Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak made a trinity of filmmakers whose achievements in the 1950s-70s largely overshadowed those of a quartet whose body of work is no less significant: Asit Sen, Ajoy Kar, Tarun Majumdar and Tapan Sinha. Of these, the films of Tapan Sinha have still managed to travel internationally. The rest have unfortunately languished in the absence of proper studies and analyses being made of their oeuvre which occupies a special place in Bengali cinema. It’s probably this essential ‘Bengaliness’, this rootedness in a specific culture, language and ethos that came in the way of any serious study being made about their cinema. Of these, Tarun Majumdar, who passed away this morning (July 4), was without a doubt a stalwart, one of the most successful filmmakers in Bengal, whose work negotiated the changing tastes of film audiences over three decades.

Tarun Majumdar’s earliest brush with cinema came, first, as an apprentice with Rupasri Studio during the making of Ardhendu Mukherjee’s Sanket (1951), and then with Anushilan Agency, an outfit that handled the publicity for Bengali films. His remarkable design for Debaki Bose’s Pathik (1953) caught the eye of the legendary director who refused to deal with anyone else for the rest of the campaign.

Srimati Pictures to Yatri; Rajlakshmi O Srikanta to Chawa Paoa

It was while working on the publicity design for Srimati Pictures’ Naba Bidhan that Tarun Majumdar came in contact with Kanan Devi who owned the banner. Impressed with his work, the first female superstar of Indian cinema offered the young man work at Srimati Pictures. This was where Majumdar cut his teeth in cinema, working with luminaries like Birendranath Sarkar, K.L. Saigal, Gyan Prakash Ghosh and Kamal Dasgupta.

This is also where he forged a relationship with two other young men, Dilip Mukherjee and Sachin Mukherjee, particularly during the making of the Uttam Kumar-Suchitra Sen starrer Rajlakshmi O Srikanta (1958), that would shape his journey.

Inspired by the example of Agradoot – film professionals who worked on and signed off a film as a collective, a phenomenon probably unique to Bengali cinema, and whose works include venerated classics like Agni Pariksha, Shobar Opore, Pathe Holo Deri, Nayika Sangbad, Chhadmabeshi – Tarun Majumdar, Dilip Mukherjee and Sachin Mukherjee formed their own group. They called it Yatrik.

The first film that Yatrik made was Chawa Paoa (1959), a loose adaptation of Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night, starring Uttam and Suchitra, who had during the making of Rajlakshmi O Srikanta promised to work with Majumdar on his first film. It was with Kancher Swarga (1962) that Majumdar found his metier as filmmaker, the moral and ethical aspects to the protagonist inspiring him to write the script himself. Though credited to Yatrik, Majumdar’s later films make it clear that Kancher Swarga was very much Tarun Majumdar’s work.

Palatak and the V. Shantaram connect

Among Yatrik’s most remarkable work is Palatak (1963), which was also their last collaborative effort. Mourning his father’s death at the time, Majumdar came across a collection of stories by Manoj Basu and was particularly moved by one of the stories, ‘Angti Chattujjer Bhai’, about a quintessential drifter, a vagabond – a character type that keeps recurring in Tarun Majumdar’s films. Realising that a conventional ‘hero’ like Uttam Kumar won’t work for the role, he zeroed in on Anup Kumar. However, no producer in Bengal wanted to have anything to do with the film. For one, Anup Kumar was known more as a comedian. And two, the film was envisioned as a tragedy.

It was at this stage that a series of epiphanies led to none other than V. Shantaram and his production house, Rajkamal Kalamandir, deciding to produce the film. Shantaram was fascinated with the script and backed the director’s vision in casting a comedian in the lead. Palatak made a star of Anup Kumar, and its music, scored by Hemanta Kumar, became a milestone in Bengali cinema, with ‘Jibanpurer pathik re bhai’, the typical drifter’s song, popular even today. Though he had more or less worked single-handedly and Shantaram wanted him to be named director, Majumdar credited the film to Yatrik. The film was remade as Rahgir in Hindi, with Gulzar writing the lyrics and Biswajit replacing Anup Kumar.

Alor Pipasa to Bhalobasha Bhalobasha; Balika Badhu to Dadar Kirti

Majumdar’s first independent film as a director was Alor Pipasa (1965), based on a novel by Banaphul. His other major works include Balika Badhu (1967; remade in Hindi in 1976, and immortalised by R.D. Burman’s composition ‘Bade achhe lagte hain’), Sriman Prithwiraj (1973), Thagini (1974), Sansar Simante (1975), Ganadevata (1978), Dadar Kirti (1980) and Bhalobasha Bhalobasha (1985). The variety of themes these films address stands testimony to Majumdar’s credentials as a filmmaker, and could also probably be a reason why he escaped the tag of an ‘auteur’. It was impossible to bracket him.

Soumitra Chatterjee included Sansar Simante in a list of his top 20 roles

The essentially romantic coming-of-age dramas Balika Badhu and Sriman Prithwiraj offer a strong contrast to the social critique of Sansar Simante (which Soumitra Chatterjee included in a list of his top 20 roles). While Thagini is a mainstream suspense drama (boasting one of Sandhya Roy’s, the director’s wife, most celebrated roles), Ganadevata, based on Tarashankar Bandopadhyay’s epic novel of the same name, is a socio-economic-political tract set in 1920s rural Bengal. The commercial and critical success of Dadar Kirti and Bhalobasha Bhalobasha not only redefined the romantic comedy as a genre in Bengali cinema but also gave the moribund industry of the era something to cheer about.

He who introduced new faces: Moushumi to Mahua to Tapas

One of Majumdar’s great contributions lies in the new faces he introduced in his films. While Anup Kumar got a new lease as a serious actor with Palatak, the director brought to light talents like Moushumi Chatterjee (Balika Badhu), Mahua Roychoudhury and Ayan Bandyopadhyay (Sriman Prithwiraj) and Tapas Paul (Dadar Kirti). Moushumi Chatterjee went on to become a major star in Hindi cinema of the 1970s, starring opposite some of its biggest names. Mahua Roychoudhury became somewhat of a legend before her life was cut short following an accident when she was only 26, but not before she was being spoken of in the same breath as Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi! Tapas Paul was the face of the Bengali industry in the 1980s, its biggest star, who acted in some of the most popular films of a forgettable decade.

It says something about a filmmaker born in 1931, coming into his own in the 1960s, making some of the most politically and socially relevant films of the 1970s, that even in the 1980s he could capture the era’s youthful zeitgeist with two of his most popular films – both young-at-heart romantic ventures. He is the recipient of four National Awards, five Filmfare Awards, seven BFJA Awards, apart from receiving the Padma Shri in 1990.

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Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri is a film and music buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer. Books commissioned and edited by him have won the National Award for Best Book on Cinema twice and the inaugural MAMI Award for Best Writing on Cinema