It is one of the greatest ironies in life that Ritwik Ghatak, who is now a cult figure in Bengal, was so little understood and appreciated during his lifetime. Despite the fact that today his films have garnered much critical acclaim, the fact remains that in his day they were mainly running to empty houses in Bengal. Ghatak’s films project a

sensitivity. They are often brilliant, but almost always faulty.

Born in Dhaka (now Bangladesh), the partition of Bengal and the subsequent division of a culture was something that haunted Ghatak forever. Joining the left-wing Indian People’s Theater Association (IPTA), he worked for some years as a playwright, actor and director. When IPTA split into factions, Ghatak turned to cinema.

Overall, Ghatak’s films revolve around two central themes: the experience of being uprooted from the idyllic rural surroundings of East Bengal and the cultural trauma of the 1947 partition. His first film, Nagarik (1952) wove the oppressive story of a young man, his futile job search and the erosion of his optimism and idealism as his family sinks into abject poverty and his love story also turns sour. Ghatak later took a job with Filmistan Studio in Bombay, but his “different” ideas were not well received there. However, he did write the scripts for Musafir (1957) and Madhumati (1958) for Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Bimal Roy respectively, the latter becoming an all-time hit.

After this brief period followed by his return to his good old Calcutta, he made Ajantrik (1958) about a taxi driver in a small town in Bihar and his vehicle, an old Chevrolet junkyard. A variety of passengers gives the film a broader frame of reference and provides situations of drama, humor and irony.

However, his “magnum opus” is none other than Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), the first film in a trilogy, which examines the socio-economic implications of partition. The protagonist Nita (played by Supriya Chowdhury) is the breadwinner of a refugee family of five. Everyone exploits it and the tension is too much. She succumbs to

tuberculosis. In an unforgettable moment, the dying Nita yells “I want to live …” as the camera sweeps through the mountains, thus accentuating the indifference and eternity of nature as the echo reverberates over the shot.

Despite the complexities, Meghe Dhaka Tara reaches audiences with her bluntness, her simplicity, and her unique stylistic use of melodrama. Melodrama as a legitimate dramatic form has continued to play a vital role in Indian rural theater and popular dramatic forms. Ghatak returns to these roots in his presentation of a family struggle for survival, which has lost its dramatic force and pathos through replay in real life.

At Meghe Dhaka Tara, day-to-day events are transformed into great drama: Nita’s tormented romance intensifies with the harsh sweep of lash across the soundtrack; Shankar’s song of faith in a moment of despair reaches the height of emotional surrender with Nita’s voice joining hers and Nita’s urge to live becomes a universal sound of affirmation that reverberates in Nature, in the midst. from the distant peaks of the Himalayas.

The three main female characters in this film embody the traditional aspects of female power. The heroine, Nita, has the quality of preserving and nurturing; his sister, Gita, is the sensual woman; his mother represents the cruel aspect. Nita’s inability to combine and contain all of these qualities is the imminent source of her tragedy.

Also, here Ghatak tries to delve into our roots and traditions and discover a universal dimension within it. And for the first time, he says he experimented with harmonic techniques. In the film, Ghatak manages to achieve a great whole through an intricate but harmonious combination of each part with the whole within.

film fabric. Meghe Dhaka Tara transcends into a great work of art that enriches and transforms visual images into metamorphic meanings …

The film’s music blends seamlessly with the images, neither displacing the other, be it a remarkable orchestration of a hill motif with a feminine moan or a ragged cough with a booming song.

Here, it would be relevant to mention that Ghatak weaves a parallel narrative that evokes the famous Bengali legends of Durga, who is believed to descend from her mountain retreat each fall to visit her parents and Menaka’s. This dual approach, condensed in the figure of Neeta, becomes even more complex at the level of

the cinematic language itself through elaborate, sometimes non-diegetic, sound effects that work alongside the image or as comments on it (for example, the chorus Ai go Uma kole loi, that is, Come into my arms , Uma, my son, used in the last part of the film, especially on the face of the rain-soaked Neeta shortly before her departure to the sanatorium).

This approach allows the film to transcend its history by opening it up to the realm of myth and the conventions of cinematic realism (for example, evoked in the Calcutta sequences).

“Meghe Dhaka Tara” was followed by Komal Gandhar (1961), in connection with two rival theater companies on tour in Bengal and Subarnarekha (1965). The latter is a strangely haunting film that uses melodrama and coincidence as one more way than

mechanical reality.

His next film, Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1973), made for a young Bangladeshi producer, focuses on the life and eventual disintegration of a fishing community in Titash. However, this epic saga was completed after many problems in the filming stage, including its collapse due to tuberculosis and was a commercial failure.

In particular, Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1974), the most autobiographical and allegorical

of his films, it was made just before his untimely demise. Here, he himself played the main role of Nilkanta, an alcoholic intellectual. The film has been talked about in the critical circle for Ghatak’s impressive use of the wide-angle lens with the most powerful effect.

Unfortunately for Ghatak, his films were largely unsuccessful. Many of those who remained unpublished for years, abandoned almost as many projects as completed. In the end, the intensity of his passion, which gave his films power and emotion, took its toll, as did tuberculosis and alcoholism. However, it has left a limited, but

Subtly rich and intricate work that no serious student of Indian cinema can dare to ignore.