People

Penelope Cruz is Spanish. And she is Spanish in every sense of the term. Fiery and funny, sexy and seductive, and saucy and spicy that only the Spanish can be. An actress who played a murderess in Pedro Almodovar's brilliant cinematic piece, "Volver", a chef wracked by motion sickness in the hilarious screwball comedy, "Woman on Top", a gypsy in the swashbuckling satire "Fanfan La Tulipe", a lovelorn lass in "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" and now as a passionate painter in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona", Cruz's range is truly incredible.

Amita Malik, India's most accomplished film critic, succumbed to leukemia at the age of 87 in a Delhi hospital on 22 February 2009. Like the lonely headmaster of the movie, "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" Mrs. Malik led a lonely but feisty life tilting her quixotic lance at the movie screen, the idiot box and the All India Radio.

This is the fate of Tapan Sinha, like Uttam Kumar, the central character of his second film Upahar (1955) - none of them got their due from the serious film audience (read the film critics). But as life does such a balance act, Tapan Sinha is loved by the educated, middle-class Bengali more than anyone else, probably second only to the towering Ray. Looking back, as Sinha passed away on the morning of 15th January, I was rather reflective - what his cinema means to me? And I was not very sure. On one side his staggering range and diversity would definitely had made Ray proud as well, and on the other side his debatable, yet unfailing belief in film being a 100% linear narrative medium. His range is so diverse that in the 40+ ...

If Tomas Guiterrez Alea was the most distinguished figure in the older generation of Cuban filmmakers, arguably the most prominent among those who followed the 'old guards' was Humberto Solas, who died of cancer on September 17, 2008 at the age of 66. While Alea chose to work on a variety of themes and subjects, Solas is identified more than anything else with what he called 'historical melodramas'...

Laksmi came to Nistha's house when she was 16. Over the years they bonded well. Cutting across the servant-master relationship, they developed a "different" kind of friendship. Over one and half years, Nishta follows her two worlds; one is her home where she is the boss and another residential complex where she serves as a maid. Once a jovial teenager, Laksmi evolves into a pragmatic soul.

Ankur Agarwal remembers one of the the greatest actor of all time, Paul Newman, and rediscovers three of his numerous gems: Hud, Sweet Bird of Youth, and The Verdict.

Paul Newman! What an array of films and great performances, a canvas of life and America, a multitude of emotions, sweat and sultry sang-froid. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof where much is hushed below the domestic and censors’ carpet between him and Elizabeth Taylor; or one of his earliest films Somebody Up There Likes Me, where Newman proves so early his ability to wrench your guts; or another Tennessee Williams, Sweet Bird of Youth, where Newman plays the part of a man willing to sell himself but yet in love so brilliantly, and maybe defines Newman for the rest of his life; or Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, when it makes me realize how much better Newman would have been in a North by Northwest; or The Verdict, the best performance ever by Newman in my opinion, where I can watch Newman’s every move, every motion again and again and again; and yet again, Absence of Malice, where love and war of ethics cross between Newman and another bright actor, Sally Field. It’s hard to imagine cinema without Paul Newman. Three of his lesser-known films follow.

Hud

The striking point of the film Hud is of course the sweeping cinematography and yet the static camera at times, forcing the viewer to be unwillingly pushed into the scene, into the setting, as if he is himself getting oppressed by the cruel wantonness of Newman, the heat, the sultry monotony of the ranch life, and the desires of letting oneself go into the manifold temptations once in a while. The solitary ranch life is dominating them all, is dominating the film, is dominating the viewer, and of course this is where the director had to succeed and has succeeded. A good film, but I don't think that most of the people will able to tolerate it , since the film is neither thrilling at any point nor has any sort of pace. Its a heavy-handed film, almost drooping shoulders on the viewer and asking him to take the burden along.

Sweet Bird of Youth

Better, much better than the written play itself, Newman starred in both the 1959 play which won 4 Tony awards and the 1962 film which won an Academy Award and was nominated for two others. Newman brings to fore the typical crisis in a man’s life, when he has to struggle for money and love both. A man whose current career is just being a beach boy! Extraordinary powerful performances by Ed Begley and Geraldine Page interweave with the beautiful, solitary romance of Newman and Shirley Knight, a romance which is like the most beautiful rose standing by a sea in a world where only dust-storms rise to greet its budding, and never let it unfold completely.

The Verdict

Nominated for five Academy Awards, this Sidney Lumet film is one of the most powerful performances you would see from an actor. For me, it comes right alongside Brando’s performance in A Streetcar Named Desire and O'Toole's in Lawrence of Arabia. The film deals with medical negligence and a lawyer’s ethics in brilliant fashion, building up the character of an alcoholic Newman in need of love and stability and yes, belief in himself, the character of a tired businessman-lawyer James Mason who knows every trick of the game except to fight against desperate truth, and the dependable lawyer who still has somehow remained a good man, Jack Warden. The few scenes between Newman and Charlotte Rampling are some of the best scenes ever in film history which can show how a woman’s love can make a man “man.”

Guru Dutt, who virtually tortured himself to a self-inflicted death, was a tragic victim of his own heightened vision of romance and drama, of life and creatively, of despair and death, writes Vidyarthy Chatterjee

The lives and lifestyle of the mentor (Uday Shankar) and the protégé (Guru Dutt) were remarkably similar in the many ways. They followed a common pattern of high creativity with a pronounced disdain for the mediocre and the mundane. Both lives ended in disappointment at what they considered to be philistine society's inability to recognize their genius. Only in the amount of the time they spent on earth were the two to be dissimilar. Uday Shankar was past 70 when he died, largely of financial distress; Guru Dutt, just 39, scornful of success and consumed by melancholia.

Some 50 years ago, Guru Dutt Shiv Shankar Padukone, a Mangalore Saraswat by birth and a Calcutta Bengali by temperament, made Pyaasa (The Seeker), striking melodrama about a damned artist saved by a noble-hearted prostitute. Pyaasa did good business; it was also favorably received by many critics. But after sometime it was forgotten, as were Guru Dutt's other films like Jaal, Aar Paar, Baazi, CID, Mr. and Mrs. 55, Chaudhavin Ka Chand and Kaagaz Ke Phool. Both the man and his quiet, contemplative work, many of them marked by a dark, corrosive anger at the unjust ways of the world combined with one's inability to fight destiny, were allowed to gather dust till the early 80s when there was a dramatic revival of interest in both. His films, his handsome looks and arresting presence, his numerous affairs, his drinking bouts, and his downward emotional spiral ending in suicide - suddenly everything became subjects of drawing-room discussion. (His early fun-filled films are now, sadly, largely forgotten; only his later, dark portraits of the sensitive individual in failure and suffering are recalled.)

For this changed scenario, the French are largely to be thanked. Nantes mounted retrospectives devoted to Dutt and another neglected genius and contemporary, Ritwik Ghatak; and Paris took over from where Nantes left off. The respected film Journal, Cahierer du Cinema, devoted pages of analysis and insight to the art and attitudes of the two directors, igniting the interest of film capitals across Europe.

Largely neglected in his lifetime (how else does one account for the box-office failure of Kaagaz Ke Phool?) and ignored by his peers in Bombay, Ironically enough, Guru Dutt is now a cult figure in whole such strengths and virtues are being discovered by film pundits as would have perhaps floored Dutt himself. such is the fickleness of human conduct and the fate of the artist who dare to live ahead of his time! Not without reason has it been said that Dutt, who virtually tortured himself to a self-inflicted death, was a tragic victim of his own heightened vision of romance and drama, of life and creatively, of despair and death. To understand such visions, one may profitably turn to his early years.

Guru Dutt had his education in Calcutta in the '40s, a tumultuous period of mass misery which left its indelible impress on his sensitive and cultured mind. Formal education did not suite him; in fact, nothing humdrum or predictable ever did, much to the consternation of his disapproving family. So, soon after completing his matriculation, he left Calcutta for Almora to join Uday Shankar's famous dance school, which had fired the imagination of many a creative youngster of the day. Dutt was to spend two years in the shadow of the great Shankar. He was also greatly influenced by the outstanding musician, Vishnudas Shirali, who is often credit with being a role model to Ravi Shankar as well.

Guru Dutt's path crossed that of numerous other artists at Almora. They included the "baba', Ustand Alauddin Khan, his son Ali Akbar, Timir Baran, the Kathakali maestro Shankaran Namboodiri, Shanti Bardhan, the Frenchwoman Simkie with whom Uday Shankar enjoyed a special chemistry both on and off stage, Zohra Sehgal, her sister Uzra Butt, and Amala Shankar, who was destined to marry Uday Shankar.

Speaking to the French film critic, Henry Micciollo, Satyajit Ray had interesting observations to make about the Almora chapter (1942-44) in Guru Dutt's life and its influence on his style of filmmaking. Ray attributed Dutt's "remarkable sense of rhythm and fluidity of camera" to the apprenticeship he served in the hills and characterized his approach to cinema as "musical."

After Almora, Guru Dutt's next port of call was Pune, where, at the famous Prabhat Sudios, his initial assignment was that of a choreographer. The rest is history, a part of the folklore of modern Hindi cinema. After working as a assistant to, first, Gyan Mukherjee of Bombay Talkies and later, Amiya Chakroborty, he got his big break by virtue of his friendship with Dev Anand, his old Prabhat Studio friend.

After making Jaal and Baazi, under the Nav Ketan banner of the Anand's, the artist in search of individualist expression struck out on his own. For company he had such gifted friends and associates as Abrar Alvi, with whom he clashed often, only to make soon after; the cinematographer V. K Murthy; editor, Y G Chauhan; art director Biren Naug; and actors Rehman and Johny Walker.

Guru Dutt worked some five decades ago, yet he's strikingly modern in his craftsmanship, specially in the films he made under his own banner. The challenges he took in lighting, camera, sound, and heightened storytelling constitute an important chapter in story of courage and commitment as shown by a homegrown film artist. Today's angry young men and women could learn many valuable lessons if only they care to look closely and for long at Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke Phool and Saaheb Bibi and Gulab (directed by Abrar Alvi but under Dutt's overall supervision). The soaring flights of fancy or the pits of disillusionment and decay in these films or the director's portrayal of himself as a deceived romantic, may leave some of today's filmmakers cold, but technically, if nothing else, they will have to travel many miles before they can catch up with the wizard who could make melancholic shadows and silhouettes move to unforgettable soulful music.

The true artist suffers the slings and arrows of an uncomprehending society with a straight face, or sometimes with contortions produced by pains, anger and an all pervaded sense of betrayal. Whatever the case, the worthwhile artist's calibre is in direct proportion to the height of all the summits he is out to scale. This writer for one, likes to remember Guru Dutt as a director, producer and actor rolled into one who dared to dream difficult dreams and thereby defeat the demands of mediocrity which has ruled the Bombay film industry ever since its inception with just a few honorable exceptions here and there; who dared to devise and improvise like few before him in Bombay and fewer still after he bade a hasty, premature exit; and who; no doubt, failed at times to realize his celluloid dreams but when he succeeded, which was more often, succeeded splendidly.

Here, Guru Dutt's own words should be recalled; "In the formula ridden film world of ours, one who ventures to go out of the beaten track is condemned to the definition which Mathew Amold used for Shelly, ....'an angel beating his wings in a void'...

"I believe that one who is out to go against the wind has to be prepared for bouquets as well as brickbats, for triumph as well as heartbreaks whether or not one makes a classic or collects the cash. It is this baffling unpredictability that gives edge to the thrill of movie-making."

The Dada Saheb Phalke Award for 2006 for cine maestro Tapan Sinha, has come as the crowning glory to a vast and diverse repertoire of films that have won acclaim in India and around the world including 19 National Awards and recognitions in international film festivals in Berlin, Venice, London, Moscow, San Francisco and Locarno among others.
If one were to wonder what makes Tapan Sinha's films a cut above the rest, it is their sheer simplicity and innocuous manner of storytelling...

As the light gets low, the breezing wind reminds us of an impending storm. Charu and Manda were playing cards in the bedroom. As the storm intensifies they are forced to leave the afternoon siesta. It is at this point in time that Amal enters like a comet. He chants ‘˜Hare Murare' from the memorable Bangla novel "Anandamath" by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.

Soumitra Chatterjee was Amal to me for quite a long time. It wasn't the first Chatterjee film that I watched, nor, was it his first film. But whenever I get to think of him the couple of images that strike me include the above from Satyajit Ray's classic "Charulata" (1964). The other being Apu in Ray's third film of the epic trilogy "Apur Sansar" (1959)....

Bergman was quintessentially a phenomenon by himself. His life, his actions remained unparalleled over the years. Though unbearable at times, the mastermind left a deep impact on human kind, thus, making it practically unimaginable to be ignored. No session of film studies, film criticism, can be completed until he is discussed again and again. Born in July 14th, 1918 to a priest, he started taking interest in theatre as a student of University of Stockholm. He wrote several screenplays including Frenzy for Director Sjoberg in 1944 followed by the "Devil's Prison" in 1949 ...