Dear Friends,
NFDC is organizing screening of Bengali Feature Film "NAYAK" on Sunday August 17, 2008 at 06:00 p.m. at NFDC Preview Theatre Basement of Nehru Planetarium, Nehru Centre, Dr. Annie Besant Road, Worli, Mumbai 400018 in memory of Maha-Nayak Late Uttam Kumar.
All are invited to pay tribute to the well known Maha-Nayak
* ENTRY OPEN TO ALL FILM LOVERS (FREE ADMISSION)
* ON FIRST-COME-FIRST-SERVED BASIS
NAYAK (The Hero)
(1966/120 Minutes/B-W/Bengali-EST)
Original Screenplay & Direction : Satyajit Ray
Music : Satyajit Ray
Cast (Character : Performer)
* Arindam Mukherjee : Uttam Kumar
* Aditi Sen Gupta : Sharmila Tagore
* Mukunda Lahiri : Bireswar Sen
* Sankar : Somen Bose
* Jyoti : Bimal Ghosh
* Biresh : Premangsu Bose
* Promila Chatterjee : Sumita Sanyal
SUMMARY
A famous film actor Arindam (Uttam Kumar), a star of Bengali films, has been invited to the capital to receive a prestigious award. As all the flights are booked, he is forced to travel by a train from Calcutta to New Delhi. He is in a foul mood as the morning's papers are filled with his being involved in an altercation and his latest film is slated to become his first flop.In the restaurant car, he meets Aditi (Sharmila Tagore), a young journalist who edits a serious women's magazines. Filled with contempt for the likes of him, she secretly plans to interview him because she thinks it would make a saleable 'copy'. It soon leads to him pouring out his life history. Aditi takes notes, surreptitiously. Critical of the star, she interrogates him and the star ends up re-examining his life. In a series of conversations with Aditi, he reveals his past and guilt.
He talks about Shankarda, his mentor, taking us back to his early youth. His selling out to films and giving up theatre against the wishes of his old teacher... His first day's shoot, and he being snubbed by a successful actor Mukunda Lahiri. A few years later Mukunda Lahiri, now a forgotten actor after a series of flops, comes to him to beg for a small part. He rejects the ageing actor in revenge. His taking refuge in alcohol. And his refusing to help a friend in politics.
In the fag end of the train journey, he is drunk and contemplates suicide. He asks the conductor to fetch Aditi. He begins to confess an affair with a married woman. But Aditi stops him. It was an affair with a heartless and ambitious Promila, which ended in a brawl with her husband.
As the star re-lives and examines his life with Aditi, a bond develops between them. Aditi realises that in spite of his fame and success, Arindam is a lonely man, and needs her sympathy and understanding. Out of respect for his frank confession, she chooses to suppress the story and tears up the notes she has written. She lets the hero preserve his public image.
AWARDS
Best Screenplay and Story, New Delhi, 1967
Critics' Prize (Unicrit award), Berlin, 1966
Special Jury Award, Berlin, 1966
Tributes
"It is the demise of a leading light of the Bengali film industry.There isn't - there won't be another hero like him."
Satyajit Ray
Remembering Uttam Kumar
Uttam Kumar, mercurial Marcello Mastroianni of Bengali cinema, even 25 years after his death, still remains a full-screen presence. Millions of his admirers still swarm around theatres where Uttam-Suchitra films run, filled to capacity. Such is the ageless impact of the pair. And Uttam Kumar, like many of his contemporaries, had refused to live in a cocoon of enigma during his life time so that his followers/ admires could imbibe him, understand him and feel him and his anima in full. His quintessential notion was: all that restores authentic emotion to you is the present. The important thing is not to know if a work has the right to be art noveau, gothic, baroque or classic; the important thing is to see if the information which it carries to the spectators is vital or not, if it proposes something new or something old. Perhaps this is why Ajoy Kar, somewhat a mentor of Uttam Kumar, described the smart actor "a soul of film".
Works of Uttam Kumar are numerous and varied in tinge and tenor; they mostly uphold his 'infallible image' even when placed in unassuming roles, miles away from 'romantic hero'. Though his major success, as per the record available, emerged from films where Suchitra Sen did pair with him with full panache. Their Agni Pariksha, Shapmochon, Sagarika, Saber Uparey, Harano Sur, Shilpi, Jeevan Trishna, Pathey Holo Deri, Surya Toron, Chandranath and Indrani, all made in the fifties and sixties, bore monumental evidence of 'star image' and total credible plots, romantic or tragic. The films they acted in made the Tollygunge film industry prima-facie 'a gold mine'. Ajoy Kar's Harano Sur, made in the shadow of Random Harvest, touched a new peak as far as popularity rate is concerned. And when Ajoy Kar again made Saptapadi, based on a story by Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, with Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen in the lead (Suchitra Sen played Rina Brown in the film), it made another history, history of unbelievable box-office success, a phenomenon in the Bengali film industry. This was the time when Ajoy Kar described the pair 'a gold mine'. The only film Ekti Raat (One Night) they had acted together flopped miserably. But it is only an aberration.
It is needless to mention the 'Midas touch' Uttam Kumar brought to the Bengali film industry. By any standard, he became an indispensable object, a lure for all producers and directors. It should be mentioned here behind the rise of Uttam Kumar into a full-fledged 'star', the role of Agradoot and Agragami, two production units, cannot be ignored. For it was their films that galvanized the 'silver screen' of Bengali cinema luminous. When Tapan Sinha cast him in Jhinder Bandi (Prisoner of Zenda) along with co-actor Soumitra Chatterjee and then in Jatugriha, Uttam Kumar proved a point or two; that his quality of acting is unpredictable and golden. None could match him. Said Tapan Sinha, the noted director, in his memoir: "You don't have to guide him much to absorb the given character. He was a true follower of the script and stuck to the disciplined margin, whether to cross it or remain within it. He was a genius though to survive he had to make may films which did not appeal to him as an actor/person".
Uttam Kumar had acted in the films of major international directors like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha, Ajoy Kar and Asit Sen. It was Mrinal Sen, then an unknown face, cast Uttam Kumar in his maiden film Raat Bhor, a film that never saw light of the day. It was such a seedy film Mrinal Sen heartily disowned it and still hates to talk about it. But when Satyajit Ray, the giant of the movie industry, called Uttam Kumar to act in his film Chiriakhana (Zoo), it became the subject of international discussion. Here he was roped in to enliven a samus, a detective to solve murder mystery. The great Ray did the film against his will as it was never his up of tea then. But lo! The film hit the jackpot and Uttam Kumar became Satyajit Ray's pride. The great Ray was much impressed by his inherent quality of acting and innovative skill, he started writing his screenplay Nayak (The Hero) after the image of Uttam Kumar, the infallible 'matinee idol' of Bengal cinema. Andrew Robinson, the author of Satyajit Ray, The Inner Eye, writes: "Although Uttam Kumar was in Ray's mind when he set off for Darjeeling off-season in May to write Nayak (The Hero), he was thinking of him more as a phenomenon than an individual. Uttam had no hand in formation of the character he was to play, and Ray to this day is surprisingly ignorant of Uttam's life". It should be mentioned Ray's Nayak (1965) is nearly the biographical film of Uttam Kumar's own life and fame, his rise and stasis, success and failures.
Nayak is the first 'road-movie' (shot in running train called Vestibule, first ever air-conditioned coach, from Howrah to Delhi). While Uttam Kumar played Arindam, Sharmila Tagore played the role of Aditi, the conscience-keeper of the film. It is claimed Nayak undoubtedly invites comparison with Kanchenjungha, Ray's first original screenplay. It lifts a group of prosperous contemporary characters out of their usual setting and thrusts them together for a brief period of time; it sets up a situation tailor-made for romance and then stalls it. Its emotions are, generally speaking, very restrained; and it has a woman for its conscience-keeper.
It is interesting to note what Satyajit Ray said about Uttam's intellect: "I never bothered to explain the character to him (Uttam Kumar). So I never discovered whether he really understood the implication of the part. And it doe's not really matter whether he did or did not. There were a lot of things he did understand because they probably corresponded to his own life and his own experience. He was not very articulate as a person, actually. Perhaps he was conscious of the fact that he would not be able to talk at the same level as us, so he kept quiet. Some people who are stupid would come out with all sorts of stupid things. So I did not discuss the psychology of the part at all. I merely told him that this is what you have to do. Trust me and it should be all right". Nayak is full of flash-backs and dream sequences. The hero's past is revealed in flash-backs and dreams which make inroads into "a very tight time-space (24-hours in a train). Incidentally, Nayak won the Critics' Prize at Berlin in 1966 where Pasolini, the Italian maestro, was a juror and had admired the film to a great extent; it had received rave reviews in the USA where it was released in 1974. Penelope Gilliat, the famous critic of New Yorker, after seeing the film, praised it: "but sometimes illuminating it by lines that suddenly show character in movement, like the glae of a torch catching a figure on a staircase". Nayak also won for Satyajit Ray the President's Gold Medal in 1967. Thus Uttam Kumar, many do believe even now, became a part of Satyajit Ray, the indomitable Prometheus, whose aura never fades out in the sands of time. And the matinee idol's image still holds the full-screen presence in all brightness.
Pradip Biswas
NFDC is organizing screening of Bengali Feature Film "NAYAK" on Sunday August 17, 2008 at 06:00 p.m. at NFDC Preview Theatre Basement of Nehru Planetarium, Nehru Centre, Dr. Annie Besant Road, Worli, Mumbai 400018 in memory of Maha-Nayak Late Uttam Kumar.
All are invited to pay tribute to the well known Maha-Nayak
* ENTRY OPEN TO ALL FILM LOVERS (FREE ADMISSION)
* ON FIRST-COME-FIRST-SERVED BASIS
NAYAK (The Hero)
(1966/120 Minutes/B-W/Bengali-EST)
Original Screenplay & Direction : Satyajit Ray
Music : Satyajit Ray
Cast (Character : Performer)
* Arindam Mukherjee : Uttam Kumar
* Aditi Sen Gupta : Sharmila Tagore
* Mukunda Lahiri : Bireswar Sen
* Sankar : Somen Bose
* Jyoti : Bimal Ghosh
* Biresh : Premangsu Bose
* Promila Chatterjee : Sumita Sanyal
SUMMARY
A famous film actor Arindam (Uttam Kumar), a star of Bengali films, has been invited to the capital to receive a prestigious award. As all the flights are booked, he is forced to travel by a train from Calcutta to New Delhi. He is in a foul mood as the morning's papers are filled with his being involved in an altercation and his latest film is slated to become his first flop.In the restaurant car, he meets Aditi (Sharmila Tagore), a young journalist who edits a serious women's magazines. Filled with contempt for the likes of him, she secretly plans to interview him because she thinks it would make a saleable 'copy'. It soon leads to him pouring out his life history. Aditi takes notes, surreptitiously. Critical of the star, she interrogates him and the star ends up re-examining his life. In a series of conversations with Aditi, he reveals his past and guilt.
He talks about Shankarda, his mentor, taking us back to his early youth. His selling out to films and giving up theatre against the wishes of his old teacher... His first day's shoot, and he being snubbed by a successful actor Mukunda Lahiri. A few years later Mukunda Lahiri, now a forgotten actor after a series of flops, comes to him to beg for a small part. He rejects the ageing actor in revenge. His taking refuge in alcohol. And his refusing to help a friend in politics.
In the fag end of the train journey, he is drunk and contemplates suicide. He asks the conductor to fetch Aditi. He begins to confess an affair with a married woman. But Aditi stops him. It was an affair with a heartless and ambitious Promila, which ended in a brawl with her husband.
As the star re-lives and examines his life with Aditi, a bond develops between them. Aditi realises that in spite of his fame and success, Arindam is a lonely man, and needs her sympathy and understanding. Out of respect for his frank confession, she chooses to suppress the story and tears up the notes she has written. She lets the hero preserve his public image.
AWARDS
Best Screenplay and Story, New Delhi, 1967
Critics' Prize (Unicrit award), Berlin, 1966
Special Jury Award, Berlin, 1966
Tributes
"It is the demise of a leading light of the Bengali film industry.There isn't - there won't be another hero like him."
Satyajit Ray
Remembering Uttam Kumar
Uttam Kumar, mercurial Marcello Mastroianni of Bengali cinema, even 25 years after his death, still remains a full-screen presence. Millions of his admirers still swarm around theatres where Uttam-Suchitra films run, filled to capacity. Such is the ageless impact of the pair. And Uttam Kumar, like many of his contemporaries, had refused to live in a cocoon of enigma during his life time so that his followers/ admires could imbibe him, understand him and feel him and his anima in full. His quintessential notion was: all that restores authentic emotion to you is the present. The important thing is not to know if a work has the right to be art noveau, gothic, baroque or classic; the important thing is to see if the information which it carries to the spectators is vital or not, if it proposes something new or something old. Perhaps this is why Ajoy Kar, somewhat a mentor of Uttam Kumar, described the smart actor "a soul of film".
Works of Uttam Kumar are numerous and varied in tinge and tenor; they mostly uphold his 'infallible image' even when placed in unassuming roles, miles away from 'romantic hero'. Though his major success, as per the record available, emerged from films where Suchitra Sen did pair with him with full panache. Their Agni Pariksha, Shapmochon, Sagarika, Saber Uparey, Harano Sur, Shilpi, Jeevan Trishna, Pathey Holo Deri, Surya Toron, Chandranath and Indrani, all made in the fifties and sixties, bore monumental evidence of 'star image' and total credible plots, romantic or tragic. The films they acted in made the Tollygunge film industry prima-facie 'a gold mine'. Ajoy Kar's Harano Sur, made in the shadow of Random Harvest, touched a new peak as far as popularity rate is concerned. And when Ajoy Kar again made Saptapadi, based on a story by Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, with Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen in the lead (Suchitra Sen played Rina Brown in the film), it made another history, history of unbelievable box-office success, a phenomenon in the Bengali film industry. This was the time when Ajoy Kar described the pair 'a gold mine'. The only film Ekti Raat (One Night) they had acted together flopped miserably. But it is only an aberration.
It is needless to mention the 'Midas touch' Uttam Kumar brought to the Bengali film industry. By any standard, he became an indispensable object, a lure for all producers and directors. It should be mentioned here behind the rise of Uttam Kumar into a full-fledged 'star', the role of Agradoot and Agragami, two production units, cannot be ignored. For it was their films that galvanized the 'silver screen' of Bengali cinema luminous. When Tapan Sinha cast him in Jhinder Bandi (Prisoner of Zenda) along with co-actor Soumitra Chatterjee and then in Jatugriha, Uttam Kumar proved a point or two; that his quality of acting is unpredictable and golden. None could match him. Said Tapan Sinha, the noted director, in his memoir: "You don't have to guide him much to absorb the given character. He was a true follower of the script and stuck to the disciplined margin, whether to cross it or remain within it. He was a genius though to survive he had to make may films which did not appeal to him as an actor/person".
Uttam Kumar had acted in the films of major international directors like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha, Ajoy Kar and Asit Sen. It was Mrinal Sen, then an unknown face, cast Uttam Kumar in his maiden film Raat Bhor, a film that never saw light of the day. It was such a seedy film Mrinal Sen heartily disowned it and still hates to talk about it. But when Satyajit Ray, the giant of the movie industry, called Uttam Kumar to act in his film Chiriakhana (Zoo), it became the subject of international discussion. Here he was roped in to enliven a samus, a detective to solve murder mystery. The great Ray did the film against his will as it was never his up of tea then. But lo! The film hit the jackpot and Uttam Kumar became Satyajit Ray's pride. The great Ray was much impressed by his inherent quality of acting and innovative skill, he started writing his screenplay Nayak (The Hero) after the image of Uttam Kumar, the infallible 'matinee idol' of Bengal cinema. Andrew Robinson, the author of Satyajit Ray, The Inner Eye, writes: "Although Uttam Kumar was in Ray's mind when he set off for Darjeeling off-season in May to write Nayak (The Hero), he was thinking of him more as a phenomenon than an individual. Uttam had no hand in formation of the character he was to play, and Ray to this day is surprisingly ignorant of Uttam's life". It should be mentioned Ray's Nayak (1965) is nearly the biographical film of Uttam Kumar's own life and fame, his rise and stasis, success and failures.
Nayak is the first 'road-movie' (shot in running train called Vestibule, first ever air-conditioned coach, from Howrah to Delhi). While Uttam Kumar played Arindam, Sharmila Tagore played the role of Aditi, the conscience-keeper of the film. It is claimed Nayak undoubtedly invites comparison with Kanchenjungha, Ray's first original screenplay. It lifts a group of prosperous contemporary characters out of their usual setting and thrusts them together for a brief period of time; it sets up a situation tailor-made for romance and then stalls it. Its emotions are, generally speaking, very restrained; and it has a woman for its conscience-keeper.
It is interesting to note what Satyajit Ray said about Uttam's intellect: "I never bothered to explain the character to him (Uttam Kumar). So I never discovered whether he really understood the implication of the part. And it doe's not really matter whether he did or did not. There were a lot of things he did understand because they probably corresponded to his own life and his own experience. He was not very articulate as a person, actually. Perhaps he was conscious of the fact that he would not be able to talk at the same level as us, so he kept quiet. Some people who are stupid would come out with all sorts of stupid things. So I did not discuss the psychology of the part at all. I merely told him that this is what you have to do. Trust me and it should be all right". Nayak is full of flash-backs and dream sequences. The hero's past is revealed in flash-backs and dreams which make inroads into "a very tight time-space (24-hours in a train). Incidentally, Nayak won the Critics' Prize at Berlin in 1966 where Pasolini, the Italian maestro, was a juror and had admired the film to a great extent; it had received rave reviews in the USA where it was released in 1974. Penelope Gilliat, the famous critic of New Yorker, after seeing the film, praised it: "but sometimes illuminating it by lines that suddenly show character in movement, like the glae of a torch catching a figure on a staircase". Nayak also won for Satyajit Ray the President's Gold Medal in 1967. Thus Uttam Kumar, many do believe even now, became a part of Satyajit Ray, the indomitable Prometheus, whose aura never fades out in the sands of time. And the matinee idol's image still holds the full-screen presence in all brightness.
Pradip Biswas
