documentary flowered into a many-coloured
thing.' Then another kind of phenomenon started occurring in
the Netherlands, The great figure ofJoris Ivens arose. Here is the
true documentary maker, the International Man. After the great
success of The Bridge [1928] and his film on the draining of the
Zuider Zee, in his native country, he came away to the bleeding
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Spain of the Republic, and made spanish Earth [ 19g7J. His

inclination led him to all the oppressed countries, and he
ended up with a documentary in Djakarta.
Another figure in the Netherlands, Helen Van Dongen,
after distinguished work in her own land, joined Flaherty as
editor in Louisiana Story.
In another part of the world, the documentary was
flourishing vigorously from much earlier times-that was in
the Soviet Union. ·
With the birth of the new republic, newsreel teams sprang
up. Their exciting activities can be learnt in detail from Jay
Leyda's book Iuno.
Just after the revolution, there was a challenge in the air in
all the arts, with a strong orientation towards composite arts.
In theatre, [Yevgeni] Vakhtangov with his Princess
Turandot, [Vsevolod] Meyerhold with his renderings of Gogol,
[Alexander] Tairov with his optimistic Tragedy, Eisenstein with
his renderings in the Proletkult theatre, revolutionized stage
art.
Mayakovsky led the revolt in poetry, and Gorky in
literature in general. In this atmosphere was born Kuleshov's
workshop and Dziga Vertov's newsreel .membly. They, as all
the other cinema workers of Soviet Union of the time, were
•
strongly realistically oriented. Then came Eisenstein, the
architect with his Strike and Battleship Potemkin, Pudovkin the
chemist with his documentary on Pavlov's theory, Mechanics of
the Brain [1925-26], Chess ·Fever [1925] and Mother [1926],
Dovzhenko the cartoonist with his Zvenigora [1928]. All these
films hover between documentary and feature types of
•
anema.
In the legitimate documentary film, Dziga Vertov, that
eccentric, started pouring out newsreels called Iuno-Pravda
and Iuno-Eye. Then he went on to creative documentary with
his The Man with the Movie Camera [1929], the camera
acrobatics of which still seem remarkable today.
And then arose the figure of Esther Shub, the perfect
editor. Finding and salvaging newsreel-strips from forgotten
archives, she built one artistic whole after another, starting
with The Russia o/Nilcolai II and Lev TolstUj [1928] .
Original from
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110 lutwilc Ghatalc
Then was Turin. His Turlcsib (1929], a creative rendering

of the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway, instantly won
critical applause.
- The Soviet Government in this period sent two agit-prop
trains to the provinces which carried a full complement for
film production and projection. These trains used to stop at
wayside stations. The filmmakers were given a chance to study
the local problems. Then they made the films, printed them,
and showed them to the very people about whose problems
the films were made, all within a week's time. The effects can
be understood even today.
Gorky was extremely interested in th.e cinema. He
conceived a film called A Day in the Soviet Union. On a specific
date, hundreds of cameraman would be scattered all over the
entire land of the Soviet Union, and would record whatever
chance happenings occurred before them.
Then the entire footage would be assembled and sho~. It
was a grandiose plan.
Then came the war. Chamberlain and Daladier sold
Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich.
The crisis was on.
War accele~tes things. It gives that impetus to the efforts
of men and nations which brings out that extra something in
their activities. ·
War is a_. curse, but some blessings are gleaned from it
which allow men to adjust themselves better to the problems
of peace, too.
Warlike Germany was mobilizing from 1935 towards. In
matters of film, too, the Nazis were no less thorough.
Ever since he saw Battl.eship PotnnJcin, Dr Goebbels urged
his filmmakers to study the craft of the ftlm and channelize
their _skills into propagandistic documentaries . With
characteristic shrewdness, Dr Goebbels steered clear of
feature and story films from the very first and concentrated
on propagandistic documentaries. The result was, the
German filmmakers became extremely efficient in creating a
sort of organized lie which goes in the name of truth. Under
the great guidance of the master of the UFA days (whose
Kam_eradschaft was one of the masterpieces of semi-
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documentary recording of a coal mine disaster way back in

1931, and, ironically, whose theme was the international
brotherhood of labour, specially that of Franco-German
labour). With G. W. Pabst, the Gennan documentary-making
machinery became as efficient and formidable as their
Wehrmacht [German armed forces prior to and during
World War II]. Persons like Leni Riefenstahl started pouring
out masterpieces of concoction, starting with the record of
the Berlin Olympics in 1936.
After the war, incidentally, a part of a film on Nazi
victories and allied barbarities· came into the hands of
occupation forces. They could not but marvel at the
command over the medium and ingenious cunning of the
Nazi film machine.
The nations of Western Europe at the time were groaning
under the heels of Hitler. Great filmmakers of countries like
France either left their motherland or joined the partisans to
fight the battle in the physical sense. There were very rare
cases of capitulators and collaborators-they were few and far
between. Across the channel, Great Britain was seething. In its
total war effort, the propaganda and documentary film had its
place in the scheme of things. Apart from the tried hands at
documentary-making, masters from other fields offered their
services for such productions-talents like Noel Coward,
Carol Reed, Anthony Asquith. The results of the joint efforts
were seen in such superb films as Target/or Tonight [1941), In
Which We .Serve [1942), Desert Victory [1943) and innumerable
others. Almost simultaneously, Paul Rotha was making
another kind of commentary on contemporary life such as
The World is luch [1947), the theme of which is hunger, as
opposed to plenty and. waste.
In another part of the world, in America, Pearl Harbour
electrified the nation and galvanized it into a cohesive whole
and poised it for action.
The series, The March of Time [launched in 1935] came
into being. It went on being released regularly. Such stalwarts
of Hollywood as Frank Capra and John Ford started turning
out brilliant documentaries on military, technical and general
subjects. In the campaign in the Pacific, cinematographers

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN -
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112 lutwilc Ghatalc
accompanied Admiral Nimtz's and MacArthur's men.

Across the globe, Soviet cinematographers geared
themselves towards the war effort. Tho11sands of cameramen-
soldiers went on recording battles at the front at first hand,
and brought back tremendous material which is both
unprecedented and emotionally shattering. Hundreds of
them died in the battle of Stalingrad, which was recorded in
its full detail in a fantastic feature-length documentary,
Stalingrad [1943], produced by the Central Newsreel Studio of
Mos-Film and directed by [Leonid] Varlamov.
Many other such films were made and circulated during
those terrible war years.
Here I may be permitted to make a digression. In 1952,
when the first International Film Festival was held in India,'
Varlamov attended it along with the Soviet delegation. He
came to make a documentary called Across India.
I had the good fortune to be one of their guides, along
with some of my friends who are famous filmmakers ~ow. At
that time I had the opportunity of watching the working
methods of Soviet documentaries.
Varlamov brought with him a team of four or five
cameraman-one of them a woman cameraman, Galina
Monglovskoya.
Varlamov used to get up early in the morning and sit with
the list of interesting places (which he had made after a long
discussion with us the previous night), allot each cameraman
a portion of it, with penetrating directions about the footage
to be covered and the general attitude of the takes to be
maintained. The man had an amazing knack of catching the
plastic points of the subject only by discussion, without seeing
the things themselves. He used to sit, profusely perspiring,
almost naked, in that hotel room in those grey dawns, and
bark out commands curtly to his different cameramen. His
relationship with his cameramen was that of a father with sons
and daughters.
We used to be assigned to one cameraman or another. We
used to scatter out ·arter those instructions and work for the
whole day.
When we used to come back in the evening, dog-tired, to
Original from
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the hotel-Varlamov would be sitting there on the bed semi-

naked, with a mug of beer in his hand and a q,iizz•cal smile
on his lips.
I never saw that man go out shooting or exert himself in
any way whatsoever. What he used to do the whole day, I have
no way of ascertaining, but he used to come up in the evening
conferences with surprising details about things which
foretold his prior knowledge of the subjecL
I have not had the good fortune to see the finished film-
it was not destined to be much of a thing anyway, being a
straight propaganda film-but I have learnt a thing or two
from that man's extremely agile brain and that Himalayan
coolness. ,
War thus expanded the horizon and accelerated the
growth of the documentary all over the world.
In India, too, during the war years, the rudiments of
documentary and newsreel movements were introduced. If
there were earlier efforts in India, I do not know of them. In
any case, such efforts could not have been works of much
importance.
During the war, the Gover~ment of India formed a
newsreel film unit which was attached with the army. Some of
its work could be seen by the public at large. At the fag end of
the war, or just after it was over, the same unit formed the
core of the organization called the Indian News Parade,
which was a newsreel organization.
After Independence, this same organization was expanded
and Films Division was born. Films Division grew into a
documentary producing concern, as we see it now.
Outside Films Division, a documentary filmmaker of note
was Paul Zits, whose films on the Todas of Nilgiris [ The
Vanishing Tribe, 1959] I remember.
Films Division has a newsreel section, a group of directors
making .one or two thousand foot films on specific themes,.
sponsored by different ministries and other government
organizatiQns. They also give out contracts called by tender
from ·a panel of approved producers, and sometimes they
approach f;ilmmakers of note for some particular or special
documentary of feature length. They also buy, if they think
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114 Jutwilc GhataJc
fit, documentaries already made. The best among these fihns

made by Films Division are quite competent without being
brilliantly creative. An organization which is hedged and
hemmed in by so many restrictions from all sides cannot
possibly do more. And the central guidance, which is of
paramount importance in matters of art (let us remember
John Grierson), is sadly lacking, it appears.
Apart from Films Division, many state governments and
semi-government organizations sponsor documentaries on
varied subjects. Some of them have their own permanent
producing units, but their results seem to be extremely
frustrating upto now.
The other sponsors that we have in our country are the.big
commercial houses operating in India. Their counterparts all
over the world have shown eminent tact and understanding
in sponsoring documentary films so that some of the greatest
documentaries ever made have been under their aegis.
I have not had much opportunity of seeing the majority of
the films made in this country, as the exhibition side of the
affair is not yet satisfactorily solved. As a random thought I
think of KonaraJc. I remember Panchathupi: A Village in Bengal,
by [Harisadhan] Dasgupta as a tolerably serious effort. Bimal
Roy's Gautam Buddha and Calcutta Film Society's Calcutta are
ciphers, in my opinion. They have missed the bus by a wide
margin. Potentially exciting material has been largely wasted
in these films-I am sorry to admiL Another Dasgupta film,
The Tata Story,· had certain interesting moments, specially in
the soundtrack, but as a whole it does not impres.,.
I have seen the longer version of Satyajit Ray's
Rabind:ranath. As it seems to be the most serious attempt so far
made in our country, it demands a bit of space.
As a whole, the film fails to convey the tensions of a
turbulent artist struggling through his life, above all, against
mediocrity. Too much space has been absolutely wasted on a
sort of tourist vision of old-time Calcutta, the family tree, the
Brahmo Samaj. By dwelling on Debendranath etc. the
balance has been completely spoilt. One could do away with
the first 2,000 ft. of the film without losing a single point
about Tagore.
Original from
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The turning point in Tagore's intellectual life·, that

moment, recorded in his autobiography, which gave birth to
his first major poem, 'Nirjharer Swapnabhanga' either
Satyajit has completely missed the significance of it or has
misunderstood iL
I also did not like the way the 'Crisis of Civilization'-
almost Tagore's last testament-has been illustrated by the
footage of Europe ravaged by the Hitlerite hordes. It betrays a
certain lack of taste-the way the thing has been played up
(which is tantamount to playing to the gallery, it seemed to
me) .
There were also certain factual mistakes, such as the ones
on Tagore's taking to painting.
The film had its brilliant moments, too.
Above all, the mental state that one arrives at at the end of
the film, is definitely all-embracing. The use of certain songs
sung by Tagore himself, on the empty verandah of his
Jorasanko house is masterly. The use of certain portraits at
certain judiciously chosen moments is a s~gn of supreme
artistic temperament and judgement.
I wish I could be more generous to this, the only genuine
creative documentary made till now in India. It is rather a pity
that the film is not entirely as satisfying as it could be. -It was
made in haste-that was a mistake, I think-and is not a
product of deep brooding and concentration. ·
But Tagore is a tough customer, one should remember
that, too.
·What is a documentary?
It can be a straight coverage of some event in the strict
newsreel fashion, or it can be a profoundly artistic, creative
piece of work like ijacques-Yves] Cousteau's The Silent World
[1956] or Ame Sucksdorff's The Creal Adventurt [1953], both
of which are, incidentally; Gran Prix winners at Cannes. The
word 'documentary' covers a wide range of categories of film.
Then there are marginal types of films, for example,
[Roberto] Rossellini's Paisan [1946], or [Vittorio] de Sica's
Sciuscia [1946].These films heralded the advent of the so-
. called neo-realism.
If the main difference between feature films and
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116 /utwilc Ghatak
documentaries is taken to be the fact that one enacts and

recreates situations and events, and the other does not, utter
confusion will follow. Man of Aran was a re-creation of events
which normally occur in the lives of a people. In one inst.µice
in that film, there was a re<reation of activity long forgotten
by the present-day inhabitants of the island. That was the
tiger-shark harpooning sequence. These creatures stopped
coming to these shores long ago, but during Flaherty's
shooting they suddenly appeared again. Flaherty had to take a
lot of trouble to find an old man who still remembered the
art of harpooning the sharks and who could teach the secret
to the young actors in the film.
Still, Man of Aran is not considered to be a feature film.
If we take employment of actors as the criterion, this will
lead us nowhere. Nowadays almost all the documentaries
employ actors, not always people impersonating themselves or
their like.
Conversely, from Pudovkin and Eisenstein onwards, use of
non-actors as a conscious theory has played a very big part in
the development of cinema as a whole.
Weaving a filmic pattern around a story or a plot is also
not the thing we are seeking. Many great documentary films
have been woven around such plots, for instance, Louisiana
Story.
Actually, in the truly creative sense, the documentary is an
attitude. The truth lies in reality, and the cinema is eminently
capable and uniquely suited to recording physical reality in all
its varied aspects. It becomes a duty and an onus on the artist
to record them and present them in an artistic manner.
That is why the documentary is the most exciting and most
valid and legitimate form of cinema and that is why the
border-line between story, film and documentary is broken
again and again by all the great artistes in all the periods of
the history of the cinema.
[Louis] Lumiere's 'documentary' The Arrival of a Train
[L '.Arrivk d'un Train en Gare, 1895] or Watering the Gardener
[L'Arroseur Arrosie, 1895], truly performed the duties of
cinema-just as Pather Panchali did. And, in the documentary
it is a wrong notion that subjective assessments,
Original from
Documentary 117
generalization, compression, seeking the essence these do

not play a part. They very much do.
Almost all the great ~asten of cinema today have made
documentaries some time or other, even in the conventional
sense of the term-[Alain] Resnais, [Michelangelo]
Antonioni, Satyajit [Ray], Karel Reisz. Roman Polanski made
his famous Wardrobe film [ Two Men and a Wardrobe, 1958],
before he made Knife in the Water [1962] which got the Critics
Award at Venice. The younger French experimentalists
periodically make documentaries between their features-
some regularly buzz off to Cuba to make them (Cuba being
very much in need of such talents) .
In our country this has not yet developed. There are the
economic facton-a generally low standard of living and lack
of enlightened sponsorship. ·
But potentially, India is one of the richest countries to be
exploited by the camera-and almost all of it still virgin. -
Some foreigners have come and done some work. [Ame]
Sucksdorff spent some years in the country and made two
films. ['A trip to India resulted in the short films Indian Villagt
(/ndislc By, 1951) and The Wind and the &ver ( Vinden och Roden,
1951) '-Erik Bamouw in Documentary: a history of the non-fiction
film, OUP, 1974, p. 189]
Then, the American television people are coming more
frequently nowadays to cover different aspects of the Indian
scene. These, along with the efforts of Films Division
directors-some of whose works are really exciting-are not
adequate by themselves.
Here, I think, is a vacuum which can be filled up by the
big commercial houses. I think some serious efforts have been
made, but judging from the results, it appears that not much
headway has been made.
Though I have no direct experience of such things, -I may
surmise the difficulties of turning out worthw·hile
documentary films of course, from the point of view of the
filmmaker.
The first thing is the question of audience. Creative
documentaries of feature or semi-feature length have
absolutely no chance of public circulation in India, except as
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118 Ritwili GhataJc
a miracle. And I don't think the commercial houses should

aim at such audiences.
The so-called 'prestige' films made for specialized
audiences generally fall between two·stools. ·
The audience to be aimed at by such sponson should be
those present at the major international film festivals. And the
aim should be at the top prizes. The way lies in the creation of
goodwill and development of public relations. A film winning
applause in such a festival is bound to create interest in any
country of the world, and such a film, for iu cultural value, is
bound to be an object of disc1ission amongst the right set of
people in the society in those countries.
This aim, and a clear idea about the audience to be
approached (via festivals) are half the b.a ttle won.
And such films should not and cannot cost very much.
The documentary films that are being sponsored by such
concerns are being paid for by fantastic amounts of money
anyway. With much le~ expenditure, much better and longer
films can easily be turned out.
The next difficulty that comes to my mind is the method
of sponsorship and the way of handling the filmmaking
proper.
Part of a letter addressed to the 11'(lian D,cygm Cmnpany, 10 October 1963.
Original from
Ast.ill from one ofGhatak's earliest fcamre film s Nagan·k [1953}, with the
legendary actress Prova Devi playing the mother.
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Above. Shooting Ajantrik. &WW. Kali Banerjee as the mechanic Bimal and
Master Deepak ~ ,.' his ward, Sultan, in the 1957 film Ajantrik.

Abovt. Anasuya [Supriya Chowdhury] and Bhrig u [Abanish Banerjee]
exchange c h ildhood me mories or separation and loss in the film Koma!
Gandhar [1 96 1]. &Ww. A still from the short fil m Adivasiyon Knjeevan Srot
[1955] .
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About. Shankar [A.ni l Chaue1jec] breaks into a fu ll-th roated re nditio n of

a son g in raga Hamsadhhwani, as I.he fi rst rays o f the sun to u ch the
waters o f the lake in Meghey Dhaka Tara. &low. The penultima te
sequence in the film . Necta cries out, 'I'd love to live. I'd live . Te ll m e,
Brother, for o nce, tha t I'd \i\'e ... I' d live, I'd live. '
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Supriya Ch owdhury as Neeta in Mtgfu:y Dhak.a Tar<I. two images of 'the
alkaring m o t.her goddess' to her lower middle<lass refugee fami ly.
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Little Seeta (lndrani Chalmtborty] meets the Bohurupee in
Subamaul,,ha LI962 ].
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Two scenes fro m the 1973 film Titru Ekti Nadir Naam:. Abovt. The first
meeting; and &WW. Death o n the banks of Titas.
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Scenes from Titas Ek.ti Nadir Naam. Based on Advaita Ma1labarman 's
novel, the film is about the struggles of the Malos, a fishing community
of East Bengal.
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Above. The song and dance rises to a frenzied crescendo: a still from the
unfinished film Aro.pkatha / &dnti. &I.ow. An il Challerjee as Shan kar in
the unfinished Kato Ajanart.

If completed , this would have bee n Gha tak's only unabashed comedy:
Sunil Bhattacharya as the gawky Bagala in &galar &ngadarshan.
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A still from R.angp Golam.
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°'g'""d by Google UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Ritwik Chatak as Nilkantha Bagchi in his last feature filmjukti Taklw A r
Cappo [ 1974) ' ... but I spoke the trUlh , when I said I am confused.
Maybe we all are ... confused ... groping . '
..... "'o'""d by Google

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AppeNtix
About the Oraons of Oahotanagpur
[In 1955 Ritwilc Ghatalc spent about a month shooting in the

Chhotanagpur region for a documentary on tribal life, Life of the
Adivasis. These obsm,ations on Oraon culture are of interest in that
connection.]
The Oraons are probably the only tribe remaining in central

India who have still retained their power to express their mental
ecstasy through the primal medium of dancing. Thousands of
years of oppression, involving waves of migration, swindling and
torture by the higher and more cultured brethren of the land
and other lands, poverty, lack of health and the easy way of living,
nothing could completely wipe out a trace of that irrepressible
joy which bursts forth in rhythm. They have been told again and
again, and that flow of advice is by no means absent even today,
that it is just not proper to break into dance at the slightest
excuse. It is not cultured. It is aboriginal, it reminds one of one's
own sins in another narrow and criminal society.
All these strictures have been successful to a large extenL The
Oraons today are not what they were even fifty years ago. And if
this goes on, after a decade they will not be \\'.hat they are today.
This is the most sad fact touching the tribals at the present
momenL But more of this later.
2
The Oraons are essentially an agricultural people. True, they still
retain customs and a memory of a past in which hunting was
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120 RjtwiJc Ghatalc
vigorously punued. Among Indian tribes, they only know how to
make and use that highly developed weapon, the boomerang
{dabsu lebdu) . But hunting is a subsidiary in their agrarian
economy. And history furnishes proof that this peace-loving and
extremely friendly people won the land wherever they went, not
by marital prowess but by the plough. When they came down to
the jungles of Chhotanagpur after being driven out of Robt.as fort
(Ruidasgarh), in more recent historical times, their present
habitat was already occupied mainly by the great tribe of Mundas.
The Oraons became the dominant people, not by giving battle,
but by being friendly with the others and clearing the jungle and
by making the earth bounteous with their better implements of
agriculture. Abundant evidence of this harmony with nature and
man around him is found in the folktales, songs, and places of
historic interest lying around the villages both of the Oraons and
Mundas.
· And hence, the key to Oraon culture is to be found in this
vocation of life, agriculture.
5
This does not mean that they do not have a martial heritage.
They have. These peaceful people have found it impossible to go
on tolerating oppression throughout history. In the past 300
years, they have risen in revolt again and again, first against the
Mughals and then against British rule. These civilized rulers
always sent their jagirdars, moneylenders and unscrupulous
traders into their territory. And the army was always just a step ·
behind them. The Oraons came, felled the trees, cleared· the
jungle, fertilized and furrowed the earth, and received yields.
Then came landlords and claimed lands and taxes . The
uncivilized ones tolerated this as_long as they could, and then
moved on to further regions only to be followed by the ravens.
These moneylenders and traders came, and broke the
harmonious economy and magnificent art of the Oraons. When
the yoke became unbearable, the Oraons rose in one grand
gesture to resist. They were mawed down by superior killing
machines. This process has gone on for a long time, probably
from the time of the Vedas. The last rising was under Birsa
Bhagwan (Birsa Munda).
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Oraons of Chhotanagpur 121
4
The impact of propagation by religious missionaries, not only
Western, but indigenous as well, came into our purview as far as
fragments of alien culture -among the Oraons is concerned. All
their art is at a highly mixed stage. But, like the sun's rays
through broken clouds, we can perceive a healthy, ever young,
primeval pattern of culture which takes us back tho11sands and
tho11sands of years into the dim twilight region of prehistory.
The study of their past from the standpoint of Indian
historiography as a whole has not been taken up seriously as yeL
But indications are there, indications of far-reaching significance.
Indications pointing to a link with the protohistoric civilization of
the Indus Valley of 3000 B.C., and through it with the prehistoric
culture of West Baluchistan, and perhaps the Sun Valley culture.
The famous Indus Valley design of the inverted leaf motif found
profusely in pottery and seals is still a living tradition (or was fifty
years ago) among the art of the Oraons. This is just one, there
are other links.
5
Let us try to shift and pick out those aspects of their culture
which take us directly back to the day when this ancient people
were young, which grew out of spontaneity, out of evolution of
life itself.
In one word, let us seek out the remnants of original culture
which may throw a glimpse, .a lthough a very vague and diffused
one, into that prehistoric past. Let the curtain of millennia
uncover a little to show a piece of life in its pristine glory.
Echoes of it can be found in the system of dormitories for
boys and girls, in the. curious system of totems, in the allied
custom of Par~a flags, in the seasonal Jatras, and above all, in the
dances.
Everything begins with dances here, continues interwoven
with it and ends where ti.red feet end.
6
So, the dances. It is here that we will find the reflection of life, of
the dawn, and, probably, of the evening glow.
A point to remember. Analysis of their songs and dances will
show their origin clearly. It is probably something like this.
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122 .RjtwiJc Ghatalc
Emotions surge in the mind of a primitive individual or a
primitive collective, with a strong unhindered impact. The
expression of this strong emotion is also equally strong. The voice
and feet develop sound and motion. And, in a collective which is
the be-all and end-all of all primitive society, this expression has a
spontaneous tendency to be rhythm~c, harmonious. It is so
because many are involved always; the unit is collective and not
an individual.
But a stage comes when spontaneity, the st.ate of not being
aware, gives place to awareness, to organization. Again, the
reason is that collective.
And soon this expression under strong emotion becomes
directed towards a definite end.
To delve deeper in search of these definite ends will carry us
into the study of the psychology of primitive people. Sufficient to
say here, the complex spiral has many ingredients from now on.
Sometimes, it is pantomimic representation of such incidents in
their own lives as excite the intense feeling of pleasure.
Sometimes it develops magical significance, this stylized
pantomime. The theory invariably is of sympathetic magic. Such
as rainmaking, which sets off the cycle of existence in an agrarian
society: let the earth drink deep, let her be fruitful, let her
nourish her children.
But all this apart, we witness in a symbolic way this birth of a
dance even today. When the drums start beating, the young lady
standing shyly in a comer goes into a trance slowly. The rhythm
intoxicates the blood in her veins, it is irresistible: waves of
rhythm start rippling on her swaying body and imperceptibly she
is in the midst of a high tempo. This birth of a dance among the
Oraons is a sight to see; once seen it is never forgotten.
7
A few words about some important things. The village dormitory
for the boys is the centre of collective activity in a collective
minded society. This dormitory, which is called dhumlcuria or
jonklverpa is highly interesting and details about it are to be found
at the end of this paper. Our dances are generally done on the
akhra or yard before the dhumlcuria which is almost always situated
in the centre of the village. In the dormitory are kept the Nagara
Muduls, Runj, Bhenr, Narsinha, Guguchu or Jorotoro. Life in the
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dhumlcuria is highly interesting from the point of view of
anthropology and sociology. But almost all important things are
celebrated by dancing. So the alchTa can hold centre of stage and
-yet can show the workings of the dormitory.
The girls also have a dormitory, which is called~ and
whose location is supposed to be secreL Its workings are different
from the boys', excepting the erotic side of iL
Now about totems. Totemistic clans are found among other
tribals of India, such as the Bisonhor Marias of Bastar among the
Austro-Asiatic tribes, and among Kohyak and Serna Nagas of
NEFA among the mongoloid tribes.
But the distinguishing features of the Oraons are that they
have anthropomorphic or zoomorphic representations of these
totems which are kept in the do~tories. Curiously enough, this
primitive custom is frozen at a certain stage of development; they
have the totem but they do not worship or attach much magical
significance to iL It is a sacred ornamentation which they. bring
out and carry at the head of processions during the magnificent
seasonal huntingjatras.
It is the parha flag that is the sacred and worshipped symbol of
the village. It has replaced ·the totem according to a curious
transformed-sanctity process. Every village has a separate design
for its flag. The greatest show of brotherhood that an Oraon
community is capable of is presentation of the village
(Jmf&al.,aa,·~,u· to a neighbouring village. This is a glorious custom
which calls for a well advertised Jatra where many gather and
dancing continues for the whole nighL
Jatras, specially the inter-parha ones like Magh Jatra, are
notable features of Oraon life. They serve two apparent purposes:
one, they are an attempt at a tribal union, where thoughts are
exchanged and intermingling is such as to develop oneness of
feeling. Two, it is the place to throw together marriageable
youngsters. Here boys and girls of a village are able to meet
others from another .village. Marriage being exogamous, this
greatly facilitates the matchmaking.
Now, something about religion. Other religions, specially
Hinduism, though it was by no means a one-way traffic, have
mixed up the original pantheistic ancestor-wonhipping magico-
religious systems with extraneous elements. Dharmes is their
supreme God (probably the Bengali rural Dhanna Thakur has a
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124 Ritwilc Ghatalc
kinship with it). Anceston pervade their religious thought; as an
instance, Harbarijatra can be cited.
And, of course, their main vocation, agriculture, is almost the
sole concern of all rites along with fertility among humans.
The earth is loved. Bangari, Bheloa Puja, Karam, Kalihani
Puja, Nawakhani, all are connected with the earth and
cultivation.
Koba Benja is the marriage of the village priest, Mahato, with
Dharti, the earth. The Mahato stands for the Sun God, and this
marriage ensures the fertility of the earth. This precedes the
human marriages of the season. Sarhul is the festival which is
celebrated in this connection.
8
We come to the dances now. As we have observed, it is the dances
that keep the rhythm of Oraon life. The cycle of the seasons is
reflected in the variegated dance festivals all the year round. It is
extremely difficult to find an order in the everflowing complex
dances of the Oraons. Let us start out from an arbitrarily chosen
period. We will enumerate merely the important ones, and will
refrain from giving any descriptions of the complex dance
movements that are involved. Only the point to remember is that
each dance is a distinct entity. The choreography, grouping,
alignment of dancers and players etc., are quite rudimentary, but
they are all there. Monotony and repetition within a single dance
form are, of course, evident, but differences between the forms
are extremely marked.
These dances are meant to be continued for hours, if not for
nights and days. Each dance takes some time to hold the mood of
the dancers, but when it does, the hold is total. That is the
moment when tribal dance is at its besL Individuals submerge in
the collective, the rhythm and the dust kicked up by the tripping
feet intoxicate you, reason is numbed, only feeling remains. This
is what these dances are meant for. They cannot be enacted, least
of all in an urban, a different, atmosphere. .
From December to March is the wedding season in the
society. Harbari Jatra and Kah~ Benja are held at this period.
This is the time for Jadur dances.
Jadur is the dance of courtship, the amorous youthful play of
love; that mysterious urge is expressed through the rhythmic
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Oraons_ <if Chhotanagpur 12.5
going forward and coming back. When you watch, the
communication becomes obvious to you.
The Phagu festival, the invocation of Spring, falls almost at the
end of this period. All marriages are stopped for about a month
up to the Sarhul festival in April, when the Sun God is married to
the Earth, the supreme marriage.
In summer comes the time for the Kharia dances. Kharia is,
on the one hand, a dance of quiet joy and satisfaction: now that
the mad quest for a mate is over and the ceremony of marriage
etc. is done, time has come for a quiet enjoyment of life and the
mind strays towards the evocation of daily life. On the other
hand, this dance has the vigour and thrust of hunters and
warriors: this is a hunting and war dance as well. The dancers
carry sticks and other weapons as if to go out hunting or to war.
After summer's heat comes rain, the most anxiously awaited
season. The dance now is the magnificent Karani. Probably the
most beautiful dance, along with Jadur. You see the young girls
enacting rain-making, sowing seeds and reaping. And they pacify
the earth with caressing motions: the mother has given her yield,
probably the child has snatched at it, let the mother earth not be
angry.
A branch of a sacred tree standing outside the village is
broken and brought to the alchra by dancing girls and planted in
the middle, and then their lyrical dance starts round and round
•
ll.
In September-November is the autumn dance, Chirdi-Kharia
of Aghan. This is a more warlike variation of the martial Kharia
dance of summer.- The granaries are full, this is the traditional
time for going out for warlike deeds.
And in this way all the seasons are ushered in and their
presence celebrated. But apart from these main seasonal dances,
there are various dances for various occasions. The more
important ones are as follows.
There are more or less four important ceremonial hunting
expeditions or Jatras in different seasons. Th_ey are Bisu Sundra
or Koba Shikar; Phagu Sundra, Jeth Shikar, and Sandhi Sundra
in the new moon hunt in Magh. Among them, Bisu Sundra is the
most important one.
During these expeditions, the totem is brought out and
carried at the head of the procession, and different activities of

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126 Ritwik Ghatalc
shikar are enacted through the motions of the dancen.
There is a curious custom during Sandhi Sundra, when all the
males go out of the village, and womenfolk take over the work,
while wearing men's dress, and generally make a nuisance of
themselves all around.
Then there are the wonderful dances connected with a
marriage. All the ceremonies of marriage are connected with
some dance or other. The coming of the maidens of the groom's
party with a young lady carrying decorated cans of paddy on a
painted pitcher on her head-all dancing merrily-and then the
bride's party receiving them through dancing and raising the
tempo to the highest pitch, is unparalleled in its expression of
playful joy.
This is the Benja Nalna.
Then the men folk of the bride's party do. a dance called
. the
Paiki, which is a mock war-dance. The motion of this dance
indicates an old custom of the groom•s snatching the bride after
giving battle.
After the marriage, the old women of the village dance with
the ploughshare, hay and sickle in hand. This is supposed to be a
satirical dance. The old hags are by no means sober when they
dance, and the meaning that they very palpably put forward
through the dance is by no mearis acceptable to the Censor
Board.
Every puja has some dance or other connected with it. There
are the social dances which have no magical significance attached
to them. Only the girls, that also when they go out of the village,
do a dance which they call Chali Bechna or Angan. It is a
beautiful dance, but probably a bit sophisticated.
Then there is the famous Jhumer, which· is secular in spirit,
and amorous in mood. It is the traditional love-malting dance.
Lujhri is a dance used as a variation on all occasions. It also
has intricate patterns of motion.
There are others, such as Mathus, which are more uncom-
monly used.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of all their dances or
variations thereof. Arid the Oraons are very adept at improvising
newer forms for newer occasions. I·have been present at a remote
village where they have mingled Karam with Benja Nalna and
Sarhul to fit the occasion of receiving a much honoured guest at
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their village. Every few steps they washed his feet and wiped them
ceremonially and in rhythm. And the songs also kept pace. There
are very old compositions as well as improvised ones of very
recent origin concerning major events. But that is a subject by
itself.
These dances create an atmosphere which suddenly makes
you aware that you are witnessing a scene which is as old as the
history of man in India. The tunes, the sound, the spectacle make
you realize what vigour and joy of life is. They are precious
because they invoke in you the primary emotions.
And they make you realize another point, the innate harmony
of the tribal form of society. Work and relaxation, worship and
pleasure, these are so intermixed and so well balanced, that
emotional disbalance, the greatest malady of civilized society, has
very little chance to appear. Moreover, all age groups have a well
defined and proper scope to take a place in the community. The
feeling of neglect which comes with a certain age is totally absent ·-
in such a society. This intense pleasure of living checks the
craving to go places, to have egoistic ambitions, by directing the
individual's attention to what nature and man's harmonious
surrounding offers.
Therein lies the one lesson, the message of the tribal societies,
viz. contentment, simplicity, a passionate love of life-they are
ingrained among them from birth.
9
But to give only this picture of the Oraons, or for that matter any
other tribal society, is to help develop another myth, that of the
Noble Savage.
Unfortunately, this balance and harmony is a most evanescent
thing; like a delicate flower it withers at the slightest rude touch ..
And touched they are bound to geL
That is why the Oraons today are a most impoverished and
haggard people. This is not the place to go into detail, but the
fact is that even the dances and customs enumerated here have
been probably forgotten and have fallen into oblivion for at least
the majority of the Oraons. Some do not remember them, many
have only the names in their memories. And as the years pass, the
more this process gets into stride.
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128 Ritwilc Ghatalc
10
This sense of decay, this feeling of a tribe becoming extinct. is a
very painful experience. One of the most colourful peoples have
become or are becoming drab, colourless and fourth-rate copies
of ourselves. They have lost their fragrance to a very large extenL
We are at a loss to know what is to be done. But we see that
this process of decay is being allowed to go on unhindered.
Cartloads of them are being sent to tea-gardens even today, all
the sharks are still taking advantage of their faithful nature, the
different foreign and Indian missionaries are still drilling into
their heads that whatever they possess has no value and offering
instead not the best but the most soulless of our civilized dogmas.
The attitude of the powers that be is extremely superficial and
smugly complacenL Some say, they are no better or worse than
our common peasants and deserve no better treatment (Prof. N
Bose).
The obvious answer, that the question is of not being better or
worse, but of a different and distinct cultural trend which should
find its place and contribute to the mainstream of Indian culture
as a whole, somehow eludes these learned gentlemen. They arc
probably cross with the ballyhoo that is being made about them.
Some others think exclusively in terms of new roads laid,
bridges constructed, community development projects and
National Extension Projects and Social Welfare Projects and what
not, doing this and that. and paid volunteers going and lecturing,
and society ladies going in cars on Sundays to distribute milk with
an eye checking on the photographer accompanying the party. In
a word, nauseating and foolish and devoid of imagination to an
extent which •s probably the limiL
A mentality of caste superiority and of having power in one's
hand .is rampant among the gentlemen who order these
aboriginals and 'untouchables' abouL .
I have seen what repercussions this is bringing abouL Apart
from political moves of the Jharkhand and Ganatantra Parishad,
in social life these gentlemen are literally afraid to go into any
village.
The enlightened attitude is still almost completely absenL
Consciousness is absent also to a larger extent among the Oraons
themselves. When they come to realize and value their own
tradition, when the force emerges from among themselves, they
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will carry forward their best heritage, incorporating the good
things of modem society; then their culture will again burst forth ,
and new dances and songs and art wi•l come into being.
In the meanwhile, all that we can do is stop pitying them.
Originally publish«l, posthumously, in Summa GhataJc '.s Ritwilt, Oaober 1977.
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A Biographical PraJik
Born atjindabazar, Dhaka (now in Bangladesh) on 4 November

1925, Ghatak completed school in 1944 at Rajshahi (now in
Bangladesh), and paMCd the Intermediate Examination in Arts,
Dhaka University, from Rajshahi in 1946. His first story,
'Akashgangar srot dhorey' ['Upstream along the Milky Way'],
appeared in 1947 in the periodical, Galpabharati, edited by
Nripendrakrishna Chattopadhyay, an eminent writer who
introduced him as a 'powerful young writer.'
In the first year of his graduation class, Ghatak edited and
published, along with Nirmal Dutta and Amaresh Lahiri, a 'little
magazine' Abhidhara (the first issue appearing in July-August
1947), which, in a later interview, he described as 'close to
Marxist ... Printed magazines published from small towns were
still quite a rarity. It ran for a few months, all on our own
financial resources, which we recovered, of course.'
He graduated from Krishnachandra College, Baharampur, in
1948 and joined the M.A. class at Calcutta University. Between
1947 and 1950 about twenty of his stories appeared in leading
periodicals of the time. In 1948, he wrote his first play Kalo Sayar
['The Dark Lake'], and acted in a revival of the landmark play
Nabanna [by Bijan Bhattacharya, who directed it, along with
Sombhu Mitra, for its original production in 1944] by
Bohurupee, a teading experimental theatre company (then
performing under the name of Ashok Majumdar O Sampraday)
on 13, 14, and 16 September 1948.
His involvement with cinema began in 1949, when he came to
assist director Manoj Bhattacharya, in both direction and
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Ritwilc Ghatak 131
screenplay-writing, on his film Tathapi, released on 10 March
1950. Incidentally, Bimal Roy and Hrishikesh Mukherjee, major
Indian film directors in the late fifties and sixties, were
cinematographer and editor respectively on this film and would
retain their connection with Ghatak in his later filmmaking days.
In 1950, he was engaged as assistant director on &deni, a film
project directed by Nirmal De, which was later abandoned.
Equally interested in theatre and cinema, Ghatak took the
initiative, along with Mrinal Sen and Tapas Sen, for the
production of a new version of Neeldarpan, an 1860 play,
eventual!y premiered under the banner of Natyachakra, on 27
August 1950, collectively rescripted, developed and directed by
Bijan Bhattacharya, Sudhi Pradhan and Digindrachandra
Bandyopadhyay, with Ghatak acting the role of an old peasant.
In 1951, he was active in the Indian People's Theatre
Association (IPTA), acting in Kalan/ca, written and directed by
Bijan Bhattacharya; in Bhanga Bandar, written and directed by
Panu Pal; and in selected scenes from Macbeth in Bengali,
directed by Utpal Dutt, as one of the Witches. The same year he
acted in the film Chhinnamu~ directed by Nemai Ghose, and
· attempted to complete Bedeni, renaming it Aruplcatha. For
Aruplr.atha, he shot an outdoor schedule of twenty days in and
around Ghatshila and Bolpur, but the film came to be
abandoned again.
In 1951 Ghatak wrote and directed his first major play Jwala,
taking off on a news item entitled 'Suicide Wave in Calcutta,' that
he had submitted to the Communist Party periodical, acting the
role of a mad man. ·
In 1952, he adapted Gogol's The Government Inspector as Officer
for IPTA, and acted in the production directed by Utpal Dutt;
and played Raghupati in Bisarjan by Rabindranath Tagore, also
directed by Dutt for IPTA.
With his involvement with the Communist Party growing
through his daily involvement with the IPTA, Ghatak participated
in a whole round of street plays performed in support of the
Communist Party's candidates for the country's first general
elections.
The same year he wrote and directed the play Dalil
['Document'] for IPTA, staged for the first time at a Teachers'
Conference at Hazra Park in south Calcutta, with a cast that

..
132 Ritwik Ghatalc
included Kali Banerjee (who would later play the lead in Ghatak's
film Ajantrilc),. and Ghatak himself as Khetu Ghosh. Dalil was
staged at the national conference of the IPTA, held at Bombay
(now Mumbai) in 1953, where the production was voted the best
production of the festival.
In 1954, he started having differences with the IPTA
leadership, and along with Mumtaz Ahmed ~an ~d Surama
Bhattacharya as co-signatories he submitted a document to the
Communist Party proposing a new 'cultural front'; but was forced
to leave the IPTA while rehearsing Neecher Mahal, Umanath
Bhattacharya's adaptation of Gorky's /.,qwe,- Depths, with the South
Squad, and /spatwith the Central Squad.
Meanwhile he had formed a new theatre group, Group
Theatre, for which he wrote and directed the play San/co ['The
Bridge'], and dramatized Sukumar R.ay's Hajabarala. In 1955, he
spent a month, shooting in Chhotanagpur and different parts of
Bihar, documenting tribal life and ancient monuments in the
state, for Life of the Adivasis and Histuric Plaas in Bihar, produced
by Aurora Cinema Company for the Government of Bihar.
On 8 May 1955 he married Surama Bhattacharya in Shillong.
For a little over a year he was employed at the Filmistan Studios,
Bombay,.as scriptwriter, making use of the time to direct a fresh
stage version of Bisa,jan in Bombay, and Musafiron Ice liye, Govind
Mali's adaptation of Gorky's Lower Depths, for IPTA,. Bombay,
premiered 18-19 December 1956, with A. K. Hangal·and Balraj
Sahni in the cast. ·
. In 1957 the Ghataks came back to Calcutta. On 2 July 1957
Ghatak started shooting his second film, Ajantri/c, in Ranchi.
Ajantrilc was released on 23 May 1958. He started shooting his
third film, &ri Theltej Paliyt. in November 1959. Hi!! next project,
Kato Ajanarey came to be abandoned after some days of shooting.
. In 1960, he completed his fourth film, Meghey Dha/ca Tara,
released on 14 April. His fifth film, Komal Gandhar, was released ·
on 31 March 1961.
_l1;1 1962 he ·began making his sixth film, Subarnarelcha.
Finan~ial and ·other handicaps came in his way, causing long
breaks in shooting, compelling Ghatak to make advertisement
films and write scripts for other filmmakers to raise funds to
. complete the fibn. Completed in 1962, Subamardcha was released
only on 1 October 1965.
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RjtwiJc Ghatak 133
A documentary on Ustad Alauddin Khan the musician and a
feature film, Bagalm' Bangadarshan, were started in 1963-64, both
left unfinished. ·
In 1964, he joined the Film and Television Institute of India at
Pune initially as a Lecturer, becoming Vice-Principal in June
1965. At the FI'II, he was involved in the making of two .s tudents'
films, viz. Fear and Renda.vow. He resigned from the FTII the
same year.
Alcoholism and nervous disoi:ders had started dogging him
from the early sixties. He was hospitalized for the first time in late
1965. For the rest of his life he was in and out of mental hospitals
and psychiatric treatmenL
Between 1967-1971 he made several shorts and
documentaries, including Scientists of Tomorrow (1967), The Chhau
Danas of Pu"'lia (1970), My Lenin (1970), Why 7 / The Qtustion
(1970), and DurlJargati Padma (1971); edited a theatre periodical,
Abhinaya Da,pan (May:June 1968-July-August 1969); translated
Brecht's Caucasian Chal/c Circle into Bengali; and wrote several
screenplays, plays and articles; producing one of these plays, Sei
Meyey, at the mental hospital, with a cast made up of patients,
nurses and physicians.
In 1971-73, he shot Titas Elcti Nadir Nam, in Bangladesh, for a
Bangladeshi producer. The film was released in Bangladesh on
27 July 1973.
In 1974, he completed his last film, ]ulcti, Talclco ar Cappo,
which was released on 30 September 1977, a year and a half after
his death. Between 1972-1975, he left two more documentaries
unfinished-one on Indira Gandhi, the other on sculptor
Ramkinkar Baij. In 1957, he wrote and directed his last play,
]walanta, and wrote three screenplays, two of which he submitted
to the Film Finance Corporation and the Children's Film Society
for funding/productional support.
He passed away on 6 February 1976 at the SSKM Hospital,
Calcutta. Incidentally, his first film, Nagarilr, was released for the
first time a year and a half later.

..
Featunfilms
1953
Nagarilc ['The Citizen'] 35 mm . B/W. 12 reels. 125
minutes.
DIRECTION and ScREENPI.AY Ritwik Ghatak. CINEMATOGRAPHY
Ramananda Sengupta. EDITING Ramesh Joshi. SOUND
Satyen Chatterjee. NARRATION Ritwik Ghatak. MUSIC
Hariprasanna Das. LYRICS Govinda Moonish. ART DIRECTION
Bhupen Majumdar. PRODUCTION Film Guild, Pramode
Sengupta, Bhupati Nandi, Ritwik Ghatak.
PREMIERED 20 September 1977, at New Empire, Calcutta.
CAST Satindra Bhattacharya (Ramu), Prova Devi (his
mother), Kali Banerjee (his father), Sova Sen (his sister,
Seeta), Ketaki Dutta (Uma), Geeta Shome (Shefali), Ajit
Banerjee (Sagar), Keshto Mukherjee (Jatin), Gangapada
Bose (the landlord), Parijat Bose (the violinist), Mumtaz
Ahmed Khan (Sushanta), Anil Chatterjee, Kanu Banerjee,
Umanath Bhattacharya, Anil Ghosh.
An offscreen narrator's voice locates the central character,
Ramu, a young graduate looking for a job, in the city of
Calcutta-'a single citizen, one of the millions of them.' As
he returns home, after a day's futile quest, from the busy
and impersonal administrative and commercial district of
the city to the poor neighbourhood where he lives, we find
ourselves in a typical lower-middle-class setting-a
ramshackle house, with Ramu's parents, a sister in her
early twenties, and a younger brother, as the other
inhabitants. There is a distraction before Ramu enters his
house. He is drawn towards a street violinist playing for a
small crowd. As the violinist closes his performance,
Original from
Filmography 135
gathers his day's earnings, and sets off, Ramu stops him:
'That was a strange tune. Would you play it for me once
again?' The violinist stretches a hand out for payment, his
face cold and stern. Ramu, who can not afford to pay,
moves away in discomfiture.
In the house, Seeta, his sister, initially resists the idea of
appearing decked up for prospective in-laws who would
like to 'examine' her thoroughly-checking her hair, her
gait, her domestic skills--to assure themselves if she would
'qualify' for a bride of the family. Seeta has to subject
herself to the humiliation.
.
Outside the room where Seeta undergoes the
'examination', Ramu and his mother talk about the
house-the mother reminisces about 'the big house' in
which they had once lived, and Ramu takes a look at the
house which they now inhabit: 'I hadn't taken a proper
look all these days. I noticed today for the first time how
the tall vertical buildings rising all around it has stuck us
into the hole of a well. How can people live here?'
T~e father-old, myopic and lame is despondent and
cynical in the throes of poverty. It is left to the daughter
and the son to console him as best as they can: the
daughter with her concern and care for his disabilities, the
son with his rosy hopes of a job!
Ramu has a girlfriend, Uma, who lives with her younger
sister, Shefali, and their mother in the same state of
poverty and the relentless struggle for survival. Every time
Ramu visits them, he has to confront their neighbour,
Jatin-babu, who pleads with him for a small loan, to buy
something special for the wailing child in the background;
and Ramu pleads his inability every time.
Ramu's mother takes in Sagar as a paying guest. Sagar,
trained as a chemist, leads a precarious existence himself,
but tries to support the family to the best of his capacity,
which is not much anyway. Ramu resents for a while the
special status that Sagar enjoys in the house. But they
reach a sort of understanding after Ramu's hopes of
getting a job does not materialize and his father dies.
Ramu cannot clear the rent for months and the landlord
Original from
136 Jutwilc GhataJc
insults him, threatens him, and forces him to leave.

Things move to a head, as Ramu and his family have to
leave the house and move to a slum. Shefali leaves
home to be mistres., to a shady character. At the point
of moving out, Seeta makes a desperate effort to come
to a relationship with Sagar, who, timid and withdrawn
all along, acknowledges, under the onslaught, that he
has loved Seeta all along, but says that witho.ut a
. shelter, and the pavement as his only residence; there
is no way they can be together. He tells Seeta: 'You said
you wanted to live a little. Do you see any such prospect
at all? We are all being tom down like the banks of the
river Padma. We do not know whether any piece of
new land is emerging anywhere. A way has to be found
out-we'll search for it. I'll search for it, Seeta. I'll try
to live, for I shall never be able to forget you. Never,
wherever I be.' Ramu visits Uma, to tell her that he is
moving out of the neighbourhood. Ramu is touched
and feels 'stronger' when Uma offers to go to his new
place and set it up for him. Ramu, on his return,
overhears Sagar's words~ and asks him to join them on
the trip to their new house. Just before they leave the
place, Ramu tears off from the wall a calendar that has
come to view so many times earlier with its picture of
a neat little house, a dream house! As he comes out on
the street, he encounters the violinist once again. The
violinist offers to play for him his favourite tune, begins
to play, but the string snaps and the narrator's voice
rounds offRamu's tale.
1957-1958
.Ajantrik ['The Unmechanical'] 35 mm. B/W. 10 reels.
120 minutes.
DIRECTION and ScREENPLAY (based on a story by Subodh
Ghosh) Ritwik Ghatak. CINEMATOGRAPHY Dinen Gupta.
EDITING Ramesh Joshi. SOUND Mrinal Guba Thakurta
and Satyen Chatterjee. Music Ali Akbar Khan. ART
DIRECTION Rabi Chatterjee. PRODUCTION L. B. Films
... Digitized by Google Original from

FilffllJKfaphy 137
International and Pramod Kumar Lahiri.

PREMIERED 23 May 1958 at Basusree, Bcena, Anjan,
Surashree, Aalochhaya
CAsT Qagaddal, the automobile1 a 1920 Chevrolet),
Kali Banerjee (Bimal), Deepak (Sultan, his ward), Kajal
Chatterjee (Hashi), Jnanesh Mukherjee (Gour),
Keshto Mukherjee (Bulaki), Gangapada Basu (the
uncle), Satindra Bhattacharya (Tarani), Tulsi
Chakravarty (Tulsi), Bachan Singh (Pyara Singh),
Prasadi Kujur Uhurni), Anil Chatterjee, See ta
Mukherjee, Debi Niyogi, Sushil Roy, Luther Tiga.
The film opens at a smalltown cab stand somewhere in
the hill tracts of Bihar, with an uncle hiring a decrepit
cab to take his slightly retarded nephew to his wedding.
Bimal, the owner and driver of the car, is so proud of
his Jagaddal-for that is what he calls it-that he takes
offence at the slightest disrespect expressed for his car.
Alone with his car, he talks to it lovingly. Only the little
boy, the kind mechanic's ward, shares his feelings for
Jagaddal. For Bimal, Jagaddal is the 'son of a tiger, the
envy of everyone.' The three of them deck up for a
photo session that somehow goes haywire.
In a series ofjourneys, Bimal and Jagaddal encounter a
wide range of passengers and landscapes, tribal life and
industrial signs, but the one experience that touches
Bimal most is that of the lively young girl who makes
the journey with her boyfriend, relishing the journey
and the 'glimpse of the sky through the tear in the
hood of the cab' and the tribal comb that she buys
from the roadside, only to be abandoned eventually by
the young man.
Battered and mud-splashed by a group of wild village
children, Bimal and his car have their last triumph
when they help an old man to catch the Calcutta-
bound train. While returning, he finds the girl again
and takes her to the station. Bimal runs after the ~n
to catch up ·with it and hand her the ticket that is his
Digitized by Google Original from •

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAtt. ~
138 &twik Ghalalc
parting gift for her.

Back in his car with a sense of satisfaction, Bimal
discovers that the girl has left behind her comb and
her bundle of belongings. Bimal, who has raced and
reached any number of goals and schedules in the past
with his car, fails this first time, when the car would not
start at first, and even when it does, blowing a lot of
smoke, breaks down at the end.
Bimal submits for the night to the energies and
rhythms of a tribal festival, and pushes the car all the
way back to the garage in the morning, to a chorus of
merciless mockery from the crowd around the cab
stand.
Insulted and humiliated, Bimal makes a last desperate
bid to revive and renew Jagaddal, puts in all his savings
to buy new parts and all his mechanical skills. The new-
look car causes some surprise at the cab stand, but the
trial run on the hills proves his efforts futile. 'I've given
you all I had, and still you won't give me your heart,'
he tellsjagaddal. A last struggle with the car ends up in
a rearward roll, leaving Bimal crying shamelessly.
jagaddal is doomed to disintegration into a mass of
scrap iron loaded on to a scrapdealer's cart. But Bimal
has his satisfaction at the sight of a little boy trying to
honk the disembodied car horn, capturing its life, as it
were.
1959
Bari Thekey Paliye [' Running Away from Home'] 35
mm. B/ W. 12 reels. 124 minutes.
.
DIRECTION and ScREENPLAY (from a story by Shibram
Chakraborty) Ritwik Ghatak. CINEMATOGRAPHY Dinen
Gupta. EDITING Ramesh Joshi. SOUND Mrinal Guba
Thakurta and Satyen Chatterjee. LYRICS and Music Salil
Chowdhury. PLAYBACK Hemanta Mukherjee, Shyamal
Mitra, Sabita Banerjee. ART DIRECTION Rabi Chatterjee.
PRODUCTION L. B. Films International.
Original from
Filmography 139
PREMIERED 24July 1959 at Minar, Bijoli, Chhabighar.

CAST Param Bhattarak Lahiri (Kanchan), Jnanesh
Mukherjee (his father), Padma Devi (his mother), Kali
Banerjee (Haridas), Kesto Mukherjee (the magician),
Jahar Roy (the traffic policeman), Deepak (Chandan),
Niti Pandit (Mini), Mrs. Krishnajaya (Mini's mother),
Satindra Bhattacharya (Mini 's father), Nripati
Chatterjee (the vendor), Shailen Ghosh (Nanda),
Bijan Bhattacharya, Mohammed Israel, Moni Srimani,
Gobinda Chatterjee, Seeta Mukherjee, Gupi Banerjee,
Bechu Singh, Gopal Chatterjee, Shakti Sen, Satu
Majumder, Sajal Rakshit.
Kanchan, eight years old, is up to pranks and mischief
all the time in his village home, where he steals and
gobbles up the offerings made to the deity and beats
up the son of the brahman who proxies for his father
in the religious ceremonies. He finds his father a cruel
demon who keeps his mother oppressed and
imprisoned, and dreams of liberating his princess
mother some day. In his dreams, the big city is El
Dorado, till he reaches there.
Fascinated at first by the clash and clangour of steel
and the arrogant construction of the Howrah Bridge
reaching up to the sky, the streets stretched out like
braids of black ribbon, the dancing street lights, the
melancholy hoots of steamers on the river, slowly he
comes to see the city and its people more closely.
The fairy tales he had heard from his mother come to
life, with the fairy princess and the innocent boy in the
clutches of the demon. There is a whiff of romance
even, when he gatecrashes into a wedding party, and
meets Mini, with whom he falls madly in love, and
dreams of carrying her off to his mother as his bride!
But the glimpses of reality are harsher-and the victims
he meets , Chandan's mother, a refugee from the
partition of the country in 1947, and Haridas, the
schoolteacher turned peddler, give him a different
Original from
....
140 Ritwilc GhataJc
view of the city. He finds affection from Mini's ailing

mother an_d from the poor worker who feeds him.
Kanchan himself has to struggle for survival, and
experiences life as it is-only to go back to his village
home a maturer person, with the realization that his
father is not a demon after ali, but only yet another
victim, struggling with poverty and growing harsh and
embittered in the process, but a loving father still.
1960
Meghe, Dhalca Tam ['The Cloudcapped Star'] 35mm.
B/W. 13 reels. 126 minutes.
DIRECTION and SCREENPLAY (based on a story by
Shaktipada Rajguru). Ritwik Ghatak. CINEMATOGRAPHY
Dinen Gupta. EDITING Ramesh Joshi. SOUND Mrinal
Guba Thakurta and Satyen Chatterjee . Music
Jyotirinda Maitra. THEME Music Bahadur Hussain
Khan, Lakshmi Thyagarajan, Mahapurush Mishra.
PLAYBACK A. T. Kanan, Debabrata Biswas, Geeta
Ghatak, Ranen Roy Chowdhury. ART DIRECTION Rabi
Chatterjee. PRODUCTION Chitrakalpa.
PREMIERED 14 April 1960 at Sree, Prachi, Indira.
CAsT Supriya Chowdhury (Neeta), Anil Chatterjee
(Shankar, her brother), Bijan Bhattacharya (Taran,
her father), Geeta Dey (her mother), Geeta Ghatak
(Geeta, her sister), Dwiju Bhawal (Mantu, her
brother), Niranjan Roy (Sanat), Jnanesh Mukherjee
(Banshi Dutta), Ranen Roy Chowdhury (Baul),
Narayan Dhar (Goswamiji), Satindra Bhattacharya,
Arati Das, Debi Niyogi, Kamini Chakraborty, Shanti
Sen, Suresh Chatterjee, Sanat Dutta, Mrs Bose, Madhu,
Chandan.
· Born on a Jagaddhatri puja day, Neeta plays
Jagaddhatri, the all-caring mother goddess, to her
lower-middle-class refugee family-her father, an old
schoolteacher; her mother, with the bitter tongue; her
elder brother, training to be a singer; her younger
Original from
Filmography 141 .
brother, a budding sportsman; and her younger sister,

who takes life easy. When the film opens, Neeta is seen
approaching a pond, somewhere in a suburb on the
fringes of Calcutta, with her brother Shankar practising
on the raga Hamsadhvan.i, sprawling on the grass
beside the pond.
Ghatak fills in a host of details-the neighbourhood
grocer stopping Neeta to complain that the family is in
arrears for over two months; Neeta tripping to discover
that she has torn her slippers; Shankar pleading with
the grocer for a shaving blade on credit, and being
rudely refused; the father referring to yet another
prospective match having refused Neeta for being
'dark', and providing the information that Neeta has
been attending her Masters classes at the University,
and earning forty rupees a month from a couple of
tuitions to support the family.
Neeta comes home to face everyone making demands.
Shankar asks for money for a shave and a pinch of
janla. Geeta, the younger sister, wants to buy a new sari.
Mantu, the younger brother, must have his footballer's
spiked boots. In the very next sequence, they all get
their gifts. But Neeta has not been able to spare
anything to replace her torn slippers.
Beyond the family, Neeta has yet another dependant-
her boyfriend Sanat, whom she supports so that he can
carry on with his research in physics without a
scholarship.
The pressure on Neeta mounts when the old father has
an accident and is incapacitated. Neeta has to give up
her studies and take a job. She turns down Sanat's
proposal for marriage for the time being. She is
resolved to go on supporting Shankar till he becomes
established as a musician. She tells Sanat: 'He will be
great some day. So will you. And maybe then I'll have
time. You have to wait till then . . ;'
Shankar leaves for Bombay looking for a professional
Original from
•• •
142 lutwilc Ghata/i
career as a vocalist. To the disappointment of the

retired schoolteacher father, who loves quoting Yeats,
Mantu takes a job in a factory, and leaves the house.
Meanwhile Sanat too takes a job and marries Gceta,
who takes it as her triumph over Neeta.
Mantu has an accident in the factory. It is left to Neeta
to do all the running about, raising funds for the
hospital costs, dealing with the doctors, collecting
blood. The strain and tension bring on a fit of reeling,
leading to a diagnosis of tuberculosis.
She confines herself to a room in the house, lest she
infect the others. She has deadly bouts of coughing in
her office. Gceta gets pregnant.
.
When a repentant Sanat meets Neeta, she
acknowledges her sin: 'I never protested against any
•
injustice.'
Shankar, now a successful singer with- a national
reputation, visits the family, takes it upon himself to
give the family a new two-storeyed house and all the
support it needs, and puts Neeta into a sanatorium in
Shillong, in the hills.
In the penultimate sequence, Shankar visits Neeta at
the sanatorium and tells her about changes back
home. Neeta throws away an early letter written by
Sanat in which he had 'discovered' her as 'a cloud
capped star'. In the first ever outburst of passion
displayed in the course of the film, Neeta cries out: 'I'd
love to live. I'll live. Tell me, Brother, for once, that I'll
live ... I want to live, live, live.'
Shankar comes back to Calcutta at the close of the film.
The neighbourhood grocer addresses Shankar,
shattered by Neeta's death, recalling the young woman
'no one remembers any longer, who would go out in
the morning, dragging her slippers, and come back in
the evening . .. the quiet girl ... did she deserve all the
suffering that was her lot?'
As Shankar looks away, another young woman comes
,.... Digitized by Google Original from

Filmography 143
into view, a woman from the refugee settlement, who

stumbles and bends down to discover that she has torn
her slippers. She continues walking, dragging her feet.
1961
Kmnal Gandhar ['The Gandhar Sublime'] 35 mm. B/W.
14 reels. 133 minutes.
DIRECTION, STORY and SCREENPLAY Ritwik Ghatak.
CINEMATOGRAPHY Dilipranjan Mukherjee. EDITING
Ramesh Joshi. SOUND Mrinal Guba Thakurta, Sujit
Sarkar, Debesh Ghosh, Satyen Chatterjee. LYRICS
Rabindranath Tagore, Jyotirindra Maitra, Salil
Chowdhury, Bijan Bhattacharya, Sukanta Bhattacharya.
MUSIC Jyotirinda Maitra. PLAYBACK Debabrata Biswas,
Hemanga Biswas, Priti Banerjee, Bijan Bhattacharya,
Montu Ghose, Sumitra Sen, Ratna Sarkar, Sreejata
Chakraborty, Chitra Mondal, Ranen Roy Chowdhury,
Jyotirindra Maitra. ART DIRECTION Rabi Chatterjee.
PRoDucnoN Chitrakalpa.
PREMIERED 31 March 1961 at Radha, Purna, Lotus,
Purabi.
CAsr Supriya Chowdhury (Anasuya), Abanish Banerjee
(Bhrigu), Geeta Dey (Shanta), Chitra Mondal Qaya),
Anil Chatterjee (Rishi), Satindra Bhattacharya
(Shibnath), Bijan Bhattacharya (Gagan), Jnanesh
Mukherjee (Debu Bose), Moni Srimani (speaker),
Satyabrata Chatterjee (Prabhat), Sunil Bhattacharya
(Pakhi), Debrabata Biswas, Mon tu Ghose, Dwiju
Bhawal, Ninnal Ghosh, Debi Neogi, Mohammed Israel,
Ketaki Dutta, Nripen Lahiri, Narayan Dhar, Arun
Mukherjee, Nabyendu Chatterjee, Sunit Mukherjee,
Sumita Dasgupta.
The film begins in the theatre a performance of the
play Dalil ['A Document', incidentally, a play written
and directed by Ghatak for the IPTA, in the early
1950s], being staged by a nonprofessional,
experimental theatre group, significantly called
-'
•
Original from
144 RjtwiJc GhataJc
Nireeksha [liL 'probe'], led by Bhrigu. The play is set

against the Partition of India in 1947, and centres on a
family forced to leave its homeland in eastern Bengal,
when it becomes part of the new State of Pakistan;
joining the mas., exodus across the river Padma, from
eastern Bengal to Calcutta. · But even as the
performance continues, the film moves from stage to
backstage, with members of Dakshinapath, a rival
theatre group, making snide remarks about the
Nireeksha production.
It soon becomes clear that Nireeksha and
Dak.shinapath had once been a single group, now split
into two. The split had come with Shanta, a leading
actress, br,.aking away to form a new group in protest
against what she considered Bhrigu's dictatorial stance.
Dakshinapath resents Anasuya, one of their members,
acting in the Nireeksha production. At the end of the
performance, Anasuya's Dakshinapath colleagues call
her a traitor.
Anasuya takes the initiative to bring the two groups
together for a joint production of Kalidasa's
Shalcuntala, a fourth century classic. Shak.untala, the
young heroine of the play, has lived her entire life in
an ashrama in the woods. In one of the central scenes
of the play, as Shak.untala leaves her forest home to go
to her husband, the king Dushyanta, the plants, her
pets, the deer cubs, and her companions, cling to her,
holding her back.
Acting Shak.untala and responding to the emotional
charge that Bhrigu brings to his interpretation of the
role, Anasuya is drawn towards Bhrigu. On a visit to
Lalgola, a town close to the river Padma, for a
performance, the members of Nireeksha listen to
traditional boatmen's songs associated with the river,
and watch boats racing along the river. Bhrigu and
Anasuya, left to themselves, exchange childhood
memories of separation and loss, of how their parents
were snatched away from them by the communal
- Digitized by Google Original from

Filmography 145
violence of Partition, till they come to share a sense of

trust and dependence. But their understanding is
jolted when Bhrigu learns that Anasuya is engaged to
Samar, an engineer who is returning to Calcutta after
being abroad for many years.
The combined company-Nireeksha and
Dakshinapath together-visit Kurseong, a hill station
in the eastern Himalayas, for a spell of rehearsals for
Shaliuntala. The sense of freedom and wide open
spaces that they enjoy in Kurseong soon gives way to
petty jeafousies arid tensions, as Shanta visits Pakhi,
Anasuya's elder brother, to get him to separate
Anasuya and Bhrigu. When Pakhi refuses to get
involved in this scheme, Shanta and a few others
sabotage the premiere of Shalcuntala.
During the final rehearsals, Bhrigu draws parallels for
Anasuya between the play, Shalcuntala, and the tensions
of Calcutta. He relates the pet deer in the play tugging
at Shakuntala's sari to a beggar boy in Calcutta
pleading for alms. As the two groups ultimately split
apart, Anasuya leaves Dakshinapath to join Nireeksha.
At the end of a performance in a small town in
Birbhum, an old low<aste woman, moved by Bhrigu's
performance, gives him a medal received by her son
for singing. Her son, like those poruayed in Bhrigu's
play, died in the Great Bengal Famine of 1943-44.
Bhrigu is overwhelmed by the old woman's gesture, for
she reminds him of his mother. Shibnath, one of the
actors, proposes to Jaya, one of the actresses, but she
refuses.
Bhrigu and Anasuya meet and walk along the desolate
sandy landscape, and Anasuya talks of her mother. She
gives Bhrigu her mother's diary. Suddenly, for the first
time, Anasuya tells Bhrigu the story of her fiance in
France. She has been waiting for six years for Samar to
return, and has just received a letter from him stating
that he will be delayed for a few more years. When she
asks Bhrigu to look at a letter that she has drafted to
Original from
146 Ritwilc Ghatalc
Samar, he gets up abruptly and leaves. The sequence

ends with Bhrigu, alone, reading Anasuya's mother's
diary, standing near a sandy ravine.
B~ck in Calcutta, infighting continues in Nireeksha,
climaxing at a meeting, with a frustrated Shibnath
antagonizing Rishi and raising questions about
Anasuya's relationship with Bhrigu. The meeting ends
in chaos, leaving the members dissatisfied and
disgruntled.
Bhrigu, however, loses nothing of his passion for a new
language for the theatre, and Anasuya stands by him,
offering him encouragement and inspiration. But the
shadow of Samar, Anasuya's fiance, hangs over them,
building up to a tension, and a fight between Bhrigu
and Anasuya. Samar's sudden return from France
forces Anasuya to take a decison, and tum up at the
last minute to join Bhrigu's group setting out on a
fresh tour of the countryside. Rishi declares his love for
Jaya, who is only too happy to accept him. Bhrigu and
Anasuya clasp hands in silent acknowledgement of
their now restored love and comradeship. The elders
in the group, played mostly by celebrated IPTA
veterans like Bijan Bhattacharya and Debabrata Biswas
look on, cheering them up affectionately.
1962
Subamarelcha ('The Golden Line'] 35 mm. B/W. 15
reels. 139 minutes.
DIRECTION arid SCREENPLAY (based on a story by
Radheyshyam Jhunjhunwala) Ritwik Ghatak.
CINEMATOGRAPHY Dilipranjan Mukherjee. EDITING
Ramesh Joshi. SoUND Satyen Chatterjee, Shyamsundar
Ghosh, Jyoti Chatterjee. Music Ustad Bahadur Khan.
PLAYBACK Arati Mukherjee, Ranen Roy Chowdhury. ART
DIRECTION Rabi Chatterjee. PRODUCTION J. J. Films
Corporation.
PREMIERED 1 October 1965 at Basusree, Bina, Lotus.
-- Digitized by Google Original from

FilfflfJgra/Jhy 147
CAsr Abhi Bhattacharya (Ishwar), Madhabi Mukherjee

(Seeta, his sister), Satindra Bhattacharya (Abhiram),
Bijan Bhattacharya (Haraprasad), Gee ta Dey
(Abhiram's mother), Jahar Roy (Mukherjee, the
foreman), Radha Govinda Ghosh (the manager),
Umanath Bhattacharya (Akhil babu), Ritwik Ghatak
(the music teacher), Abanish Banerjee (Hari babu),
Ranen Roy Chowdhury (Baul), Seeta Mukherjee (Kajal
didi), Pitambar (Rambilas), Arun Chowdhury
(Gurudev), Shyamal Ghosal (Benimadhab), Indrani
Chakraborty (Seeta as a child), Tarun (Abhiram as a
child), Ashok Bhattacharyaya (Binu, Seeta's son),
Narayan Dhar, Rabi Chatterjee, Ajit Lahiri, Piyus
Ganguli, Kalpana Jana, Rubi Mitra, Sekendar Ajam,
Bahadur Khan.
Ritwik Ghatak's Subarnarelcha is set in post-
Independence West Bengal during the early 1950s on
the outskirts of Calcutta. The initial action takes place ·
in a refugee colony, where the main characters, lshwar
and his little sister, See ta, join the rest of the
community in an attempt to start a new life. In the
opening sequence, the members of the colony are
celebrating Independence Day* by opening a school. A
small boy, Abhiram, and his mother arrive at the
colony. Suddenly, Abhiram's mother is abducted by
some men hired by the landlord who owns the land on
which the refugees have settled, and the boy is left
alone . Ishwar and Seeta take in the motherless
Abhiram.
Rambilas, Ishwar's rich friend from college, offers
Ishwar a job in his iron foundry· in Chhatimpur on the
banks of the Subarnarekha river in Chhotanagpur.
Despite being called a deserter by his friend
Haraprasad, one of the leaders of the colony, Ishwar
takes Seeta and Abhiram to Chhatimpur to make a new
home. The you~g Seeta and Abhiram discover an
abandoned airfield which was built at the time of
World War II. Once in Chhatimpur, Ishwar sends
Original from
1111
148 Ritwilc Ghatak
Abhiram away to a boarding school, while Seeta

remains at home and learns to sing.
Years pass, and Seeta grows into a woman. She is both a
sister and mother to Ishwar, who is unmarried and now
runs the iron foundry. When Abhiram returns home
.from school, he and Seeta realize that they love each
other. Ishwar wants to send Abhiram to Germany to
train to be an engineer, but Abhiram wants to be a
writer. One day, while walking along the local train
platform, Abhiram comes upon an old refugee woman
who is dying. Abhiram recognizes this woman as his
mother, and at that moment he also realizes that he
belongs to one of the lower castes. Ishwar is
determined to find a proper high-caste Hindu husband
for Seeta. Ishwar proceeds to arrange Seeta's marriage.
Seeta, resolved to marry Abhiram, escapes with him to
Calcutta on her wedding night
A few years pass. Seeta and Abhiram are now living in a
slum in Calcutta with their young son, Binu. Abhiram
cannot make a living from his writings, so he learns to
drive and gets a job as a bus driver. Meanwhile, Ishwar,
who is still in Chhatimpur, is becoming increasingly
despondent over his alienation and separation from
Seeta. He attempts to hang himself but is interrupted
by his old friend, Haraprasad. Earlier, Haraprasad's
wife has killed herself and her children because they
were staIVing. Now, alone and depressed, Haraprasad
aimlessly wanders through the West Bengal
countryside. The two dejected men decide to embark
upon a journey to Calcutta to immerse themselves in
the sins .of the big city.
In the Calcutta slum, Seeta waits for Abhiram to return
home from his driver's job, but the brakes of his bus
fail and he accidentally kills a young girl. In retaliation,
Abhiram is beaten to death by an angry mob. In order
to provide for herself and her child, Seeta is compelled
to sing for male customers for money. Seeta's first
customer turns out to be Ishwar, who is roaring drunk
Original from
.
Filmography 149
after spending an evening bar-hopping in Calcutta with

Haraprasad. Stunned and terrified, Seeta kills herself
with a kitchen knife. A blood-spattered Ishwar, through
a haze of alcohol, sees his dead sister's face and reels
out of the room holding the knife.
Although Ishwar maintains that he killed his sister,
after two years of legal proceedings, he is proven
innocenL Binu, having no other known blood relation,
is placed in Ishwar's custody. Finally, a slightly dazed
and considerably aged Ishwar takes Binu to
Chhatimpur to again attempt to establish a new home
and a new life.
[*The official date of Indian Independence is 15 August
1947. However, in this film, the Independence Day that is
recognized is significantly different. In the Punjab iB
Jallianwallah Bagh on 1~ April 1919, a British officer, General
Dyer, and his soldiers massacred hundreds of innocent
Indians who had peacefully gathered to protest against
reprcuive British measures. The Jallianwallah Bagh Massacre
served to mobilize and strengthen the Indian non-
cooperation movement against British rule. This is the date
that is observed as Independence Day in SubtmaamV&a]
1973
Titas FJcti Nadir Naam ('A River Named Titas'] 35 mm.
DIRECTION and SCREENPLAY Ritwik Ghatak. STORY
Advaita Mallabarman. CINEMATOGRAPHY Baby Islam.
EDITING Basheer Hossain. SOUND Amzad Hussain.
MUSIC Bahadur Khan and Aahidul Haque. LYRICS Lalan
Fakir. PLAYBACK. Dhirajuddin Fakir, Rathindranath Ray,
Neena Hamid, Abida Sultana, Dharmeedan Barua,
Dipu Mamtaj, Pilu Mamtaj, Abu Taber, Indramohan
Rajbangshi. ART DIRECTION Munshi Mahiuddin .
PRODUCTION Purba Pran Katha Chitra, Bangladesh:
PREMIERED 27 July 1973 at Madhumita, Gulistan and
Lion in Dhaka; Hangsa and Gulshan in Narayanganj;
Jalsa, Cinema Palace and Lion in Chat~agram in
Original from
150 RuwiJc Ghata/c
Bangladesh and 11 May 1991 at Nandan, Calcutta.

CAsr Rosa Samad (Basanti), Roushan Jamil (Basanti's
mother), M. A. Khair (Basanti 's father), Kabari
Chowdhury (Ananta's mother Rajar jhi), Shafikul
Islam (Ananta), Rani Sarkar (Munglee), Sufia Rustom
(U daytara), Prabir Mitra (Kishore), Golam Mustafa
(Ramprasad/Kader Miao), Ritwik Gbatak
(Tilakchand) , Fakrul Hasan Bairagi (Nibaran Kundu),
Sirajul Islam (Magan Sardar), Narayan Chakrabarty
( the village headman), Banani Chowdhury ( the
headman's wife), Chand (Subol).
Set in the 1930s, the film-based on a novel by Adwaita
Mallabarman, a Malo himself-focuses on the life and
struggles of the East Bengal fishing community known
as the Malos.
As the film begins, a young girl, Basanti, and her
mother are seen winnowing the grain. They are
discussing the antics of two local village boys, Kishore
and Subol. Basanti and her mother ponder over which
boy will take the paper boat which Basanti will set
afloat during the forthcoming winter festival. Later,
Munglee, Basanti's friend, teases Rasanti because she
has painted her lips for Kishore. Ramprasad laments
his daughter Durga's death and fears that one day the
river Titas may dry up.
Meanwhile, Kishore and Subol are hauling in their
catch of the day to sell in a distant village. With
Tilakchand, they have been invited by a local village
headman to watch the spring festival that is taking
place. Suddenly, a group of rowdies from a rival village
attack the women assembled for the festival. A young
girl faints, and Kishore goes to her aid. He picks her up
and calls for water to revive her.
The village headman approaches Kishore with a
proposal of marriage to the young girl. Kishore accepts
and marries her. That night, they consummate their
•
marnage.
Original from
Filmography 151
The next day, Kishore takes his bride away from her
parents' home. Subol asks Kishore about Basanti, and
Kishore tells Subol that he can marry her. While
travelling back to Kishore's village, Tilakchand tells
him that they must hide her from the kidnappers.
However, during the night, bandits abduct her. A
frantic Kishore believes he sees her face in the water as
she floats away, and goes ·mad. The next morning,
some fishermen find her alive but unconscious, washed
up on a bank of the Titas.
A montage of sailboats and river life indicates the
passing of time. Rasanti, who appeared as a little girl at .
the beginning of the film, is now a grown woman.
Basanti is now a widow-she had married Subol,
Kishore 's friend, who has been mysteriously killed. Her
childhood friend, Munglee, is happily married, and
Basanti's mother is distraught over her daughter's .
plight. For the past ten years, the young woman whom
Kishore married has been living with the fisherfolk who
found her. She now has a young son, Ananta, but has
failed to track down her husband, not knowing his
name, nor the name of his village.
By a quirk of fate she now arrives in Kishore's village.
Kishore has remained mad since his wife's kidnapping.
She sees the insane Kishore on the riverbank, but fails
to recognize him. Basanti meets her and Ananta, and
offers to help them. The villagers meet to dicuss how
the homeless Ananta and his mother can be
rehabilitated.
While preparing sweets for the harvest festival, Basanti
and Rajar jhi, Ananta's mother, discuss their lives. After
everyone has gone to sleep, Ananta's mother brings
Kishore some food. Sensing her desire for a husband,
Basanti comforts her.
Rajar jhi decides to help Kishore's mother give him a
bath before the spring festival. Kishore and Rajar jhi
playfully splash water on each other. As Kishore lifts
her off the ground, she swoons. He carries her to the

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN •
1.52 lutwilc GhataJc
riverbank, then lays her on the sand, when a group of

men from the village attack and beat him up because
he had carried her off after marriage. Dying, he calls
for water. She crawls over the sand to the river and
brings him water. He briefly revives, and there is a
moment of mutual recognition between the couple.
But crying 'Wife!', Kishore dies. In agony, she drowns
herself in the river.
The orphaned Ananta is taken in by Basanti. One day,
by the river, he imagines that he sees his dead mother,
who has now become a goddess. Through his
wanderings, Ananta meets many new people, including
Banamali and Kader Mian, a Muslim peasant who
resembles Ramprasad. Kader Mian offers to take
Ananta to his village one day. Basanti and her mother
fight over Ananta; Basanti's mother wants to drive the
boy away. She wishes that he would die because she
sees him as just one extra mouth to feed. ·
In preparation for his mother's funeral, Ananta gets
his head shaved. He is shown the spot where his
mother died. Ananta imagines that he sees her again,
this time he is rowing her in a boat. That night, Ananta
tells Basanti about the visions that he has had of his
mother, as the Mother Goddess.
Basanti's hut collapses in a storm. In a rage, Basanti's
mother attacks Ananta and tries to beat him. Basanti
and her mother have a violent argument, with 'Basanti
trying to strangle her mother in a rage, and sending
Ananta away. Left to fend for himself, Ananta shifts
from place to place in search of food and shelter.
. Udaytara feeds Ananta and gives him a place to sleep.
Basanti comes to see him, but Ananta ignores her.
Banamali comes to take his sister, Udaytara, to their
parents, and Ananta goes with them. Basanti is left
behind on the riverbank, angry and desolate.
Some rich men from an adjoining city exploit the Malo
community, charging exorbitant interest on the
fishermen's loans and harassing their wives. When a
Original from
Filmography 153
creditor comes to collect on some loans, Basanti lures

• •
him into a hut, where th~ women proceed to beat him
and then throw him into the Titas. Outraged, the rich
men conspire to seize the fishermen's boats and nets
and drive them away from their villages. These men
want to form a theatre group amongst the fishermen so
that they can bribe some of its members into creating
divisions within the community.
They also bring false charges against Kader Mian, who
is from another Muslim village. Kader goes to confront
Magan Sardar, the lawyer who will plead the case
against him. Magan is overwhelmed by Kader's honesty
and promises to become a better man after the court
case is settled. After Kader leaves, an ashamed Magan
commits suicide by jumping into the Titas.
Kader Mian talks of building a racing boat and sending
his son to school. Kader Mian fears that his grandson
will grow up to become a corrupt person if he goes to
this school, but he agrees to send him anyway and to
gives his son money for a racing boat. Everyone goes to
the boat races.
At the races, Basanti is reunited with Ananta. When
Ananta says that he will have nothing to do with her,
Basanti begins slapping him wildly. Udaytara intervenes
and restrains her. Comforted by her mother, Basanti
realizes how important a mother is in one's life.
Basanti is propositioned by a city man, whom she
promptly beats up. The rich men now conspire to dam
up the Titas to ensure that the fishermen lose their
livelihood and become dependent upon them. They
also spr_e ad rumours that Basanti is pregnant. Furious,
Basanti goes to a village meeting, only to realize that
the unity of the fishermen is disintegrating. In order to
drive away the fishermen ,' the rich city men set fire to
the village.
Ba.santi meets her old childhood friend, Munglee, now
reduced to begging. All the women of the village, both
Digitized by Google Original from "f

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ~
1.54 JutwiJc GhataJc
young and old, are now forced to beg for their food
beca~ the river Titas has virtually dried up and they
no lo·n ger have a home. The fishermen have joined
forces with the local ~uants to fight against the big
fannen. Rampraud is killed in the fighL
As parched Basan ti slowly walks to the sandy banks of
the Titas to gather just a little water for his last rites,
she rememben Ramprasad's prophesy about the Titas
drying up. While attempting one last sip, Basanti
collapses. As she lies dying, her final vision is of a small
boy blowing a whistle and running through a green
paddy field.
1974
.Ju1cti TaltJco Ar Gappo ['Arguments and a Story'] 35mm.
DIRECTION, STORY, SCREENPLAY AND Music Ritwik
Ghatak. CINEMATOGRAPHY Baby Islam. EDITING Amalesh
Sikdar. SOUND Shyamsundar Ghosh, Jyoti Chatterjee.
PLA\'BACK Debrabrata Biswas, Ranen Roy Chowdhury,
Arati Mukherjee, Binapani Roy Chowdhury, Sushil
Mullick. CHOREOGRAPHY Shambhu Bhattacharya. AllT
DIRECTION Rabi Chatterjee. PRODUCTION Rit Chitra,
Surama Ghatak.
PREMIERED 30 September 1977 at Minar, Bijoli,
Chhabighar.
CAsT Ritwik Ghatak (Nilkantha Bagchi), Tripti Mitra
(Durga, his wife), Ritaban Ghatak (Satya, his son),
Saonli Mitra (Bangabala), Bijan Bhattacharya
Uagannath Bhattacharya), Saugata Barman
(Nachiketa), Jn~esh Mukherjee (Panchanan Ustad),
Ananyo Roy (Naxalite leader), Shya_mal Ghosal
(Inspector), Utpal Dutt, Gobinda Chakraborty, Jahar
Roy, kanen Roy Chowdhury, Parthapratim Chowdhury,
Satindra Bhattacharya.
.
Julcti TaltJco Ar Gappo, Ritwik Ghatak's last feature ftlm, is
set during 1971. This was an extremely turbulent time
Original from
Filmography 155
in Bengal's history: India and Pakistan were at war,

which resulted in the formation of Bangladesh, and in
the Bengal countryside, the Naxalite Movement was
raging. This movement, Maoist in philosophy, called
for land reform for the peasants through violent
means.
A village elder in an askew hut, vacantly stares out at
the mad dance that is consuming the politics of India.
Nilkantha Bag<;hi, an alcoholic and a frustrated
intellectual, sits drunk on the floor of his flat in
Calcutta. His wife, Durga, and their son, Satya, arrive to
collect their belongings. Durga has grown weary of
Nilkantha's alcoholic lifestyle, and has secured a
teaching job in an outlying village. Fearing that
Nilkantha will sell their records and books for liquor,
Durga takes them so that Satya will have someting to
remember his father by wh·e n he grows up. Durga
warns her husband not to follow them. Nilkantha
requests that she at least leave the ceiling fan, which
she suspects that he will promptly sell to buy alcohol.
Durga and Satya leave, Durga asking Nachiketa, an
unemployed engineer, to look after Nilkantha.
Meanwhile, a young woman from Bangladesh named
Bangabala enters Nilkantha's flat. Her father was killed
in Bangladesh, and she has fled to Calcutta. When
Nachiketa returns with the alcohol, the three embark
upon a journey together, beginning in Calcutta.
The trio spend the night in a park. Nilkantha looks to
Nachiketa and Bangabala as examples of 'the new
Bangladesh, yet unborn, but inevitable.' Nilkantha
recalls the times when he and his wife were young and
in love, and roamed around the rivers and forests of
the Shillong Hills. The next morning, they meet an
unemployed Sanskrit teacher, Jagannath Bhattacharya,
who joins the group on their wanderings through the
city.
The group of four sit by the side of the river Ganga and
listen to a Baul song. That night a group of Calcutta's

.,
156 Ritwik Ghatalc
intellectuals sit around drinking and discussing the

disintegration of Bengali society and culture. Nilkantha
arrives, and when he is offered money by one of the
intellectuals to buy liquor, he only accepts what he
requires. Upon leaving, he says, 'Think. Practise
thinking.' Later, he drinks with two of his pickpocket
friends, and later spends the night near the Kalighat
temple with Nachiketa, Bangabala andjagannath.
Nachiketa attempts to get a job in an iron and steel
factory. However, the factory workers are on strike, and
a man stands outside, bellowing about serving
democracy and 'Mother India'. Later, inspired by a
song that Bangabala sings, Nilkantha decides that he
wants-to sec his wife and child.[The agamoni song from
Sylhet is sung to the Mother Goddess, Durga, here
adoringly portrayed as a daughter who, after three
days, must return to her husband's house. This is the
mother's parting song to her beloved daughter, Durga]
In the countryside, they meet Panchanan Ustad, a
village Chhau dancer, who offers them food and
shelter. The local peasants ruse against their landlords.
Panchanan shows Bangabala his Chhau masks. She
wants to dance, but as a female, she is not supposed to.
Bangabala insists, and· Panchanan relents. She dreams
about Durga dancing in the Chhau dance performed
by the local community, as the others look on. Later,
the erudite Jagganath and the rustic Panchanan have a
fight, and Bangabala appeases them. Nilkantha has his
favourite country liquor with a villager. Meanwhile,
Nachiketa and Bangabala are constantly at odds with
one another, and finally, when Bangabala offers food
to Nachiketa, he refuses it and walks away. Nilkantha
soothes Bangabala with a song.
The next morning, while departing from Panchanan's
village, Jagganath is accidenta,lly shot and killed by an
angry landlord. Nilkantha, Nachiketa and Bangabala
press on to Durga's house. Outside her house is a
forest where the three are observed by a group of
•-·•
I
Filmography 15 7
Naxalites. Durga receives the trio with mixed emotions.

Bangabala helps her cook, and Durga asks her to stay.
Bangabala tells her that she wants to stay with
Nilkantha, to help him get well. Durga refuses to let
them spend the night in her house, but agrees to bring
some food and their son, Satya, to Nilkantha in the
neighbouring forest in the morning.
On the way to the forest, Nilkantha vents his frustration
over what he considers to be the •
'sham' of India's
independence in 1947. They ericounter the Naxalite
group, and that night, Nilkantha has an extended
discussion with a young Naxalite boy about Marxism
and politics in India. Despite Nilkantha's arguments,
the Naxalite has only disdain for Nilkantha and
dismisses him as a stupid drunken middle-class
intellectual. Finally, Nilkantha says: 'But I spoke the
truth, when I said that I am confused. Maybe we are all
confused. We are all groping ... ' As the night
progresses, Nachiketa and Bangabala grow closer.
.In the morning, Durga and Satya come ·to the forest
with food for Nilkantha. Suddenly, a pitched battle
ensues between the police and the Naxalite fugitives.
Caught in the crossfire, Nilkantha gets shot in the
stomach. As he lies dying, Durga and Satya rush to his
side. Nilkantha tells them a story. The film ends with
the continuation of India's mad political dance, as the
old villager impassively looks on.
J.Jot.:rull4mtain'es and Short Films

1955
Adivasiyon Ka Jeevan Srot ('The Life of the Adivasis'].
Documentary. Hindi. 35 mm. B/W. 2 reels..13 minutes.
DIRECTION and ScltEENPlAY Ritwik Ghatak. PRODUCTION
Publicity Department, Government of Bihar.
1955
Bihar k Darshaniya Sthan ('Places of Historic Interest
Original from
in Bihar']. Documentary. Hindi. 35 mm. B/W. 2 reels.
16 minutes.
DIREGnON and Sc:REENPLAY Rit'wik Ghatak. PRODUGnON
Publicity Department, Government of Bihar.
1962
Scissors. Advertisement film. English. 35 mm. B/W.
.
DIREcnON Ritwik Ghatak. CINEMATOGRAPHY Mahendra
Kuinar. PRoDucnoN Imperial Tobacco Company.
1965
Fear. Short film. Hindi . 35 mm. B/W. 2 reels .
15 minutes.
DIRECTION, STORY, SCREENPLAY and MUSIC Ritwik
Ghatak. CINEMATOGRAPHY B. D. Thatte, M. D. Thakur,
Lal Jaswani. SOUND U. C. Sinha. EDITING Vishram
Revankar. PRoDucnoN Film and Television Institute of
India, Pune.
CAsr Subhash Ghai (the science student), Sudha Rani
(his wife), Urvashi Dutta (the voluptuous girl),
C. Asrani (the quiet man), S. Shah (the musician),
S. Desai (the pick-pocket), V. K. Malhotra (the
scientist), Umarani A (the colonel), Ranjit Kant (the
captain), Nooruddin (the drunkard).
1965
Rendezvous. Short film. Hindi. 35 mm. B/W. 1 reel.
13 minutes.
[A diploma film made under Ritwik Ghatak.'s supervision]
DIRECTION and SCREENPLAY Rajendra Nath Shukla.
CINEMATOGRAPHY Amarjeet Singh. EDITING R. V. Rajput,
H. L. Chauhan. SOUND P. K. Panwar, S. C . Bansal.
MUSIC Ram Kadam. V /0. Mrs and Mr Arjun Wadkar,
Samir Roy. PRoDucnoN Film and Television Institute
of India, Pune.
- Digitized by Google Original from

Filmography 159
CAsT Sudharani Sharma (a girl) S. Dinkar (a boy),

Govardhan Lal (a passer-by).
1965
Civil Defence. 35mm. B/W. 1 reel. 10 minutes,
DIRECTION Ritwik Ghatak. PRODUCTION Film and
Television Institute of India, Pune.
1967
Scientists of Tomorrow. Documentary. 35 mm. B/W.
1 reel. 10 minutes.
DIRECTION, SCitEENPLAY, CoMMENTARY and MUSIC Ritwik
Ghatak. CINEMATOGRAPHY Amarjit Singh. EDITING
Ramesh Joshi. V/0 Vijay Menon. PRODUCTION Films
Division, Mumbai.
1970
Yeh Kyon ['Why'/ The Question] . Documentary. Hindi.
35 mm. B/W. 2 reels.
DIRECTION and SCREENPLAY Ritwik Ghatak.
CINEMATOGRAPHY Mahendra Kumar. EDITING Amalesh
Sikdar. MUSIC Kamalesh Maitra. PLAYBACK Priti
Banerjee, Montu Chose, Bachhu Rahman. PRODUCTION
ChitraPrarthana
CAsr Arun Kumar, Atanu Roy, Radhagovinda Ghosh,
Bula Sengupta, Manas Dey.
1970
Amar Lenin ['My Lenin']. Documentary. Bengali. 35
mm. B/W. 2 reels. 20 minutes.
DIRECTION and SCREENPLAY Ritwik Ghatak
CINEMATOGRAPHY Dhrubajyoti Basu. EDITING Ramesh
Joshi. MUSIC Jyotirindra Maitra, Benoy Roy. Pu.'YBA.CK
Benoy Roy, Priti Banerjee, Montu· Ghose, Anima Das
Gupta, Reba Roy Chowdhury. PRODUCTION Sumana
Original from
160 RjtwiJc GhataJc
Films.
CAsr Arun Kumar.
1970
Puruliar Chhau [ 'The Chhau Dance of Purulia'].
Documentary. Bengali. g5 mm. B/W. 2 reels.
DIRECTION Saw:NPLAY and CoMMENTARY Ritwik Ghatak.
CINEMATOGRAPHY Dhrubajyoti Basu. EDITING Ramesh
Joshi . MUSIC Bahadur Khan. PRODUCTION Sumana
Films.
1971
Durbar Cati Padma ['The Turbulent Padma'] . Short
film. Bengali. 35 mm. B/ W. and Colour. 2 reels. 22
•
minutes.
Saw:NPLAY and DIRECTION Ritwik Ghatak. PRODUCTION
Trio Films.
CAST Biswajit Chatterjee, Nargis Dutt [special
appearance] .
Unfinished Projeca
FmlwrfU,,u
1950-52
Arupluuha/ &dmi. 35 mm. B/W.
Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay. CINEMATOGRAPHY Sachin
Dasgupta. CHOREOGRAPHY Panu Pal, Shambhu
Bhattacharya, Botu Pal.
CAsr Prova Devi (Shapla), Kctaki Dutta (Chiti), Abbi
Bhattacharya (Dhana), Sova Sen (Pingla), Manoranjan
Bhattacharya (Sardar) , Bijan Bhattacharya, Mita
Chatterjee (Gokhree), Mumtaz Ahmed Khan, Parijat
Bose, Keshto Mukherjee.
Ketaki Dutta, one of the leading actresses in the cast,
Original from
Filmography 161
recalls: 'The film, &deni, was initially started [in 1950]

with Ninnal De as director, who left it unfinished. The
producer, Sunil Roy, sold his shop and mortgaged his
house two years later, to raise money to finish it, with
Ritwik-da, who was at one time Ninnal De's assistanL As
director, Ri twik-da rewrote the screen play and
renamed the film A.ruplt.atha. Manoranjan
Bhattacharya, better known as 'Maharshi' (from his
performance as Valmiki in Seeta), replaced Sisir
Batabyal. Others in the cast included Prova Devi, Abbi
Bhattacharya, and I . Kanu Bandyopadhyay was
replaced by Bijan Bhattacharya. There were also
Shambhu Bhattacharya, Mumtaz Ahmed, Parijat Bose.
For the first time Keshto Mukherjee was given an
important role. Mahadev [Shee] was taken for the
songs.
'Shooting for the film started in Ghatshila [in 1952] .
Sachin Dasgupta was the cameraman, assisted by Anil-
babu and Jyoti Laba. The c~eras were rented from
Everest Films. Every day, we would bathe in the
Subarnarekha and sit around a campfire. Sometimes
the boys would start on country liquor. They could not
persuade Ritwik-da to take even a drop of iL One day
he even ran away to the station. In his little tin box all
he had was one lungi, .two vests, and some bidi and
matches.
'In the film, Prova Devi acted Shapla; Sova Sen played
Pingla and I was Chiti. Abhi-da played the role of
Dhana. Manoranjan Bhattacharya played the Sardar.
Chiti and Dhana were in love. But love·has no place in
the life of a Bede woman. She must live the life of a
servant of god, somewhat like a goddess herself, and
deny herself all earthly happiness. When her youth
passes away, she becomes a witch, exiled to a hut in
shambles, where she must survive far away from human
habitation. A new Bedeni is then appointed, full of the
ebullience of youth. Such is the cursed existence of the
Bedenis.
Original from
162 &twilc Gkatalc
'The story presents three generations of Bede

women-Shapla, Pingla and Chithi. Prova Devi did an
extraordinary job of the character of Shapla, the witch.
But before that, let me talk about Chili. One of the
scenes was set on the day of the yearly festival. The
girls, decked up and wearing garlands, were dancing in
a row. I was one of the dancers, playing the role of
Chili. Bijan-da was playing a drum, Ritwik-da a flute.
The male dancers included Shambhu Bhattacharya,
Keshto Mukherjee and Abbi Bhattacharya. Rising with
the music, the song and dance would reach a
crescendo, and all of us would be in a state of trance.
But in the mind of every girl there lurked the fear-
whom would the Sardar choose to mark with his special
sign on the forehead? The Sardar carried a plate,
bearing an earthen lamp, some flowers and vermilion
paste. It was for the girl, to mark her as the Bedeni.
And with that would come the end of her natural and
earthly life of love. She must sacrifice her life now as
the servant of god, must live like a goddess herself. She
could no longer serve even the Sardar. Amidst the
frenzy of the dance, the blow fell. The mark of the
Sardar fell on Chiti's forehead. With an agonized
scream of protest, she collapsed in the middle of a wild
dance. Suddenly everyone was silent. Only the Sardar
remained unmoved, undeterred by Chiti's agony.
'Even today I cannot forget the acting and the shooting
of that sequence. I am giving you a colour photograph
taken on that day, probably the only surviving token of
the film. There are some more pictures. But, because
of a fault in the camera, whatever material was shot
turned out to be too dark. We could see none of it.
The work of an extraordinary film could not be
displayed before the people. And Sunil Roy had given
away everything he possessed to complete the film .
. . . We had gone to Bolpur to pick up the dialect for
the film. I remember the first shot being taken. The
camera holds on a dense, dark night. The noise of
Original from
Filmograpky 163
crickets. Somebody rushing away like a frightened

animal. View from the top. In an open space below, a
wild dance is .in progress. The camera draws back. In
the darkness, two eyes peer into the window of one of
the huts. Through the window can be seen large bowls
full of rice-beer and meat. The eyes stay transfixed on
the window. A woman enters the room and takes some
meat from the bowl. A black arm picks up the meat.
Suddenly a scream. The singing stops. Dhana enters
the room and asks: Who was •it that screamed?
Everybody says: She has come, she has come again!
Shapla, still holding some meat in her hands, is being
beaten by the crowd. She is a witch now, and lives
outside the village in a hut with a roof of leaves. Shapla
says: Today you are hitting me, driving me away. Once
you called me Mother and offered me worship. On
Shapla's face the visible signs of long starvation, an
expression of greedy hunger. I will never forget Prova
Devi's acting.
'I will never forget &deni either. During the early days
of shooting, I had a miscarriage. I was told that I must
be bare-bodied. I refused; I acted wearing a Z.ungi and a
blouse made of the same material. I was hurt while
doing a shot. Chiti lights a fire after gathering some
dry leaves together. Dhana is helping her, lifting the
leaves, and hitting out at a hare. Chiti, whom he
accidentally pushes, straightens angrily. The camera
charges on her. She shouts: Son of a crow!
'I was four months pregnant then. I was too shy to tell
even my mother about it. I was being told over and
over again that I was not doing it right. The shot was
taken fourteen or fifteen times, and it was still not
right. That night, after all the strain, I suddenly started
bleeding. My mother, elder brother and the doctor,
Subodh Dutta, all of them tried hard to help me. But it
was all over after eight or nine days. That is why,
whenever I remember &deni, my first child comes to
my mind. When &deni was shot again, I had my second
Original from
164 lutwik .Ghatalc
child. After that came Nagaril&.'

[As recounted to Surama Ghatalc. Translated by Shampa
Bannj«.]
1959
Ko.to Ajanare ['All the Unknown'], 35 mm. B/W. 18
reels (approx.).
Shankar [Manishankar Mukherjee]. CINEMATOGRAPHY
Dilip Ranjan Mukherjee. EDITING Ramesh Joshi .
PRODUCTION Mihir Laba.
CAST Anil Chatterjee (Shankar), Chhabi •B iswas
(Rempini) Kali Banerjee (Noel Frederick Barwel),
Utpal Dutt (the Dutch sailor), Ashim Kumar, Karuna
Banerjee, Geeta Dey.
An extremely popular novel, centred on the High
Court in Calcutta, with thinly disguised real life court
cases providing crisscrossing stories, linked by the
lawyers and judges dealing with these cases, provided
Ghatak with the opportunity of casting some of the
major stars of the period. The film was abandoned
after eighteen synchronized reels had been shot in the
Technicians Studio, Calcutta, and in and around the
High Court. A reconstruction from the rushes gives
three or four silent sequences. Without any text
available, there is no way to conceive the structure of
the film or even the episodes chosen from the massive,
rambling novel.
1964
Bagalar Bangadarshan [ 'Bagala' s Discovery of Bengal']
35 mm. B/W. 4 reels.
CINEMATOGRAPHY Dilip Ranjan Mukherjee. EDITING
Ramesh Joshi. Music Hriday Ranjan Kushari. PLAYBACK
Pratima Barua. PRODUCTION Raman Maheswari.
Original from
Filmography 16.5
CAs'r Sunil Bhattacharya (Bagala), Indrani Mukherjee

(Kan'chanmala), Padma Devi, Renuka Roy, Jahar Roy,
Mumtaz Ahmed Khan, Keshto Mukherjee, Tarun
Ghosh, Deepak.
Ritaban Ghatak, Ritwik's son, has reconstructed a short
version of the film, from the eight sequences that exist
out of the fifty envisaged in the elaborate extant
screenplay by Ghatak. H completed, it would have been
Ghatak's only unabashed comedy. Significantly, the
first sequence (as envisaged) would have 'quoted', in
an indigenized remake, the Lumiere bit of the little
boy stepping on the water hose and releasing it to
splash the man with the hose, with a full blast of water.
In a comedy of errors, Bagala, a medical representative
in Calcutta, living with his schoolteacher wife and two
children, out on a tour, -befriends a young girl on the
train, and accompanies her to her village, where he is
mistaken for the girl's boy friend, with whom she is
suspected to have eloped. Now the family and the
community are prepared to accept them and marry
them off, with all the conventional rites and the
ubiquitous wedding feast for the entire village! An
awkward Bagala gets caught out at the end, but
Kanchan 's actual boyfriend, who had run away and
abandoned her, having been beaten up by her,
surfaces at the right time, and saves the situation.
1968
Ranger Golam ['The Knave of the Trump'] 35 mm.
B/W. 3 reels. ·
DIRECTION, ScREENPLAY AND PRODUCTION Ritwik Ghatak.
STORY Prabodhkumar Sanyal. CINEMATOGRAPHY
Mahendra Kumar.
CAs'r Anil Chatterjee (Sushil), Sarbani,Jahar Ray, Moni
Srimani, Seeta Mukherjee.
A synopsis of the film script that has survived:
Sushil, a kind-hearted, trusting young mail, on his way
Original from
166 lutwilc Ghatalc
to meet his wife at his in-laws' place, makes a long

trip-by train, by boat, walking through unfamiliar
terrain-accompanied by a young woman, Jhumri,
against whom he has been warned by almost everyone
he has met. People suspect her to be a robben' moll,
an infanticide, and what noL Sushil finds her a warm-
hearted friend, who is grateful to him for a lift in the
boat he has hired, and helps him in all possible ways.
When they come to a village where they have to spend
the night, Jhumri asks Sushil for the clothes and
jewellery that he is carrying for his wife. She would
wear them for the rest of the journey, and return them
to him when they parted. At the end of the journey,
Sushil is re-united with his wife, whom he tells the story
of his travels with Jhumri, the mysterious woman. On
their way back by boat, they find a crowd gathered on
the riverbank, and Sushil brings his wife down from the
boat, to allow her a last look at the dead Jhumri who
has committed suicide.
1963
Ustad Alauddin Khan.
SCREENPLAY Ritwik Ghatak. DIRECTION Harisadhan
Dasgupta. PRooucnoN Films Division.
The producer backed out after shooting had been
completed. Alauddin Khan, Annapurna Devi, and
Swaranrani had played for the film. The rushes remain
unaccessed.
1972
Indira Gandhi. 35 mm. B/W.
CINEMATOGRAPHY A. K. Goorha, Mahendra Kumar,
Pramod Mathur.
Original from
Filmography 167
1975
Ramltinkar. 16 mm. Colour.
.
DIRECTION, SCREENPLAY, PRODUCTION Ritwik Ghatak.
CINEMATOGRAPHYNirmal, Suniljana.
Ghatak's own 'treatment' script swvives:
RamlcinJcar Baij. A Personality Study
Sequence 1
White screen. Suddenly flashes of colours
thrown from all sides of the camera
strike the.screen.
cut to
Scene 2
Sculptures of all kinds, each taken
from different angles.
The river, the undulati11g landscape,
the villages, etc.
cut to
Boys and girls are coming out from Kala
Bhavan. Their discussions are about art.
As they proceed beyond the camera,
we go forward into Kala Bhavan itself,
and start panning over the murals.
These have been made by different artists

under the supervision and direction •
of Ramkinkar.
Some works of Nandalal Bose are also there.
cut to
Scene 3
I
168 Iutwik Ghatak
We now go into the details of the murals

which depict not only Aryan, Dravidian
sculptures but also Assyrian, Egyptian,
Persian and Mohenjodaro sculptures.
On the soundtrack every mural is explained.
cut to
Scene 4
The famous sculpture of Gandhi is shown
from various angles.
Then we come to the sculpture of
KrishaJcDampati (The Peasant Couple),
followed by the distinctive sculpture
of Buffall>Fish.
cut to
Scene 5
The camera tilts down from a dark screen
and reveal~ the fountain. Colourful streams
of water gush out of it.
Scene 6
Trick shot
Clouds gather rapidly, towards the centre
of an empty sky.
There is thunder and lightning.
Rain falls.
cut to
Scene 7
Original from
Filmography I 69
Ramkinkar's small cottage.

He comes out of his cottage with a paint
brush in his hand, looks at the sky and
starts painting the landscape around him
on a canvas. He is sitting on a verandah
with a bottle of drink by his side.
Then he goes out of the frame.
The camera charges onto the painting.
cut to
Scene 8
Half finished statue of a prehistoric
animal. He picks up some concrete and
cement and starts working on iL
As the camera charges onto his face,
he starts ta.J,king about art and
an artist's approach to life.
cut to
Scene 9
We show him in different locations,
as he talks about his philosophy of
life and his understanding of art.
.
Between the lines, we gather that he is
a 'son of the soil'. He deals mainly with
children of the village, as he too is
one of them.
Scene 10
Original from
170 Iutwilc GhataJc
At Calcutta, Delhi, Bombay, Paris and

New York, Ramkinkar is admired immensely,
and what fabulous prices his
paintings fetch.
cut to
Montage of his paintings

progressively leading to a climax.
cut to
Scene 11
Ramkinkar is lying on his cot.
Water drips from the roof.
To protect himself.from the leaking
water he takes up one of his invaluable
paintings and puts it below the roof.
He looks at the camera,
smiles and says:
It is very difficult to be an artist.
But more so, to understand an artist.
Fade out.
The film ends.
Original from
Select Bibliography
IN BENGALI
BASU Rov,Jyotirmoy, Ritwik Ghataker Chhabi ['The Films of

Ritwik Ghatak'], Calcutta: Rashbehari Book House,
1974. . .
GHATAK, Surama, Ritwilc, Calcutta: Asha Prakashani,
1384 B. s. [1977]; an edition of this book was published
by Anustup, in 1995, after the original publishing
house had closed down.
-Ritwik: Padma Thelt,ey Titas ['Ritwik: Padma to Titas: a
biographical documentation], Calcutta: Anustup,
January 1995.
Rov, Rajat [ed.], Ritwik O Taar Chhabi ['Ritwik and his
Films', vol. 1), Calcutta: Sampratik, May 1979.
IN ENGLISH
BANERJEE, Haimanti, Ritwik Kumar Ghatak, Pune: National

Film Archives of India, 1985.
BANERJEE, Shampa [ed.], Ritwik Ghatalc, New Delhi:
Directorate of Film Festivals of India, 1981 .
RAJADHYAKSHA, Ashish, A R.etum to the Epic, Mumbai: Screen
Unit, 1982.
IN BENGALI
-Chalachchitra, Manush Ebong Aro Kichhu ['Cinema, Man
Original from
172 Ritwilc Ghatalc
and Something Else']: Calcutta: Sandhan Samabayi
Prakashani, Ashadh 1382 B.s. [1975].
-Daul ['A Document'], Calcutta: Gananatya New Masses
Publications, 1952.
-Galiuo Galilei [a translation of Bertolt Brecht's The Lift of
Galileo], Calcutta: Jatiya Sahitya Parisad, 1965.
-.Jwala ['Rage'], Calcutta:Jatiya Sahitya Parisad, Raishakh
1375 B. S. [1968].
-Ritwilc GhataJrer Galpo [a collection of stories by Ritwik
Ghatak], Calcutta: Ritwik Memorial Trust, 4 November
1987.
-Mtghey Dhaka Tara [the reconstructed filmscript]
Calcutta: Ritwik Memorial Trust, 4 November 1999.
INENGUSH
-Cinema and I, Calcutta: Ritwik Memorial Trust,Janu.ary
1987.
-On the Cultural Front, Calcutta: Ritwik Memorial Trust, 4
November 1996.
[ The list compiled here has been restricted to boolc-length worlts on/
by Ritwilc Ghatalc. J
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Ritwik Ghatak - Rows and Rows of Fences (Edited)

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Ritwik.

Rows and Rows

texts on the same theme, or may be variations, written in Bengali.

In a career that spanned over twenty-five years until his death in

Initially, I was a writer. I have written about a hundred shon

Film is, basically, a matter of personal statemenL All arts are, in

Dr Kracauer is an eminent sociologisL The present book [ Theory

Even after an experience of over half a century and an enormous

Arl Related "'Man

Though the use of colour by itself cannot be called extravagant,

We, the younger generation of Indian filmmakers, hne

Today the Bengali novel is, in my opinion, in a moribund

Decay t.f l;ie,atun

Cinema cannot but be engaged, committed, to be worthy of its

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The word 'experiment' with reference to fihmpaking has become

The symbolic-imaginative view of the world is just as

I apologize for starting off in such a manner-with a barrage of

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We were born into a critical age. In our boyhood we have seen a

For any filmmaker today, it would be a grave and sacred thought

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The Mind: Dajd,aanlifff

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Different implements come to use at different times w_hen

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With our common habit of describing cinema as a visual art, at

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Ours is a multilingual country. Unless one fully knows the

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assess individuals of the present generation, but, as I have

are fundamentally nothing but dilettantes who clamour about

Whal, in your opinion, is the role of an artiste. particularly that

intellect may probably rear something else that may expres.1

There is nothing modem about this. This has existed from

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From collaboration with Salvador Dali to Viridiana, Bunuel's

With much pain and hesitation ·I am writing ·this letter to you.

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1. A cinema show ends. It is the opening nighL The assistants

It all started with an explorer-a geologist. A French fur-trading

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Spain of the Republic, and made spanish Earth [ 19g7J. His

Then was Turin. His Turlcsib (1929], a creative rendering

documentary recording of a coal mine disaster way back in

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accompanied Admiral Nimtz's and MacArthur's men.

the hotel-Varlamov would be sitting there on the bed semi-

fit, documentaries already made. The best among these fihns

The turning point in Tagore's intellectual life·, that

documentaries is taken to be the fact that one enacts and

generalization, compression, seeking the essence these do

a miracle. And I don't think the commercial houses should

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About. Shankar [A.ni l Chaue1jec] breaks into a fu ll-th roated re nditio n of

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..... "'o'""d by Google

About the Oraons of Oahotanagpur