Tapan Sinha: A Centenary Tribute

Sinha’s films sustain socio-political implications that cross man-made barriers of time, space, language, people and culture.
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Tapan Sinha, 100 this year, was the quintessential Bengali filmmaker in spirit and worldview. In a long and prolific career spanning almost five decades, Sinha’s works have been varied in quality and genres but like a true auteur, his style and aesthetics remained constant. A story-teller par excellence, his films were well-crafted in terms of structure and technique, but seldom did they exhibit cinematic adventure and experimentation.

Tapan Sinha, the visionary storyteller whose stories resonated with the masses

Born in Kolkata on 2nd October 1924, Tapan was the fifth child of Tridibesh and Pramila Sinha. He did his schooling in the small towns of Bhagalpur and Bankura. Sinha remembers in his memoirs Mone Pore that in Bhagalpur he had seen A Tale of Two Cities – a Hollywood film starring Ronald Coleman – and the film perhaps was “sub-consciously responsible for him becoming a filmmaker”. In 1961, Sinha was to pay homage to Ronald Coleman in Jhinder Bandi – a lavish historical melodrama about palace intrigue – which was based on one of Coleman’s major hits The Prisoner of Zenda.

He also made a casting coup of sorts by bringing together Uttam Kumar and Soumitra Chatterjee for the first time and extracting a fine performance from Soumitra Chatterjee as the charismatic villain. 

While doing his Masters in Physics at the Calcutta University during 1943-46, the movie-bug bit him and he regularly saw the works of John Ford, Carol Reed, Billy Wilder and Frank Capra. Completing his masters in 1946, Sinha joined the New Theatres Studios as a trainee assistant sound-engineer. A couple of years later, he joined Calcutta Movietone Studios where Mrinal Sen too worked in the sound department.

In 1950, he got an opportunity to work at the Pinewood Studios, London and joined the unit of director Charles Creighton, who was shooting The Hunted at that time. After a two-year stint in London working and watching films of Fellini, De Sica, Rossellini and others Sinha returned to Kolkata ready to make his own films.

Tapan Sinha was one of the most soft-spoken, erudite and low-profile gentlemen one has had the good fortune to meet in the film industry.

He was modest to a fault and was ever open to interviews in spite of his indifferent health towards the end of his days. Tapan Sinha stepped into New Theatres as a sound engineer from 1945 to 1949. He observed Nitin Bose and Bimal Roy at work and then did the sound independently for Satyen Bose’s Parivartan in 1949. The film was a big hit.

In 1950, he was invited to attend the London Film Festival. On reaching London, he contacted Cry Hearsth, Manager of Pinewood Studios. Through his help, he managed to obtain his first assignment. He got to work in director Charles Cryton‘s unit as a Sound Engineer. Cryton, who made some British comedies like Lavender Hill Mob etc. was then working for a film called The Hunted. He stayed on in London because Pinewood Studios invited him to spend a few months and watch them at work.

Sinha was a man who made a career out of observing the true human nature and replicating it in his films

Ankush (1954), Tapan Sinha’s debut film based on the novel Sainik by Narayan Ganguly with Anubha, Abhi Bhattacharya, Johor Roy and Manju De in the leading roles had an elephant named Nilbahadur as its central character. The film though a flop gave him the opportunity to make his next film Upahar. Sadly, there is not a single print available of Sainik today. Tonsil (1956) – the debut of Madhabi Mukherjee (she used her real name Madhuri in this film) –a comedy film was another modest success.

It was with his fourth film, the all-time favourite Kabuliwala (1956), that Tapan Sinha’s credentials as a film-director were firmly established. This film, based on a famous short story by Rabindranath Tagore, was about a golden-hearted Afghan dry-fruits merchant and money lender who develops a tender friendship with a little Bengali girl Minnie. Chhabi Biswas gave a stellar performance in the title role. The film was screened at the Berlin Film Festival of 1957 received critical acclaim and also won an award for its music at the festival.

A still from ‘Kabuliwala’ featuring Chhabi Biswas in the title role and Oindrila Tagore as Minnie

In 2008, Tapan Sinha was bestowed two awards– the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the Dada Saheb Phalke Award at the National Awards for 2006 awarded in 2008.  Cine Central, the oldest and most active film society in West Bengal, had organized a bouquet of films by Tapan Sinha to celebrate the two awards in 2008. The films screened were – Upahaar (1955), Kabuliwalla (1957), Louha Kapat (1958), Khaniker Atithi (1959), Kshudita Pashan (1960), Jhinder Bondi (1961), Nirjan Saikate (1963), Jatugriha (1964), Hatey Bazarey (1967), Sagina Mahato (1970), Harmonium (1976), Banchharamer Bagan (1980), Adalat O Ekti Meye (1982) and Wheelchair (1994.)

Among the lesser-known films in this bouquet were Upahaar, Louha Kapat, Khaniker Aitithi, Nirjan Saikate and Harmonium. Upahaar was a big budget multi–starrer with Uttam Kumar, Sabitri Chatterjee, Manju De playing the major roles. The film revolving around a pathological miser was a reasonable success. Louha Kapat (The Iron Door) has an interesting history.

It was the first novel penned by a person who worked all his life as a jailor and jail superintendent and based his novels on his personal encounters with prisoners. His pen name was Jarasandha who became an overnight celebrity after his first novel. He later extended the first novel to four parts over his years as novelist. But Sinha based his film only on the first part. The film offers a sympathetic insight into the lives of hardened criminals and the relationships that evolve between them and the jailor.

Also Read: An Ode to Manoj Mitra’s Theatrical Brilliance

Khaniker Atithi is a moving tale of a young widow who visits a doctor with her sick son in search of treatment. She finds that the doctor is the man she was once in love with but could not marry. The fine tightrope walks between a former lover and a sick son, the doctor’s anxiety to give the woman he once loved with new hope to latch on to by curing her son, was a fine play of emotions subtly expressed through the two main actors, Ruma Guha Thakurta and Nirmal Kumar. Nirjan Saikate, based on a novella by Samaresh Bose, has a poetic resonance structured into this strange love story of a young widow and the wandering author.

The finer nuances of the effect of environment on the psychological and emotional mindsets of five widows who come to a pilgrimage to Puri are more telling that the social statement the film makes on widow remarriage.

Sharmila Tagore played the female lead opposite Anil Chatterjee.

From Kabuliwalla to Hatey Bazare, Sinha drew his sources from Bengali literature, largely remaining loyal to the littérateur’s original work.

Haatey Bazaare based on a novel by Bonophool, part autobiography and part fiction, featured Ashok Kumar and Vyjayantimala in a relationship that defies any preconceived definition of the man-woman relationship. The film is said to be one of Sinha’s most accomplished works. Kabuliwala is the first of Sinha’s three films – Khudita Pashan (1960) and Atithi (1965) being the other two – based on short stories of Rabindranath Tagore. Kshudita Pashan, the story of a decadent sultan as experienced by a traveller (played by Soumitra Chatterjee) who is trapped within the confines of the haunted palace on a rain-lashed night. Two of his outstanding films not based on Tagore’s work are Jotugriha and Atanka.

Most of Tapan Sinha’s films were commercially successful but it is Banchcharamer Bagan that takes the cake. Adapted from a very successful play by Manoj Mitra, is a hilarious social satire about a marginal farmer who outwits three generations of a landlord family and even defies death just to save his beautiful garden. It is also the story of the struggle of a single individual that forms a microcosm of class struggle of the powerless fighting with power, to triumph by sheer wit, common sense logic and hope. It draws a packed house on every re-release.

A still from ‘Banchharamer Bgan’

Adalat O Ekti Meye, starring Tanuja and Wheelchair with Soumitra Chatterjee in a complex role, was triggered by true incidents that appeared as news reports. Urmila, a young teacher on a holiday, is raped by a gang of wealthy young men in the seawaters of Digha. It is a moving story of a woman seeking justice from the patriarchal judicial system. But the sentencing of her rapists does not stop the society from shunning her. It could have been a strong feminist statement, but the strength fades away when she seeks emotional and social escape in the children in her school.

Wheelchair was inspired by the life and triumph of a doctor who practices from his wheelchair and runs his own nursing home to help physically, psychologically and socially disabled patients come back to the mainstream. The focus is on an anti-social who is reformed to assist the doctor in the hospital and a young stenographer who is gang-raped on the stairs of her office. She is paralyzed when her molesters attack her as she tries to resist.

Also Read: Ritwik Ghatak and his Celluloid Women

Sinha is also remembered for his films in Hindi, for the large screen and for television. Among these are Ek Doctor Ki Maut which won the National Award featuring Pankaj Kapoor and Shabana Azmi, Admi Aur Aurat for Doordarshan also won a National Award, Didi for the small screen about the closeness between a sister and her little brother, Safed Haathi, Anmol Moti and Aaj Ka Robinhood aimed at a child audience but carried a message on environment preservation and Sagina Mahato, the screen adaptation of a famous novel by veteran journalist Gour Kishore Ghosh featuring Dilip Kumar in the title role in the only Bengali film of his career. Sagina was a simple labour in a tea plantation in the northern parts of West Bengal who leads an uprising against the torture, exploitation and oppression by the owners and triumphs in the end.

Sinha’s films sustain socio-political implications that cross man-made barriers of time, space, language, people and culture.

He took inspiration from anything and everything from mainstream and classical literature, crime thrillers, politics, human relationships, comic capers, newspaper stories, social satire, black comedy, children’s films and music-oriented scripts.

Tapan Sinha’s oeuvre reveals a cross-section of personal struggles, individual pain and social change.

He fore grounded his films with issues directly linked to Bengal but with universal significance.

Tapan Sinha can be best described as a socially committed entertainer. Eschewing experimentation he has striven to deliver films which have been commercially viable yet aesthetically pleasing, socially sensitive and thought provoking. In his own words his career as a filmmaker has been, “one long journey in search of art, truth and beauty ….”

Image Courtesy: Author, YouTube

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Shoma A. Chatterji is a freelance journalist, film scholar and author based in Kolkata. She has won the National Award twice, in 1991 and 2000. She has authored 26 published titles of which 14 are on different areas of Indian cinema. She holds two Masters Degrees and a Ph.D. in History (Indian Cinema). She has also won a few Lifetime Achievement Awards from different organizations over time.

Shoma A. Chatterji is a freelance journalist, film scholar and author based in Kolkata. She has won the National Award twice, in 1991 and 2000. She has authored 26 published titles of which 14 are on different areas of Indian cinema. She holds two Masters Degrees and a Ph.D. in History (Indian Cinema). She has also won a few Lifetime Achievement Awards from different organizations over time.

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