Ritwik Ghatak | |
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| Born | Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (1925-11-04)4 November 1925 Dacca,Bengal Presidency, British India |
| Died | 6 February 1976(1976-02-06) (aged 50) Calcutta, West Bengal, India |
| Education | Ballygunge Government High School,Rajshahi Collegiate School |
| Alma mater | Presidency College, Calcutta University |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1952–1976 |
| Works | |
| Spouse | Surama Ghatak[1] |
| Children | 3[2] |
| Relatives | Aroma Dutta (niece) Manish Ghatak (brother) Mahasweta Devi (niece) Parambrata Chatterjee (grandnephew) Nabarun Bhattacharya (brother's grandson) Bijon Bhattacharya (niece's spouse) |
| Awards | Padma Shri (1970) National Film Award for Best Story (1974) |
Ritwik Kumar Ghatak (listenⓘ; 4 November 1925 – 6 February 1976)[3] was an Indian film director, screenwriter, actor and playwright.[4] Widely considered as one of the greatest film makers of all time, his works remained largely underrated and ignored during his lifetime. Along with prominent contemporary Bengali filmmakers likeSatyajit Ray,Tapan Sinha andMrinal Sen, his cinema is primarily remembered for its meticulous depiction of social reality, partition and feminism. He won theNational Film Award's Rajat Kamal Award for Best Story in 1974 for hisJukti Takko Aar Gappo[5] and Best Director's Award from Bangladesh Cine Journalist's Association forTitash Ekti Nadir Naam. The Government of India honoured him with thePadma Shri for Arts in 1970.[6][7]
Ritaban Ghatak, his son, is also a filmmaker[8] and is involved in the Ritwik Memorial Trust. He has restored Ritwik'sBagalar Banga Darshan,Ronger Golam and completed his unfinished documentary on Ramkinkar.
Ritaban has made a film titledUnfinished Ritwik. He is working on adaptingBibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's novelIchhamati. Ghatak's elder daughter, Samhita, made a docufeature titledNobo Nagarik. Ghatak's younger daughter died in 2009.[1]
In 1948, Ghatak wrote his first play,Kalo sayar (The Dark Lake), and participated in a revival of the landmark playNabanna.[9] Ghatak, who was a member of theCommunist Party of India till he was expelled in 1955, was one of the main leaders behind the party's cultural wing, theIndian People's Theatre Association.[10] He was renowned for hispartition trilogy Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-capped Star), 1960; Komal Gandhar (E Flat), 1961; and Subarnarekha (The Golden Thread), 1962.[10]
Ghatak entered the film industry with Nimai Ghosh'sChinnamul (1950) as an actor and assistant director.Chinnamul was followed in two years by Ghatak's first completed film,Nagarik (1952), both major breakthroughs forIndian cinema.[11][12] Ghatak's early work sought theatrical and literary precedent in bringing together a documentary realism, a stylised performance often drawn from the folk theatre, and a Brechtian use of the filmic apparatus.
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Ghatak moved briefly toPune in 1966, where he taught at theFilm and Television Institute of India (FTII). His students included filmmakersMani Kaul,Kumar Shahani,Adoor Gopalkrishnan,Saeed Akhtar Mirza,John Abraham. During his year atFTII, he was involved in the making of two student films:Fear andRendezvous.[13]
Ghatak died on 6 February 1976.[14] At the time of his death, Ghatak's primary influence seemed to have been through former students. Although his stint teaching film at FTII was brief, one-time studentsMani Kaul,John Abraham, and especiallyKumar Shahani,[15] carried Ghatak's ideas and theories, which were elaborated upon in his bookCinema and I, into the mainstream ofIndian art film.Cinema and I was called bySatyajit Ray as a book that covers all aspects of filmmaking. Other students of his at the FTII includedSaeed Akhtar Mirza,Subhash Ghai andAdoor Gopalakrishnan.[16]While other filmmakers likeSatyajit Ray succeeded in creating an audience outside India during their lifetime, Ghatak and his films were appreciated primarily within India. Satyajit Ray did what he could to promote his colleague, but Ray's generous praise did not translate into international fame for Ghatak. For example, Ghatak'sNagarik (1952) was perhaps the earliest example of a Bengali art film, preceding Ray'sPather Panchali by three years, but was not released until after his death in 1977.[11][12] His first commercial release,Ajantrik (1955), was one of the early Indian films to portray an inanimate object, anautomobile, as a character in the story, many years before theHerbie films.[3] Ghatak'sBari Theke Paliye (1958) had a similar plot toFrançois Truffaut'sThe 400 Blows (1959), but Ghatak's film remained obscure while Truffaut's went on to become one of the more famous of theFrench New Wave. One of Ghatak's later films,Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1973), is one of the early to be told in ahyperlink format, featuring multiple characters in a collection of interconnected stories, predatingRobert Altman'sNashville (1975) by two years.
Ghatak's only major commercial success wasMadhumati (1958), a Hindi film, which he wrote the screenplay for. It was one of the early ones to deal with the theme ofreincarnation and is believed to have been the source of inspiration for many later works dealing with reincarnation inIndian cinema,Indian television, and perhapsworld cinema. It may have been the source of inspiration for the American filmThe Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975) and the Hindi filmKarz (1980), both of which dealt with reincarnation and have been influential in their respective cultures.[17]Karz in particular was remade several times: as theKannada filmYuga Purusha (1989), theTamil filmEnakkul Oruvan (1984), and more recently theBollywoodKarzzzz (2008).Karz andThe Reincarnation of Peter Proud may have inspired the AmericanChances Are (1989).[17] The most recent film to be directly inspired byMadhumati was the hit Bollywood filmOm Shanti Om (2007), which led to the lateBimal Roy's daughterRinki Bhattacharya accusing it of plagiarism and threatening legal action against its producers.[18][19]
Ghatak's work as a director influenced many later Indian filmmakers, including those from theBengali film industry and elsewhere. Ghatak is said to have influences onKumar Shahani, Mani Kaul,Ketan Mehta, andAdoor Gopalakrishnan. For example,Mira Nair has cited Ghatak as well as Ray as the reasons she became a filmmaker.[20] Ghatak's influence as a director began to spread beyond India much later; beginning in the 1990s, a project to restore Ghatak's films was undertaken, and international exhibitions (and subsequent DVD releases) have belatedly generated an increasingly global audience. In a critics' poll ofall-time greatest films conducted by theAsian film magazineCinemaya in 1998,Subarnarekha was ranked at No. 11.[21] In the 2002Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll for all-time greatest films,Meghe Dhaka Tara was ranked at No. 231 andKomal Gandhar at No. 346.[22] In 2007,A River Named Titas topped the list of 10 bestBangladeshi films, as chosen in the audience and critics' polls conducted by theBritish Film Institute.[23]Russia-born German actress Elena Kazan once said Ghatak'sJukti Takko Gappo has the most profound influence on her view about world cinema.[24]
Bangladeshi filmmakerShahnewaz Kakoli said she has been greatly influenced by Ritwik Ghatak's films and regarded Ghatak as her idol. She said, "like all Bengalis, I too have grown up watching movies of Satyajit Ray and Ghatak, though I like Ghatak more and I idolize him. I am greatly inspired by him and consequently my movie 'Uttarer Sur' (Northern Symphony) too is influenced by Ghatak."[25]
Ghatak was a theorist as well. His views and commentaries on films have been parts of scholarly studies and research. As a filmmaker, his main concentration was on men and life, especially the day-to-day struggle of ordinary people. He could never accept the partition ofBengal in 1947, which divided Bengal and created a new country. In almost all his films, he dealt with this theme.[26]
For him, filmmaking was an art form and a means to end the suffering of people. It was a means of expressing his anger at the sorrows and sufferings of his people.[27]
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