Remembering Ritwik Ghatak, trailblazer of his own kind
Despite having tasted success with two Hindi films, the filmmaker made a conscious departure from the narrative style of storytelling
Ritwik Ghatak’s (1925-1976) originality owed it to his rootedness to the soil and an acute understanding of its social reality. Photos courtesy: Shoma Chatterji
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No Indian filmmaker evokes the kind of strong reactions that Ritwik Ghatak does. Even about 50 years after his death, Ghatak (1925-1976) is reckoned as a truly original director, lionised and criticised in equal measure. What makes him and his films different?
Ghatak’s formidable reputation rests largely on eight feature films, all in Bengali. His first film, ‘Nagarik’ (‘The Citizen’, 1952), was released after his untimely death, but his second film, ‘Ajantrik’ (‘The Unmechanical’, 1955), was released in the same year as Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ that heralded a new phase of Indian cinema. Though Ghatak’s films came out during the creative years of Ray, their styles, influences and approach towards the cinematic medium were widely different. While Ray continued to extend the horizons of cinema, lifting it to the level of art and carried his audience along, Ghatak remained largely uninfluenced by his illustrious contemporary.
He remained uninfluenced by Hollywood too. Russian masters like Eisenstein and Pudovkin inspired him, but he sought to create his own idiom that moved a small audience and some talented young filmmakers who came into his contact during 1965-66, when he had served as vice-principal of the Film & Television Institute of India. To many of them, like Mani Kaul, John Abraham, Kumar Shahani and Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Ghatak was a cult figure. Years later, in 2015, when the students at FTII protested against the appointment of its chairman, one slogan read: ‘Go back Chauhan! Ghatak was here!’
By any reckoning, Ray and Ghatak belonged to different planes. But one had high regard for the other. Ghatak wrote that if anyone in India had understood the medium of cinema, it was Ray alone. Ray had helped and perhaps commented more on Ghatak than on other Indian directors. In an influential essay published in 1974, Ray wrote: “It is strange that both Kaul and Shahani should acknowledge their debt to Ritwik Ghatak, who taught them at Poona, when the only Ghatak trait they seem to have imbibed is a lack of humour. In every other respect — in their avoidance of strong situations and full-blooded characters, in their lack of concern for social issues, in their use of camera and cutting, there is not a trace of Ghatak to be discerned…”
There are reasons that contributed to Ghatak’s originality — his rootedness to his soil and an acute understanding of its social reality, boldness in expressing human anguish through unrestrained sentiments and melodrama, and a conviction that the power of cinema as a personal statement of its maker, overwhelmed by emotional turmoil, can be unleashed even without exhibiting much concern about the subtleties of art and commercial considerations. Understandably, most of his films did not succeed commercially. But such failures could not deter him, nor made him compromise on his political position or style.
Much has been written by film scholars like Rajadhyaksha (‘Ritwik Ghatak: A Return to the Epic’, 1984), Vahali (‘Ritwik Ghatak and the Cinema of Praxis’, 2020) and others about the uniqueness of Ghatak’s oeuvre. Documentaries have been made on him. Ghatak himself wrote numerous essays (many of which were compiled in the book ‘Cinema and I’) in English and Bengali, and short stories and plays. Shahani wrote: “When I saw ‘Titash Ekti Nadir Naam’ (‘A River Called Titas’, 1973) in 1989, along with Mani Kaul and John Abraham and many younger colleagues at Pesaro, I realised how deeply Ritwik has taken us all along to a realisation well beyond the horizons of contemporary art.”
Although ‘Ajantrik’ is hailed as a film with anthropomorphic attributes showing the relationship between a taxi and its driver, Ghatak is best known for his Partition trilogy — ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’ (‘The Cloud-Capped Star’, 1960), ‘Komal Gandhar’ (‘A Soft Note on a Sharp Scale’, 1961) and ‘Subarnarekha’ (‘The Golden Line’, 1965). On celluloid, none has expressed the pangs of Bengal Partition and human suffering more eloquently and more passionately than Ghatak.
Ghatak was awarded the Padma Shri, but none of his films won any major national award. His films often appear to be of uneven quality with breathtaking sequences in between, but their full appreciation demanded the audience to be prepared too. It, therefore, took time for his fame to spread, first within the country, then internationally.
Few people remember that Ghatak wrote the story and screenplay for Bimal Roy’s film ‘Madhumati’ (1958), besides the script of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s ‘Musafir’ (1957). He could have thus become a conventional and successful director, but he made a conscious departure, seeking to eschew the narrative style of storytelling.
He directed about 13 short films and documentaries. The number of incomplete films, documentaries and screenplays aborted before shooting is legion. Certain personality traits, often aggravated by bouts of serious illness, and lack of self-discipline perhaps prevented him from achieving a larger stature that befitted his creativity.
In the year of his birth centenary, his films should be subtitled, widely telecast and watched.
— The writer is a former bureaucrat
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