{"id":60,"date":"2013-11-04T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/4th-november-1925-ritwik-ghatak-indian-scriptwriter-and-director-was-born\/"},"modified":"2013-11-04T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-04T10:00:00","slug":"4th-november-1925-ritwik-ghatak-indian-scriptwriter-and-director-was-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/4th-november-1925-ritwik-ghatak-indian-scriptwriter-and-director-was-born","title":{"rendered":"4th November 1925: Ritwik Ghatak, Indian scriptwriter and director, was born"},"content":{"rendered":"

Born on November 4, 1925, the Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak got limited recognition in his lifetime, but was hailed as one of the great Indian filmmakers after his death.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was born at Dhaka in East Bengal, which was then a part of India, but in his lifetime became East Pakistan and, then, Bangladesh. Like millions of others, Ghatak too was forced to move to West Bengal in the 1940s, but the trauma of displacement never left him, and Partition and exile occur as recurrent motifs in his films. He was also immersed in Indian culture and theatre, and the cult of the \u2018Mother figure\u2019, in particular, was another significant marker of his films.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ghatak would poetically describe his beloved East Bengal where he spent his childhood: \u201cMy days were spent on the banks of the Padma \u2014 the days of an unruly and wild child. The people on the passenger boats looked like dwellers of some distant planet\u2026In the drizzling rain a joyful tune would float in the village air, pulling at one\u2019s heart-strings with the sudden gusts of wind.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Starting his creative career as a playwright, Ghatak wrote his first play Kalo sayar<\/em> (The Dark Lake) in 1948. He joined the Indian People\u2019s Theatre Association in 1951. He was both actor and assistant director in the 1950 film \u2018Chinnamul\u2019. In 1952, he completed his first feature film, \u2018Nagarik\u2019 (The Citizen), but it was not released in a theatre until much later. \u2018Nagarik\u2019 reflects the pain of Partition through the travails of a family living in Calcutta (now Kolkata) that yearns for a return to the joyful past in East Bengal that has gone for ever. In its themes and concerns, \u2018Nagarik\u2019 foreshadows much of Ghatak\u2019s later work. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Nagarik\u2019 also reflected Ghatak\u2019s unique sensibility when it came to cinematic sound. \u201cAnother innovation of Ghatak which he used in Nagarik and which became a characteristic of his later style was the device of using deep focus to place his characters firmly in their social environment,\u201d theatreperson and activist Safdar Hashmi wrote later.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Ajantrik\u2019 (Pathetic Fallacy), his 1958 film, was a remarkable accomplishment for its time, given it is the story of a man\u2019s feelings for his car, which is almost shown as a living being. The New York Times<\/em> has called it \u201ca laugh-out-loud comedy of naive anthropopathism [but] also an allegory of India\u2019s stumbling emergence into the industrial age\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of the eight full-length features he directed, \u2018Meghe Dhaka Tara\u2019 (The Cloud-Capped Star) and \u2018Subarnarekha\u2019 (Golden Lining) are his greatest works. \u201c[The] deep concern with archetypes informs the main body of [Ghatak\u2019s] work,\u201d film scholar Ira Bhaskar wrote. \u201cOrchestrated repeatedly in all his films, the concern is best integrated in Meghe Dhaka Tara.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Subarnarekha\u2019 is the story of Isvar who is forced by circumstances to go to Calcutta to look for work and brings along his sister Sita and a young boy, Abirham. Isvar finds work at a mill near Subarnarekha River. He raises the two children there. But Sita and Abirham eventually marry, and their links with Isvar are broken. When Abirham dies, Sita is forced into prostitution. Isvar realises this under disturbing circumstances.<\/span><\/p>\n

About \u2018Subarnarekha\u2019, Bhaskar wrote: \u201cSubarnarekha is and will remain a fearless critique of modern civilization, and yet its meaning emerges only through a consideration of its cultural significations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1966, Ghatak moved to Pune where for a year he taught at the newly-opened Film and Television Institute of India. Among his students were the filmmakers Mani Kaul, John Abraham, and Kumar Shahani.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Ghatak made two more films, in the 1970s, \u2018Titash Ekti Nadir Naam\u2019 (A River Called Titas), and \u2018Jukti Takko Aar Gappo\u2019 (Reason, Debate And Story), himself acting in the latter. But by this time he was heavily drinking and his health was steadily worsening. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ghatak\u2019s work began to find a global audience more than a decade after his death in 1976. A critics\u2019 poll conducted by the film magazine Cinemaya<\/em> ranked \u2018Subarnarekha\u2019 No. 11. in all-time great films.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

His fellow Bengali filmmaker, the great Satyajit Ray, had this to say of Ghatak: \u201cHe was one of the few truly original talents in the cinema this country has produced. Nearly all his films are marked by an intensity of feeling coupled with imaginative grasp of the technique of film-making. As a creator of powerful images in an epic style he was virtually unsurpassed in Indian cinema\u2026For him Hollywood might not have existed at all. The occasional echo of classical Soviet cinema is there, but this doesn\u2019t prevent him from being in a class by himself.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ghatak once said in an interview that art was not a trivial thing. \u201cThe primary objective of making films is to do good to mankind,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you do not do good to humanity, no art is a true work of art.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In his own way he remained true to his words.<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Also on this day:<\/span><\/p>\n

1845 \u2014 Vasudeo Phadke, Indian revolutionary who fought against the British, was born\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

1971 \u2014 Tabu, Indian film actress, was born<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Born on November 4, 1925, the Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak got limited recognition in his lifetime, but was hailed as one of the great Indian filmmakers after his death. He was born at Dhaka in East Bengal, which was then a part of India, but in his lifetime became East Pakistan and, then, Bangladesh. Like millions of others, Ghatak too… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n4th November 1925: Ritwik Ghatak, Indian scriptwriter and director, was born -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"- 4th November 1925: Ritwik Ghatak, Indian scriptwriter and director, was born\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/4th-november-1925-ritwik-ghatak-indian-scriptwriter-and-director-was-born\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"4th November 1925: Ritwik Ghatak, Indian scriptwriter and director, was born -\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"- 4th November 1925: Ritwik Ghatak, Indian scriptwriter and director, was born\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/4th-november-1925-ritwik-ghatak-indian-scriptwriter-and-director-was-born\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"What Happened on This Day in History - 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