Soumitra Chatterjee’s association with Satyajit Ray started with Apur Sansar (1959) – the last film in the Apu Trilogy. His association with Ray spanned over three decades. The most popular Ray films are associated with Soumitra Chatterjee. While Uttam Kumar, the other superstar of Bengali cinema, attempted (unsuccessfully) to carve a place in Hindi films, Soumitra remained known only to regulars in the film festival circuit or those who watch good films regardless of language.While Soumitra has acted in films of the best of Bengali film directors like Aparna Sen, Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha, Rituparno Ghosh, he won the National Award as late as 2006. He turned down the Padma Shree a few times but accepted the Dada Saheb Phalke award in 2011.
There is a clear divide between a star and an actor in the films. The star plays himself or herself regardless of the character. Soumitra has been that rare thespian who has managed to bridge the divide. His dedication to the Konstantin Stanislavski approach to acting meant that the actor needs to live the character before he or she can draw upon the “emotional memory” of the character being portrayed. The actor must “experience” the character during performance. That involves crafting a character in the psyche of the actor first before working on the external aspects like the gaze, the walk, the voice etc. Make-up and clothes fill up the rest to craft the complete character.For the film Wheel Chair Soumitra practiced using the wheelchair for many months. That led to his realization how someone in a wheelchair always has to look up at people and difference in level has a psychological impact. That is angst he communicated through the character. The director Tapan Sinha had based the film on a real-life orthopedic whom Soumitra visited to find out how he dealt with patients.Soumitra credits his mentor Sisir Bhaduri, the legendary theater actor, for having installed in him the detective like approach to reading a script and discovering the subtext that can explain what the character would have done when not on screen. The insights on the character are built from there.The reason why Satyajit Ray chose Soumitra for 14 of his movies was probably because both actor and director appreciated the need for detailing what is in the script and what lies beyond and in their quest for perfection. In Charulata Soumitra plays the character Amal who has to play the piano. Ray rented a piano and sent it to Soumitra’s home and showed him how to play with both hands. Soumitra practiced until the finger-work looked reasonably authentic. Tagore’s song Ami Chini Go Chini sung was by Kishore Kumar and remains one the highlights of the film.https://youtu.be/_HinFn8DWSoBut Charulata left a permanent reminder in the life of Soumitra. This was my favorite part of the book. He says
“I had to change my Bengali handwriting for good. There were many sequences showing Amal writing. At that time my handwriting was rounded, a style that arrived on the Bengali cultural scene with Rabindranath Tagore. Manik-da (Satyajit Ray) felt that since the story was written by Tagore, the setting had to reflect an earlier period. That was Manik-da for you, a perfectionist to the core. He was a superb calligrapher himself, so he collected and consulted a lot of texts of the pre-Tagore era, and showed me how the alphabets would be, and the strokes of the swara-barnas (vowels) when used with the byanjan-barna (consonants). I diligently practiced it for the next six months. I used to write diaries and when I had nothing to write I just copied from any random book. This helped me changed my writing at the age of twenty seven!”
Amitava Nag’s book Beyond Apu describes twenty films of Soumitra Chatterjee. The synopsis of the story follows a discussion on the role that Soumitra played. How he approached it. The interaction with the director and how they interpreted the character. There are anecdotes and trivia that give us an insight into the mind of the actor and the person. This is probably the very first book about Soumitra Chatterjee in English and it certainly sets a high standard for others to follow. Even if you do not follow Bengali films or know about Soumitra, the book is captivating in the way it describes how an actor crafts a character.Amitava Nag describes Soumitra as a complete artist because of his accomplishments in theater where he wrote and acted in his own plays. Beyond that he is a poet, an author, a literary editor and a painter. This book is a terrific tribute to the complete artist – Soumitra Chatterjee.——–Join me on Twitter @AbhijitBhaduriFilms of Soumitra Chatterjee that you can watch on YouTubeApur Sansar (1959)Samapti (1961)Charulata (1964)Aranyer Din Ratri (1969)Sonar Kella (1974)Joi Baba Felunath (1979)