The tragic life of an Indian cinematic genius

Iconic Indian director and actor Guru Dutt was simply 39 years previous when he died in 1964 however he left behind a cinematic legacy that continues to resonate a long time later.

Born on 9 July 1925 within the southern state of Karnataka, subsequent week marks his delivery centenary. However the man behind the digicam, his emotional turmoil and psychological well being struggles stay largely unexplored.

Warning: This text accommodates particulars some readers might discover distressing.

The maker of basic Hindi movies comparable to Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool – movie college staples for his or her timeless themes – Dutt cast a deeply private, introspective fashion of filmmaking that was novel within the post-independence period.

His complicated characters usually mirrored his private struggles; his plots touched upon common motifs, inviting the viewers to confront uncomfortable realities by way of hauntingly stunning cinema.

Dutt’s beginnings had been humble and his childhood was marked by monetary hardship and a turbulent household life. After his household shifted to Bengal in japanese India for work, a younger Dutt turned deeply impressed by the area’s tradition and it might form his cinematic imaginative and prescient later in life.

He dropped his surname – Padukone – after coming into the Bombay movie trade within the Nineteen Forties. He made his debut not as a director however as a choreographer, and likewise labored as a phone operator to make ends meet. The turbulence and uncertainty of the last decade – India’s independence wrestle had intensified – impacted the aspiring filmmaker’s prospects.

It was throughout this section that he penned Kashmakash, a narrative rooted in creative frustration and social disillusionment, concepts that will later form his cinematic masterpiece Pyaasa.

Dutt’s friendship with fellow struggler Dev Anand – who quickly rose to fame as an actor – helped him get the prospect to direct his first movie in 1951. The noir thriller, Baazi, propelled him into the highlight.

He quickly discovered love with celebrated singer Geeta Roy, and by many accounts, these early years had been his happiest.

After Dutt launched his personal movie firm, he scored back-to-back hits with romantic comedies Aar-Paar and Mr & Mrs 55, each that includes him in lead roles. However craving for creative depth, he got down to make what would turn into his defining movie – Pyaasa.

The hard-hitting, haunting movie explored an artist’s wrestle in a materialistic world and a long time later, it might go on to be the one Hindi movie in Time journal’s record of the twentieth Century’s 100 biggest motion pictures.

Dutt’s late youthful sister, Lalitha Lajmi, who collaborated with me after I wrote his biography, mentioned that Pyaasa was her brother’s “dream challenge” and that “he needed it to be excellent”.

As a director, Dutt was keen on ‘creating’ the movie because it took form on the units, making a number of adjustments within the script and dialogues and experimenting with digicam strategies. Whereas he was recognized for scrapping and reshooting scenes, this reached worrying ranges throughout Pyaasa – for example, he shot 104 takes of the now well-known climax sequence.

He would shout and get bad-tempered when issues didn’t go proper, Lajmi mentioned.

“Sleep evaded him. The misuse of and dependence on alcohol had begun. At his worst, he began experimenting with sleeping capsules, mixing them in his whiskey. Guru Dutt gave his all to make Pyaasa – his sleep, his desires, and his reminiscences,” she mentioned.

In 1956, as his dream challenge neared completion, 31-year-old Dutt tried suicide.

“When the information got here, we rushed to Pali Hill [where he lived],” Lajmi mentioned. “I knew he was in turmoil. He usually referred to as me, saying we have to speak however would not say a phrase after I bought there,” she added.

However following his discharge from hospital, no skilled help was sought by the household.

Psychological well being was a “socially stigmatised” subject on the time, and with huge cash using on Pyaasa, Lajmi mentioned that the household tried to maneuver on, with out totally confronting the explanations behind her brother’s inner struggles.

Launched in 1957, Pyaasa was a crucial and industrial triumph that catapulted Dutt to stardom. However the filmmaker usually expressed a way of vacancy regardless of his success.

Pyaasa’s chief cinematographer VK Murthy recalled Dutt saying, “I needed to be a director, an actor, make good movies – I’ve achieved all of it. I’ve cash, I’ve the whole lot, but I’ve nothing.”

There was additionally a wierd paradox between Dutt’s movies and his private life.

His movies usually portrayed sturdy, unbiased girls however off display, as Lajmi recalled, he anticipated his spouse to embrace extra conventional roles and needed her to sing solely in movies produced by his firm.

To maintain his firm thriving, Dutt had a easy rule: every creative gamble ought to be adopted by a bankable industrial movie.

However buoyed by the success of Pyaasa, he ignored his personal rule and dived straight into making his most private, costly and semi-autobiographical movie: Kaagaz Ke Phool.

It tells the story of a filmmaker’s sad marriage and confused relationship along with his muse. It eerily ends with the dying of the filmmaker after he fails to come back to phrases along with his acute loneliness and doomed relationships.

Although now hailed as a basic, it was a industrial failure on the time, a blow Dutt reportedly by no means overcame.

Within the Channel 4 documentary In Search of Guru Dutt, his co-star Waheeda Rehman remembered him saying, “Life mein do hello toh cheezen hai – kamyaabi aur failure. (There are solely two issues in life: success and failure) There may be nothing in between.”

After Kagaz Ke Phool, he by no means directed a movie once more.

However his firm recovered over time, and he made a robust comeback as a producer with Chaudhvin Ka Chand, probably the most commercially profitable movie of his profession.

He then launched Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam directed by his trusted screenwriter Abrar Alvi. By this time, Lajmi mentioned, his private life was in extreme turmoil, marked by temper swings.

The movie delved into the loneliness of a girl trapped in a loveless marriage to a philandering, usually tyrannical landlord in an opulent but feudal world.

Author Bimal Mitra remembers that Dutt instructed him about his wrestle with sleeplessness and reliance on sleeping capsules throughout this time. By then, his marriage had collapsed and psychological well being had worsened. Mitra recalled many conversations with Guru Dutt’s fixed chorus: “I believe I’ll go loopy.”

One night time, Dutt tried to take his personal life once more. He was unconscious for 3 days.

Lajmi says that after this, on the physician’s recommendation, his household referred to as a psychiatrist to inquire about remedy for Dutt however they by no means adopted up. “We by no means referred to as the psychiatrist once more,” she added with remorse.

For years, she believed her brother was silently crying for assist, maybe feeling trapped in a darkish area the place nobody might see his ache, so darkish that even he couldn’t discover a approach out of it.

A couple of days after Dutt was discharged, the capturing for Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam resumed as if nothing had occurred.

When Mitra requested him concerning the incident, Dutt mentioned, “These days, I usually marvel what unrest was this, what was the restlessness that I used to be hell-bent on committing suicide? Once I take into consideration this, I get terrorised with worry. However that day, I felt no dilemma in swallowing these sleeping capsules.”

The movie was successful, turned India’s official entry to the 1963 Berlin Movie Pageant and likewise gained a nationwide award.

However Dutt’s private struggles continued to mount. He separated from his spouse and though he continued appearing in movies, he battled profound loneliness, usually turning to alcohol and sleeping capsules for respite.

On 10 October 1964, Dutt, 39, was discovered useless in his room.

“I do know that he had at all times wished for it [death], longed for it… and he bought it,’ his co-star Waheeda Rehman wrote within the Journal of Movie Business, 1967.

Just like the protagonist of Pyaasa, true acclaim got here to Dutt solely after he was gone.

Cinema fans usually marvel what may need been had he lived longer; maybe he would have continued to reshape India’s cinematic panorama along with his visionary, poetic works.

Yasser Usman is the creator of the biography Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story