Kolkata, July 5 (Representative) Auteur Tarun Majumdar was a storyteller par excellence, who switched effortlessly between commercial and art-house cinema, sensitively portraying human relationships and the lives of the Bengali middle and lower-middle classes in both urban and rural backdrops. Majumdar, the son of a freedom fighter, cut his teeth in cinema as a publicity designer for several Bengali films, earning praise from the likes of Debaki Bose and Kanan Devi in the early 1950s, before moving on to direct movies towards the end of the decade. It was a time of great churning in Bengali, as well as Indian cinema, with the trinity of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen setting out to introduce the cine-buffs to new metaphors and idioms of film making which was unimaginable in the national context even a few years back. Notwithstanding being contemporaries of the three leviathan directors, Majumdar and Tapan Sinha walked the middle road, making films for a larger audience without compromising aesthetics and good taste.
Once in an interview with Doordarshan, Majumdar spelled out his philosophy of filmmaking. “A film should be such that when the viewer leaves the theatre he becomes a better human being and feels life – and the world – is still worth living,” he said. Majumdar, who always called himself a “Leftist at heart”, and lapped up Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and Vladimir Lenin’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Back during his college days, always strove to relate to the masses. Thus in several of his blockbusters like Shriman Prithviraj (1973), Fuleswari (1974), Dadar Kirti (1980) as also in critically acclaimed creations including Palatak (1963), Nimantran (1971), and Sansar Simante (1975) the main protagonists are people with “imperfections”, and not the usual “perfect” band of heroes and heroines possessing every quality under the earth. “But in spite of having imperfections, they were real winners in other areas of life. I thought this would help us in relating to the masses, who have their own imperfections,” he said. Born on January 8, 1931, in Bagura (now in Bangladesh), Majumdar made his filmmaking debut as a member of the directorial team Yatrik – that also included Sachin Mukherji and Dilip Mukherji – with the 1959 Bengali movie Chaowa Pawa which had Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen in the lead roles. In 1962, the troika came up with Kancher Swarga, which won the national award as the best feature film in Bengali.
After directing two more films, including the classic Palatak, with Team Yatrik, Majumdar decided to go solo, and never had to look back, in the process etching his name in the history of Bengali cinema with his soulful representation of the culture and society of the linguistic community. Majumdar, a voracious reader, felt writers had a better insight into life, people and nature – the three ingredients which a filmmaker needs to understand to make enriching stuff and draw the masses. Thus many of his celluloid ventures were successful recreations of Bengali literary classics penned by eminent writers like Bimal Kar, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and Tarashankar Banydopadhyay. They got both flourishing box offices and praise from the discerning cine-goers. Another salient feature of Majumdar’s films is the apt selection and aesthetic picturisation of songs, particularly Rabindra Sangeet, which are popular even to this day. “Sakhi Bhabona Kahare bole” (Shriman Prithviraj) and “Charana dharite dio go amare” (Dadar Kirti) are rated among the best on-screen presentations of Rabindranath Tagore’s songs, evoking emotions completely in sync with the flow of the story and the state of mind of the principal characters. “Tagore’s words and compositions are unrivalled in the genre of music.
His songs portray every emotion and vagary of nature. When I have such a goldmine before me, why do I need to look elsewhere? He would say time and again, and decreed that post-death, he should be draped in the red flag with a copy of Tagore’s Noble winning anthology of songs “Geetanjali” placed close to his heart. Throughout his career, Majumdar delved into multiple film genres including thrillers, drama and romantic comedy, and left his mark in each of them, with his mastery of storytelling. The daily life, moments of happiness and struggles of the middle and lower-middle classes featured in his creations, as did the collapse of socio-economic structures in rural Bengal in the British era (Ganadevata) and the romance of wanderlust (Palatak). He also came up with a docu-feature on the issue of aforestation Aranya Aamar in 1984. Ganadevata, Palatak and Aranya Aamar – all bagged national awards.
But it was in his dissection of human relationships, particularly the varied expressions and pulls and pressures of love, that Majumdar’s genius lay. It is not for nothing that romantic comedies like Balika Badhu, Shriman Prithviraj, Dadar Kirti” and Bhalobasa Bhalobasa and romantic dramas like Fuleswari”, “Nimantran” (national award as best Bengali feature film in 1972) and “Apan Amar Apan” have still retained their popular charm, though critically the last one could be called a notch below the others. Majumdar picked up five national awards, and was given India’s fourth-highest civilian honour Padma Shri in 1990, besides winning five Filmfare East awards. He also remade two of his hit films (Balika Badhu, 1976) and Rahgir (1969, adapted from Palatak) in Hindi, but with limited success. Majumdar married celebrated actress Sandhya Roy, who played vital roles in 20 of his films. The couple, however, separated later He also introduced Moushumi Chatterjee, Mahua Roychoudhury, Ayan Banerjee and Tapas Paul to the silver screen. To his last, he retained an abiding faith in Marxism. Befittingly, his swansong was a docu-feature Adhikaar (2018) that brought out the struggles of the teeming millions working in the country’s unorganised sector in pitiable conditions.