For him Hollywood might not have
existed at all.
No Love for the Cinema
In Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen's account of Ritwik
Ghatak's place in the history of Indian cinema, they propose Ghatak was
truly an original filmmaker with no cinematic predecessors. Rather, they
suggest that “aesthetically his work can be placed alongside that of
Bengali novelist Manik Bandyopadhyay (1908–56) and the teachings of
his music forbear Ustad Allauddin Khan” (2). Given
this assessment, it is not surprising that some of the most intriguing comments
made by one of India's most well respected independent directors are about
cinema itself. What is surprising is that Ghatak's writings about the cinema
regularly denounce a love for the medium. Instead, Ghatak drew a fine distinction
between the opportunities offered up by the cinema and cinema itself, always
insisting: “Film is not a form, it has forms” (3).
Accordingly, it was the massive size of the film going audience, rather
than a love for the cinema, that Ghatak claims brought
him to the business of films. The only special skill he perceived in the
cinema over any other artistic medium was that “It can reach millions
of people at one go, which no other medium is capable of” (4).
Ghatak declared on a number of occasions that if some other medium came
along enabling him to reach more of the masses, he would happily drop cinema
and embrace that other medium.
Equally at home writing fiction or theatre, Ghatak consistently investigated
the question of whether filmmaking was an art form and what attributes made
it such, remarking “raw meat is not exactly 'Moghlai kebab'. A cook
comes somewhere in between” (5). What mattered
to Ghatak was that a work was artistically engaged. Ghatak's work in the
cinema itself never settled into any one genre of style.
My first film was called a picaresque episodic
film along the lines of the eighteenth century Spanish novel Gil Blas
De Santillane; the second was called a film of documentary approach;
the next was a melodrama, and the fourth, nothing at all, just no film.
(6)
An artist across many mediums, Ghatak wrote, performed in, directed and
produced numerous plays on the stage and in the streets for the Indian People's
Theatre Association (IPTA), the theatre branch attached to the Communist
Party of India. His significant influence with IPTA is evidenced by his
play Dalil (Document). It was voted best production of the
IPTA All-India conference in Bombay in 1953. He formed his own theatre group,
Group Theatre, following differences with IPTA, staging a play called Sei
Meye in 1969 with the patients in the mental asylum at which he resided
for some time. His film Komal Gandhar (The Gandhar Sublime
or E-Flat, 1961) is about this split within the IPTA in Bengal,
during the early years after Partition, and opens with a theatre performance
of Ghatak's Dalil, featuring many celebrated veteran IPTA actors,
forging yet another crossover between media for Ghatak.
Between Human, Camera
and Machine
So what are we to make of this director/writer/producer/actor/author
of films/theatre/novels/short stories – in short, a self-proclaimed
artist – who declared no attachment to a medium we, as cinema enthusiasts
from all walks, claim to love? An anecdote about Ghatak's own viewing habits
might go a little way to explaining. I have been told that Ritwik Ghatak
and Kumar Shahani (Ghatak's prized pupil) used to watch the Lumières'
L'Arrivée d'un train à la Ciotat (Arrival of a Train
at Ciotat Station, 1896) over and over again, and laugh. They laughed
because they found funny the idea of “one machine looking at the other”
(7). Whenever I think about this anecdote, it always connects
itself to the events of Ghatak's film Ajantrik (Pathetic Fallacy
or The Unmechanical, 1958). Set in Bihar around the activities
of a taxi driver who lives at a bus station, it was Ghatak's first film
to be released commercially.
It's just a lump of iron. Why this attachment?
This is a question asked of taxi driver Bimal (Kali Banerjee, an IPTA veteran),
the central character of Ajantrik, regarding his dedication
to his very old and battered 1920 Chevrolet jalopy, called Jagaddal. It
seems to me that it is the same question Ghatak wants to ask of the presumption
of a filmmaker's attachment to the apparatuses of the cinema – an attachment
Ghatak claims not to possess. We could draw some interesting conclusions
about Ghatak's investigation of this taxi driver's relationship to his car
and Ghatak's own attempts to explain what it is about the cinema that draws
his commitment.
Let us consider further the mingling of the human and the mechanical that
traverses Ajantrik.
“The gentlemen at the Bengali Gentlemen's Club. They put it
well.”
Bimal pauses, pensively.
“That I'm a machine. I like the smell of burnt gasoline. It makes
me high...”
A light giggle escapes him.
“What they don't understand is that Jagaddal is also human.”
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Ajantrik
|
The companionship Bimal feels towards his taxi in Ajantrik (which
generates the accusation that Bimal “must be a machine”) in fact
announces a profoundly ”human” attachment and dedication motivating
him. Bimal holds onto his car, Jagaddal, for fifteen years, against the
prevailing trend amongst his peers for ditching old cars and upgrading regularly
to new “fashionable whores”. The sense of companionship between
Bimal and his taxi is evident from the dialogue Bimal establishes with Jagaddal
and his loving actions towards the car. Jagaddal is also invested with ”human”
gestures and locomotion. These are implied in Ajantrik by emphasis
on Jagaddal's bodily functions and independent agency, epitomised by the
camera's attention to frequent autonomous movements of Jagaddal's headlights.
Sounds of drinking and exhalations of satisfaction exude from the car among
descriptions of Jagaddal's health and durability. According to Bimal, in
comparison with other cars, Jagaddal never “catches colds” or
“gets tummy aches”. That Bimal believes in Jagaddal's independent
agency is summarised in the final test of the car's strength, after it has
received new parts.
“I've pampered you enough,” Bimal warns, dropping
several large boulders that he can barely carry into the back of Jagaddal.
“Today you must decide whether you want to stay or not!”
When Jagaddal struggles with the load and collapses (effectively dies),
Bimal smashes the windscreen and bursts into tears, his head resting on
the steering wheel.
Ghatak's own comments about this relationship surprised me when I came across
them as an already dedicated fan of the film. He is rather disdainful:
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 peasants, animists like tribals. To us city
folks, it is a story of a crazy man. […] We could imagine ourselves
in love with a river or a stone. But a machine – there we draw the
line. (8)
At first I was taken aback by such a seemingly superior attitude towards
the central character of Ajantrik, for whom I hold much affection
and for whom I believed the film held a similar affection. However, while
the condescending tone is evident in these comments, Ghatak maintains a
significant sense of curiosity about this phenomenon. He begins to make
some very interesting connections between some of the cultural traditions
of India in relation to this machine. He continues:
But these people do not have that difficulty.
They are constantly in the process of assimilating anything new that comes
their way. In all our folk art the signs of such assimilation are manifest.
(9)
At the same time as Ghatak discusses this capacity for assimilation common
to “children, simple folk like peasants, animists like tribals”,
he acknowledges the trends of the modern era: “The order of the day
is an emotional integration with this machine age” (10).
Here we discover a curious confluence between the practices of folk art
and the attitudes resulting from industrialisation. Bimal is certainly not
the first man to fall in love with his car. We can all think of “city
folks” of similar persuasion. Ghatak, it seems, is in fact well aware
of this: “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” (11).
Surely we must acknowledge that the cinema and its apparatuses such as the
camera are deeply engaged in this process of “emotional integration
with this machine age.” Yet Ghatak is skeptical of this kind of emotional
integration. This is why the director laughed when he saw L'Arrivée
d'un train à la Ciotat, describing it as “one machine
looking at the other” and why he finds Bimal such a curiosity. In Bimal,
we can envisage a loose metaphor for the quintessential filmmaker, defined
entirely by his or her relationship to a machine that is his or her livelihood.
Yet Ghatak resists offering Bimal as a portrait of himself because he refuses
to accept any attachment to the cinematic medium, indeed to any medium in
particular. He finds such attachment laughable, like many of Bimal's detractors.
He remains inquisitive about this phenomenon, however, drawing out the tension
in Ajantrik between, on the one hand, a climate that encourages emotional
attachment to machinery that constitutes livelihood, resulting in companionship,
and on the other, a climate of constant upgrade that encourages discarding
on a regular basis. Is Bimal an exemplary figure of the machine age or an
anachronism? The unresolved tension between these possibilities feeds much
of my own curiosity about this film.
Is it that Ghatak is uncomfortable with the kind of integration Bimal
embraces and that the cinema potentially manifests because he perceives
himself as a kind of universal artist hero, a Renaissance man in the shadow
of his much admired hero Tagore? It seems it could be Ghatak who is anachronistic
rather than his simple peasant folk and tribals. It is another interesting
confluence: Ghatak, an innovative filmmaker, breaking and creating all kinds
of cinematic rules and regulations, like Bimal, resisted the fashions of
his day to respond in a certain way to his means of livelihood. The parallel
between Ghatak and Bimal, then, lies not in their relationship to the machine
age but rather to a sense of being isolated by a personal vision that goes
against the grain. Further, both refugees of Partition, their sense of being
out of place is magnified as individuals whose vision of the world differs
strongly to many of those surrounding them.
Partitioning Realities
Ghatak was born on 4 November, 1925, at Jindabazar, Dhaka, the cultural
centre of East Bengal (now Bangladesh), which had become, by the beginning
of his filmmaking career, East Pakistan. At that time, Pakistan had a general
ban on all Indian films. As a consequence, for the majority of Ghatak's
filmmaking career, his films could not screen in his birth city. Ghatak
migrated to Calcutta in early youth, attending the M.A. class at Calcutta
University in 1948. His films are heavily influenced by his personal experience
of Partition.
In our boyhood we have seen a Bengal, whole and
glorious. […] Our dreams faded away. We crashed on our faces, clinging
to the crumbling Bengal, divested of all its glory. (12)
Before I encountered Ghatak's work, I knew plenty about Partition at the
moment of its birth on the other side of the country – the trains
full of corpses coming in and out of Lahore, the attacks made on old friends
and neighbours. With Ghatak, however, for the first time, I experienced
the mindset of the refugees of Partition, without statistics, and
also the particular experience of Bengal, about which I had heard little.
For the first time, I was brought most relentlessly into time and space
of those left homeless, crumbling on the faded outskirts of a nation, living
out a divided Bengal.
Ghatak's pupil, Kumar Shahani, explains the importance of Ghatak's approach
to Partition as a radical political expression:
The heroes and heroines of Ritwik's films, while
their energies are sapped by a society which can sustain no growth, have
inner resources that seem to assert themselves. […] He was extremely
disenchanted with those of his colleagues who wanted to maintain a false
unity and were not, implicitly, pained enough by the splintering of every
form of social and cultural values and movement. It is these factors that
make Ritwik's films a vitally generative force for the young. He does
not hide behind a medieval or a dead past or a decorative Indianess…Very
few of his contemporaries have avoided these pitfalls whether they work
in the cinema and the other arts, or in the theoretical and cultural
sphere. It is as if they were ashamed of being themselves, today, with
their true history. (13)
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Subarnarekha
|
This potent attitude to Partition distinguishes Ghatak's
work acutely from the films of those such as Satyajit Ray. The difference
between the two can be described in this way: “Instead of painstakingly
trying to build up a realistic space-time, he would try to develop a story
simultaneously on various levels, relying heavily on songs, melodrama and
coincidences” (14). Kaleidoscopic, relaxed, discursive,
Ghatak's uneven style manifests the deep tensions weighing from various
directions upon his characters and the trajectories of their lives. Meghey
Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star, 1960), Kormal Gandhar (The
Gandhar Sublime, 1961) and Subarnarekha (The Golden
Line, 1962) form a trilogy around the socio-economic implications of
Partition. Ghatak's own description of a moment in his film Subarnarekha
(which, like Komal Gandhar, was an absolute box officer
failure) set in a refugee colony, called Nabajeeban on the outskirts of
Calcutta in the 1950s, illustrates beautifully his cinematic manifestation
of Partition:
When the camera suddenly comes to a halt at the
dead end of a railway track, where the old road to East Bengal has been
snapped off, it raises (towards the close of the film) a searing scream
in Anasuya's heart. (15)
A Place in the Canon:
Ghatak versus Ray
Motivation for writing this profile arises partly from
a desire to overturn, realign and respond to Satyajit Ray's predominant
position within the discourse of Indian cinema. I am aghast when I come
across seemingly contradictory statements such as this one: “It all
goes to prove once again that Satyajit Ray is the exception who proves the
rule of Indian filmmaking” (16). Yet this statement
captures perfectly a common general attitude about Ray's place in Indian
filmmaking history. The tendency, both in and outside India, to valourise
the cinema of Ray as representative of everyday life in India or as representative
of Indian cinema in general, is problematic. As a consequence of this tendency,
other cinemas outside of the commercial mainstream that do not follow Ray's
distinctive model have had great difficulty registering their authenticity
or authority to the viewing public, both indigenous and foreign. Ghatak
is largely unknown outside India and outside certain Indian filmmaking circles,
despite being regarded by Satyajit Ray as one of the best Indian directors
of the twentieth century. This appears to be changing with increasing accessibility
to his work and a successful retrospective of his work held in New York
in 1997.
Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak were in fact clearly admirers of each other's
work. Praise from both sides can be found in print on a number of occasions.
Indeed Ray, a member of the Ritwik Memorial Trust, provided the foreword
to the published volume of Ghatak's writings on cinema in English, Cinema
and I, reprinted in Rows and Rows of Fences. He is full
of approval for Ghatak's work:
Ritwik was one of the few truly original talents
in the cinema this country has produced. […] As a creator of powerful
images in an epic style he was virtually unsurpassed in Indian cinema.
(17)
Likewise, in his Row and Rows of Fences, Ghatak's praise for
Ray is high: “Satyajit Ray, and only Satyajit Ray in India, in his
more inspired moments, can make us breathtakingly aware of truth, the individual,
private truth” (18). Ray's Pather Panchali (1955)
is lauded in Ghatak's essay on literary influence in Bengali cinema:
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 the two art forms was delineated.
(19)
In the essay “Recollections of Bengal and a Single Vision”, Shampa
Banerjee offers an interesting anecdote from Dopati Chakrabarty about the
relationship between the cinemas of Ray and Ghatak:
Satyajit Ray once said: Had Nagarik been released before
his Pather Panchali, Nagarik would have been accepted
as the first film of the alternative form of Bengali cinema. (20)
Nagarik (The Citizen), the first film Ghatak
ever made, was completed in 1953 but in fact released posthumously in 1977.
Pather Panchali was released in 1955. The central character of Nagarik,
Ramu, opens the film looking for a job in Calcutta, while his family struggles
to make ends meet. Incredibly, in a memorial lecture on Ghatak, given after
his death, Satyajit Ray had this to say:
Ritwik was a Bengali director in heart and soul, a Bengali artist
much more of a Bengali than myself. For me that is the last word about
him, and that is his most valuable and distinctive characteristic.
(21)
Given the incredible praise heaped upon Ghatak by Ray
at such times, it is a wonder his work was not more widely received with
open arms. Jacob Levich goes a little way to explaining in part the difference
in the reception of these two filmmakers during their lifetime.
Satyajit Ray is the suitable boy of Indian film, presentable, career-oriented,
and reliably tasteful. Ghatak, by contrast, is an undesirable guest: he
lacks respect, has "views", makes a mess, disdains decorum.
(22)
Indeed, Siddharth Tripathy puts it well: “if cinema were a religion…Ritwik
Ghatak was a rare catholic from out country.” (23)
But what's not to like about a rebel? Edgy, uncouth, insulting, an alcoholic,
Ghatak's films are always challenging. They never make one feel comfortable.
But why should they? My own response to this issue of Ghatak's status within
Indian cinema is merely to frame the competing views on his worth that exist
within the discourse of this cinema and its history. In order to account
for Ghatak's unpopularity with audiences during his lifetime, we must balance
Ray's praise for Ghatak's work with the attitudes of those who sought to
bring Ghatak into disrepute:
The knowledge that Komal Gandhar's box-office
potential was sabotaged by people who were once his friends, deeply hurt
Ghatak. It is to this day widely believed in Calcutta that the Communists
and Congress joined hands to finish him off. A large number of tickets
were bought by goons of both the parties who then disturbed the viewing
of the legitimate viewer by sobbing loudly during funny scenes and breaking
into uproarious laughter at the serious ones. The audience was alienated
and the viewer-ship fell dramatically after a promising run in the first
week. The film had to be withdrawn. He, being the co-producer, had to
share the burden of the financial loss. It broke him. His descent into
alcohol began soon after. (24)
Cinema's Scars
So it seems that the distress of Partition, ingrained in Ghatak's very ability
to perceive his surroundings, combined with an interest in extending the
artistic possibilities of the cinematic medium, crystallised into something
quite fascinating and unprecedented in Indian cinema, which was not well
appreciated by many of his peers. What makes it so fascinating for me is
not only a new outlook on the partitioning of India but, more importantly,
the consequences of this for the cinema as a medium. It is as if the very
frames and coordinates of his cinema regularly manifest the fracturing that
took place with Partition. Cinema itself, it seems, must bear the scars
of Partition as much as any individual or nation-state.
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Meghey
Dhaka Tara
|
A passing train cuts deafeningly across the background of a shot as Neeta
sits with Sanat by the river in Meghey Dhaka Tara, overpowering
the soundtrack entirely with its travelling wheels, piercing whistle and
screeching breaks so as to drown out their conversation, sabotaging the
spectator's ability to hear. The sound of the railway, unreasonably loud
given its position in the very background of the image, breaks open the
soundtrack as if a crack has formed and the train has surged through it.
At a later moment in Meghey Dhaka Tara, the camera positions
close up under Neeta's chin as the light shines on her glistening hair,
giving the impression that Neeta is looking upwards to the twinkling light
that reflects off her hair like stars. Suddenly a whip sounds repeatedly
on the soundtrack over Shankar and Neeta's singing, prompting her to sob
uncontrollably for the first time in the film, under the burden she carries
supporting her family and losing her own dreams. Here again, it is as if
the soundtrack pierces the image, breaking its beauty and breaking Neeta
too, breaking her down in fact. Meghey Dhaka Tara has an absolutely
revolutionary soundtrack, which at times reaches an incredible saturation
point. I felt, at times, as if the soundtrack would swell open or burst,
almost as song, spoken word, the sound of Neeta's dizziness, drums and her
tuberculosis-induced coughing rose to compete in the mix. Bhaskar Chandavarkar
gives an excellent account of Ghatak's experimental work on the soundtrack:
While mixing, he heard the whine of a projector
leaking in from the projection room. Obviously, the glass pane on the
projection room window was missing. A live track was also being fed into
the mixer from the studio. Ritwik heard the whine a while and then advised
the recordist to leave it that way. (25)
In a portrait of Bimal left waiting on a railway platform,
Ajantrik generates a framing that reminds me of a “dynamic construction”
(26): Bimal's head is cut off from his body while the
rest of the frame registers clear sky. The particular angle of framing in
this scene operates a kind of de-framing in the form of an abnormal point
of view. Bimal's floating head, framed with a piece of the sky, offers us
a slice of space, emphasising the quality of framing as cutting (27)
reminding us that the “closed system” of the frame “is never
absolutely closed” (28). Rather, the internal
composition of this unusually angled close-up denotes a Deleuzian “affective
framing”, carrying off with a scrap of the sky and forming between
it and the face, a “virtual conjunction” (29).
Bimal's face, extracted from its spatio-temporal coordinates, carries “its
own space-time” (30).
Here we must return to Kumar Shahani's comments about why Ghatak was such
a vital force for young independent filmmakers such as Shahani who have
since achieved significant influence and support for their important work.
As Shahani has explained, Ritwik Ghatak was “disenchanted with those
of his colleagues who wanted to maintain a false unity and were not, implicitly,
pained enough by the splintering of every form of social and cultural values
and movement.” What must be acknowledged is that Ghatak's recognition
and incorporation of this splintering into his work may have borne the cinema
some scars but this scarring, this splintering and fracturing of a false
unity in the cinema, generated significant new growth and development. Further,
recognising and embodying the truth of his own experience of Partition in
the cinema, forged connections that were profoundly true to the experience
of Indian people, rather than what Shahani describes as a “decorative
Indianess”. The Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema describes Ajantrik
as:
…a new investigation into film form, expanding
the refugee experience into a universalised leitmotiv of cultural dismemberment
and exile evoking an epic tradition drawing on tribal, folk and classical
forms (Buddhist sculpture, Baul music, the khayal). (31)
This statement is key to understanding Ghatak because it links the refugee
experience – the experience of exile – to folk and epic forms
which together expand into an investigation of film form. These are the
key elements of Ghatak's originality in the cinema – a potent mix.
The folding in of all of these aspects produces cinema true to Ghatak's
experience of India in a form that others have found incredibly productive,
as Shahani's comments illustrate.
Meta-Cinema
Ghatak had a philosophical attitude to cinema – his work asks the question
“What is Cinema?” Fleeting concurrence is the mainstay of Bimal's
encounters with other individuals in Ajantrik. An incredible yet
fleeting encounter occurs between a woman Bimal collects once deserted by
the “local Romeo” and her train arriving on the platform in front
of her. This encounter, well outside the central drive of Ajantrik,
has captured me completely. It deserves lengthy attention. A woman stares
straight ahead at the edge of the railway platform in close-up as a train
arrives at her station. Passing train carriages block the light and cast
a panel of shadow so that the area underneath her eyes becomes darker, as
if she is exhausted, harrowed, under-slept. The darkness under her eyes
disappears when panels of light, unblocked by the train, travel over her
face and again return with the passing shadows. The alternation of light
and shadow traces the movement of the train onto her face. The train slows
down as it pulls into the station, its pace measured by this movement of
shadow.
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Ajantrik
|
This woman's face in Ajantrik becomes a reflective
surface onto which the train's rhythm is traced, projected. The train's
locomotion is reconfigured, temporally, by this trace. Her face, through
the aspect of chiaroscuro, not only reflects the train but also refracts
it into an expressive series. What results is that the train's conquest
of space and time is turned off-course towards a quality that is outside
its coordinates. The optical effects rendered upon this moment render the
railway station and the woman, together, an “any-space-whatever”
(32), suspending their individuation to the creation
of affect, performing the quality of the railway, rather than its function
(33).
The abandoned woman in Ajantrik has been stripped
of her jewelry and status losing her distinctive adornments. It is the ordinary
blandness of her features, unadorned, that allow her face to operate as
screen for the projection of the shadow of the train. Yes, this moment of
conjunction between face as screen and train as projection is also a meta-cinematic
image. The ratio of light to dark projected onto her face is approximately
90% dark and 10% light – exactly the ratio of light travelling through
the film projector. The locomotion of the projector and the train merge
and these moving shadows become a form of dynamic framing – the frame
as dynamic micro-movement (34) – the frame
passing over a still face.
The affection-image is the close-up, and the close-up is the face.
[…] There is no close-up of the face, the face is in itself close-up,
the close-up is by itself face and both are affect, affection-image.
(35)
The railway, under Ghatak's incredible close-up of a face, becomes an affection-image.
This kind of transformative work Ghatak achieves in Ajantrik,
in which the railway becomes the projector and a human face becomes
a cinema screen, shifts machines so that the apparatuses of the cinema become
locatable inside the image. Meghey Dhaka Tara likewise performs incredible
transformations, this time between the river and Neeta, who is the “Cloud-Capped
Star” of the film's title. The relationship between the river and Neeta
begins as the running water of the river sparkles behind the title sequence
like exquisitely formed twinkling stars. Later on, the moonlight reflecting
off the river filters across Neeta's face in the darkness of her bedroom
suggest the passing clouds over the night sky and over her face. As Neeta's
situation worsens – with Sanat, her sweetheart, marrying her sister
Geeta – tiny particles of light stream through the thin gaps between
the bamboo strips woven to form the family hut, twinkling in a way that
recalls the river of the title sequence, as Shankar and Neeta sing together.
The camera closes in on Neeta's despairing face, the light source catching
her hair in the dark so that it becomes filled with sparkles. The stars
shift from their source in the river (we never see them in the sky) to surround
Neeta completely at her most desperate moments – her face clouded in
distress but shrouded by tiny twinkling, brilliant reflections.
Under
the Influence – You Are a Fence Yourselves
It seems that despite Ghatak's claim to have been drawn to the cinema by
the size of the audience he could reach, as Satyajit Ray has noted, “Ritwik
had the misfortune to be largely ignored by the Bengali film public in his
lifetime” (36). While Ghatak has been classified
as a “Great Director” by the likes of Satyajit Ray, he was not
placed in this category because of his popularity. With incredible moments
such as the one described above between an abandoned woman and an approaching
train, Ghatak's most unwavering influence was on other filmmakers. While
very few of Ghatak's films were influential at the box office during his
lifetime, his influence as a teacher at the FTII had a profound impact upon
the trajectory of Indian independent cinema. Ghatak was an influential lecturer
and vice principal at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII)
in Pune from 1966 to 1967. He says of this time:
The time I spent working at the Film Institute
in Pune was one of the happiest periods of my life. The young students
come there with a great deal of hope, and a large dose of mischief by
which I mean, "There's a new teacher, let's give him a bad time!"
I found myself right in their midst. I cannot describe the pleasure I
experienced winning over these young people and telling them that films
can be different. Another thing that pleased me a lot was that I helped
to mold many of them. My students are spread all over India. Some have
made a name for themselves, some haven't. Some have stood on their own
feet, some have been swept away. (37)
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Jukti
Takko Aar Gappo
|
The last film Ghatak completed was Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1974)
in which Ghatak played the lead role himself – an alcoholic intellectual
with various nervous conditions, a state for which he was notorious among
students. Much loved by students but suffering difference with the establishment,
he lasted at FTII for only a few years. Ghatak passed away on 6 February,
1976, at the early age of fifty, leaving many unfinished projects. Always
at odds with his requisite establishment, it seems, from IPTA to FTII, his
influence was more wide reaching than might be expected. Reading recently
Lalitha Gopalan's book on action genres in contemporary Indian cinema, Cinema
of Interruptions, I came across a reference to the influence
of a group of directors Ghatak is famed for fathering:
Consciously setting themselves apart from commercial
cinema, films by Adoor Gopalkrishnan, G. Aravindan, Mrinal Sen, Girish
Kasarvalli, Kumar Shahani, and Mani Kaul focused on social and political
antagonisms to narrate their tales of disappointment with the postcolonial
state while also conveying hopes for a different society. […] [T]heir
films drew the urban elite to cinemas and shaped film-viewing habits by
encouraging the audience to focus more intently on the screen. A substantial
number of commercial films made in the late 1980s borrowed from these
film making practices while continuing to improve on conventions of entertainment.
(38)
In line with this account, we could say that Ghatak's legacy has been a
kind of cinema that invites us “to focus more intently on the screen”.
I like this idea. Interestingly, it might suggest a mode of contemplation
asked of in front of great works of art, echoing Ghatak's own claims to
be an artist first and a filmmaker second. Certainly he has snubbed any
value in ”entertainment” as a filmmaking practice:
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 make films for them. I may be a failure. That is for
the people to judge. (39)
So Ghatak's cinema asks us to contemplate “deeply of the universe”
– to “focus more intently” rather than be “entertained”.
This requirement appears to have proved unyielding in his lifetime and perhaps,
still, for many of us today. So how can we access Ritwik Ghatak? How can
we begin to watch his cinema? We can make an effort to judge differently
if we can allow ourselves into to his particular cinematic rhythmic inflections.
To this end, I must canvas here my own encounter with what Gopalan has described
as Ghatak's ability to make us “focus more intently on the screen”.
There is a scene in Ajantrik in which two taxi drivers sit atop their
car bonnets and sing (to themselves, it seems) ”from their guts”
in deep and bellowing voices, the one trying to drown out the other, in
a contrapuntal cacophony. The whimsical singing of the two taxi drivers
opens up a momentary pause, a delay in the movement of the film.
Somehow, the camera frames this moment of vocal interweaving in Ajantrik
so that it waits upon the drivers. It is scenes such as this one that
have asked me to look and look again at Ghatak's cinema, to inquire repeatedly
into what Ghatak has achieved on the screen. I say that the camera
waits or lingers on these two taxi drivers, partly because it is me
who doesn't want this moment to end. It is me who holds onto this singing
so that it lingers in the images that follow, me that tries to squeeze out
the duration of this scene and stretch it from within, indulging.
We can acknowledge that the spectator can open up a film by the desire to
suspend and hold onto an image. Indeed, I must admit my own bias in writing
this profile towards Ajantrik, a film for which I hold so much affection
that it clouds my articulation of much of Ghatak's other work which is less
accessible to me. I too am a culprit of putting up a fence to Ghatak's experimentations.
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. […]
Filmmakers like us will be gratified if people just accept the fact that
we are fenced in. […] You are a fence yourselves, the most ominous,
perhaps. (40)
Examining the fences we put in place against Ghatak's ambitious work should
begin to open us up to this cinema. We too must bear his cinema's scars
if we are to learn from his vision.
© Megan Carrigy, October 2003
Endnotes:
- Satyajit Ray, Foreword to Cinema and I, Rows
and Rows of Fences: Ritwik Ghatak on Cinema, Calcutta, Seagull
Books, 2000.
- Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, The Encyclopedia
of Indian Cinema, London: BFI & Oxford Univ. Press, 1994 p. 96.
- Ghatak, “Film and I”, Rows and Rows of
Fences, p. 5.
- Ghatak, “Film and I”, p. 1.
- Ghatak, “Film and I”, p. 4.
- Ghatak, “Film and I”, p. 7.
- I thank Laleen Jayamanne for this anecdote, which
she received during discussions with Kumar Shahani. It was told to me
during the completion of my Honours thesis at the University of Sydney
in 2002.
- Ghatak, “Some Thoughts on Ajantrik”,
Rows and Rows of Fences, p. 39.
- Ghatak, “Some Thoughts on Ajantrik”,
p.40.
- Ghatak, “Some Thoughts on Ajantrik”,
p. 39.
- Ibid.
- Ghatak, “My Films”, Rows and Rows of
Fences, p. 49.
- Kumar Shahani quoted in Paul Willemen (ed.), Indian
Cinema, London, BFI Dossier No. 5, 1982, p. 41.
- See http://www.onmag.com/ritwik.htm
- Ghatak, “My Films”, p. 50.
- Monthly Film Bulletin Vol. 30 No. 355, August
1963. Cited in Rosie Thomas, “Indian Cinema – Pleasures and
Popularity – An Introduction”, Screen, 26 (3–4),
p. 118.
- Satyajit Ray, “Foreword”, Rows and Rows
of Fences, p.ix.
- Ghatak, “Film and I”, p. 5.
- Ghatak, “Bengali Cinema: Literary Influence”,
Rows and Rows of Fences, p. 26.
- Shampa Bannerjee, “Recollections of Bengal and
a Single Vision”, http://216.152.71.145/filmmakers/ghatak/ghatak.html
- Ibid.
- Jacob Levich on Ritwik Ghatak, http://216.152.71.145/filmmakers/ghatak/ghatak.html
- Siddharth Tripathy, “An epic in amnesia”,http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/feb23/at4.asp
- Partha Chatterjee, “In Memory of Ritwik Ghatak”,
http://www.biblio-india.com/articles/JA01_ar19.asp?mp=JA01
- Bhaskar Chandavarkar in Willemen, pp. 40–1.
- “[T]he physical or dynamic conception of the
frame produces imprecise sets which are now only divided into zones
or bands. The frame is no longer the object of geometric divisions but
of physical gradations.” Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement
Image, London, The Athlone Press, 1986 (first published in
France 1983), pp. 13–14.
- Deleuze, p. 18.
- “[W]hen we consider a framed image as a closed
system, we can say that one aspect prevails over the other, depending
on the nature of the 'thread'. The thicker the thread which links the
seen set to other unseen sets the better the out-of-field fulfils its
first function, which is adding space to space.” Deleuze, p. 17.
- “…a scrap of vision with which the face
is formed in power or quality”. See Deleuze, pp. 103–4 and
p. 107.
- “Although the close-up extracts the face (or
its equivalent) from all spatio-temporal co-ordinates, it can carry
with it its own space-time – a scrap of vision, sky, countryside
or background.” Deleuze, p. 108.
- Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, The Encyclopedia
of Indian Cinema, p. 96.
- Certainly, they have the primary condition Deleuze
stipulates for an 'any-space-whatever': “a space full of shadows,
or covered with shadows, becomes any-space-whatever.” Deleuze,
p. 111.
- Gilles Deleuze's comments about Bergman's Persona
prompted my own articulation of this scene: “The close-up has
merely pushed the face to those regions where the principle of individuation
ceases to hold sway. […] The close-up does not divide one individual,
any more than it reunites two: it suspends individuation.” Deleuze,
p. 100.
- “When a part of the body has had to sacrifice
most of its motoricity in order to become the support for organs of
reception, the principal feature of these will now only be tendencies
to movement or micro-movements which are capable of entering into intensive
series” Deleuze, p. 87.
- “[I]t is precisely in affection that the movement
ceases to be that of translation in order to become movement of expression,
that is to say quality, simple tendency moving up an immobile element.”
Deleuze, p. 66.
- Satyajit Ray, “Foreword”, Rows and Rows
of Fences, p.ix.
- Bannerjee, op cit.
- Lalitha Gopalan, Cinema of Interruptions: Action
Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema, London, BFI, 2002,
p. 6.
- Ghatak, “My Coming into Cinema”, Rows
and Rows of Fences, p. 1.
- Ghatak, “Rows and Rows of Fences”, Rows
and Rows of Fences, pp. 44–7.
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Ritwik
Ghatak (right)
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Filmography
All films are in the
Bengali language and are black and white unless otherwise stated.
Feature Films:
Nagarik (The Citizen) (1953) released posthumously
on 20 September, 1977
Ajantrik (Pathetic Fallacy or The Unmechanical)
(1957–8)
Bari Thekey Paliye (Running Away From Home) (1959)
Meghey Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star) (1960)
Komal Gandhar (The Gandhar Sublime or E-Flat)
(1961)
Subarnarekha (The Golden Line) (1962)
Titas Ekti Nadir Naam (A River Named Titus) (1973)
Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (Arguments and a Story
or Reason, Debate and a Tale) (1974) released posthumously
on 30 September, 1977
Documentaries:
Adivasiyon Ka Jeevan Srot (The Life of the Adivasis)
(1955) in Hindi, commissioned by the Government of Bihar
Bihar Ke Darshaniya Sthan (Places of Historic Interest
in Bihar) (1955) in Hindi, commissioned by the Government of Bihar
Scientists of Tomorrow (1967)
Yey Kyon (Why or The Question) (1970
) in Hindi
Amar Lenin (My Lenin) (1970)
Puruliar Chhau (The Chhau Dance of Purulia) (1970)
Short Films:
Fear (1965) in Hindi
Rendezvous (Rajendra Nath Shukla, 1965) in Hindi; diploma
film made under Ghatak's supervision
Civil Defence (1965) at Film & Television Institute of India,
Pune
Durbar Gati Padma (The Turbulent Padma) (1971)
Unfinished Projects:
Features:
Arupkatha/Bedeni (1950–3)
Kato Ajanare (All the Unknown) (1959)
Bagalar Bangadashan (Bagala's Discovery of Bengal)
(1964)
Ranger Golam (The Knave of the Trump) (1968)
Documentaries:
Ustad Alauddin Khan (1963) documentary about the musician
Indira Gandhi (1972)
Ramkinkar: A Personality Study (1975) colour
A note on obtaining these films:
Ritwik Ghatak's films are difficult to locate so I've included a few directions
here. Ghatak's early feature, Ajantrik, is available in the Australian
Film, Television and Radio School library for borrowing in Sydney. Nagarik,
Meghey Dhaka Tara, Komal Gandhar and Titas Ekti Nadir
Naam are available through the National
Film and Video Lending Service at ACMI in Melbourne.
Meghey Dhaka Tara and Titas Ekti Nadir Naam are available for
purchase at the British
Film Institute website. Several other of his feature films are
available at the British Film Institute for lending. Otherwise, more films
may be found in the archives of the Film and Television Institute of India
in Pune. FTII may also be able to give directions on how to contact the
Ritwik Memorial Trust.
Bibliography
Books
on Ritwik Ghatak:
IN BENGALI
Jyotirmoy Basu Roy, Ritwik Ghataker Chhabi (The Films of
Ritwik Ghatak), Calcutta, Rashbehari Book House, 1974.
Surama Ghatak, Ritwik, Calcutta, Asha Prakashani; Anustup,
1977; 1995.
Surama Ghatak, Ritwik: Padma Thekey Titas (Ritwik: Padma to
Titas: a biographical documentation), Calcutta, Anustup, 1995.
Rajat Roy (ed.), Ritwik O Taar Chhabi (Ritwik and his Films,
vol. 1), Calcutta, Sampratik, 1979.
IN ENGLISH
Haimanti Banerjee, Ritwik Kumar Ghatak, Pune, National Film
Archives of India, 1985.
Shampa Banerjee (ed.), Ritwik Ghatak, New Dehli, Directorate
of Film Festivals of India, 1981.
Sibaditya Dasgupta and Sandipan Bhattacharya (eds), Ritwik Ghatak:
Face to Face: Conversations with the Master 1962–1977,
trans. Chilka Ghosh, Kolkata, Cine Central, 2003.
Ashish Rajadhyaksha, A Return to the Epic, Mumbai, Screen
Unit, 1982.
Books by Ritwik Ghatak:
IN BENGALI
Dalil (The Document) [a play], Calcutta, Gananatya New
Masses Publications, 1952.
Jwala (Rage) [a play], Calcutta, Jatiya Sahitya Parisad,
1965.
Ritwik Ghataker Galpo [a collection of stories by Ritwik Ghatak],
Calcutta, Ritwik Memorial Trust, 1987.
Meghey Dhaka Tara [the reconstructed film script], Calcutta,
Ritwik Memorial Trust, 1999.
IN ENGLISH
Cinema and I, Calcutta, Ritwik Memorial Trust, 1987.
Rows and Rows of Fences, Calcutta, Seagull Books, 2000.
[Includes all material from Cinema and I, now out of print.]
On the Cultural Front, Calcutta, Ritwik Memorial Trust,
1996.
Relevant Books on Indian Cinema:
Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen (eds), Encyclopedia of Indian
Cinema, London, BFI & Oxford University Press, 1994.
Paul Willemen and Behroze Gandhy, Indian Cinema, London, BFI Dossier
No. 5, 1982.
Web
Resources
For
Purchasing:
The British Film Institute
The best place to find Ghatak's films. You can order The Cloud-Capped
Star or A River Named Titus on DVD or VHS. At the BFI collections
and catalogues index, click on 'Ethnic Notions' and look under the category
'South Asian Films' for access to the Ghatak's films available for lending.
They include the titles available for purchase as well as E-Flat
(Komal Gandhar); Subarnarekha; Jukti Takko Aar
Gappo (Reason, Argument and Story).
Vedams
On this website of the Indian bookhouse, you can order Rows and Rows
of Fences: Ritwik Ghatak on Cinema and Ritwik Ghatak: Face to Face:
Conversations with the Master 1962–1977.
Short essays:
On Mag
Provides a detailed filmography of Ghatak's work and some biographical
details.
Recollections
of Bengal and a Single Vision
By Shampa Bannerjee. There is a link to another article on Ghatak by Jacob
Levich.
Sensibilities
of Bengal: Ritwik Ghatak Revisited in this Millenium
By Dr Arup Ratan Ghosh.
Ritwik
Ghatak…An Epic in Amnesia
By Siddharth Tripathy. From the Deccan Herald, Sunday Herald, February
23, 2003.
Instruments
of Analysis
By Parg Amladi.
In
Memory of Ritwik Ghatak
A review of Rows and Rows of Fences by Partha Chatterjee. To access
this review you need to make a request via the feedback page.
Bengali
Cinema: Ritwik Ghatak
Beautiful stills. Not much text but what text is available can be viewed
either in English or Bengali.
Reviews:
Ritwik
Ghatak
Review of The Cloud-Capped Star by Acquarello on the 'Strictly
Film School' website.
Meghey
Dhaka Tara
Another review of The Cloud-Capped Star on upperstall.com, a website
devoted to Indian cinema. Links to a review of Subaranarekha and
biographical details on Ghatak.
The
Cloud-Capped Star
Review of The Cloud-Capped Star by Travis Hoover.
India
x 2
A review of Ghatak's Ajantrik together with Satyajit Ray's The
Music Room by Donato Totaro.
Indian Cinema (general):
Bengal on the
Net
Information on Ghatak can be found here among general popular information
about Bengal.
Bibliography
A useful bibliography of books on Indian cinema.
A Tribute to the Bengali Film Industry
Partition
Through a Woman's Eye
By Ranjita Biswas.
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