June 14, 2009
Guru Dutt: India’s Orson Welles
Well understanding the title was itself a search work for me. You need to know who was Orson. Well a small (and impressive) fact about Mr. Welles is that In 2002 he was voted as the greatest film director of all time.
I wanted to write for my journey of watching Guru Dutt’s movies, understanding his personality and knowing about the greatest film maker, India has ever had.
For today’s post, just notes from Wikipedia:
Real name: Vasanth Kumar Shivashankar Padukone
Some Facts:
1. The Indian film director, Kalpana Lajmi, is his sister’s daughter.
2. He spent a great deal of time with his mother’s cousin, Balakrishna B. Benegal (known to the family as Bakutmama) who was a painter of cinema posters. The Indian film director, Shyam Benegal, is the son of Sridhar B. Benegal, Balakrishna’s younger brother.
3- He was not Bengali, but a Kannada! though He can speak fluent Bengali. Guru Dutt’s father was initially a headmaster at Panambur and later a bank employee at Bangalore. He moved jobs to work as an administrative clerk at the Burmah Shell company and began living at Bhawanipore near Calcutta, where Guru Dutt finished his schooling.
Hence, Guru Dutt spoke fluent Bengali, and carried a distinct stamp of Bengali culture in his work.
in the 1940s, he dropped the Shivashankar Padukone part of his name, and was known simply as Guru Dutt. Because Dutt is a common Bengali last name, many people assumed that he was a Bengali.
4- He was a good student, but never went to college, partly because of financial troubles at home. Instead, he joined the performing arts troupe of Uday Shankar, the older brother of the better-known Ravi Shankar.
5- Pyaasa was a autobiography. Its original name was Kashmakash which was changed later to Pyaasa
6- Before marrying to Geeta, Guru Dutt was almost married twice! The first time he eloped with a girl called Vijaya from Pune, and later his parents had him almost married to his maternal niece, Suvarna, from Hyderabad.
7- Guru Dutt’s first film, Navketan’s Baazi, was released in 1951. NavKetan was Dev Anand’s production house.
8- Guru Dutt also introduced Zohra Sehgal (whom he met at Almora) as the choreographer in the movie Baazi, and he also met his future wife, Geeta Dutt during the making of the movie.
9- Fortune smiled on Dutt’s next film, the 1954 Aar Paar. This was followed by the 1955 hit, Mr. and Mrs. 55, then C.I.D., Sailaab, and in 1957, Pyaasa – the story of a poet, rejected by an uncaring world, who achieves success only after his apparent death. Guru Dutt played the lead role in three of these five films.
10- His 1959 Kaagaz Ke Phool was an intense disappointment. He had invested a great deal of love, money, and energy in this film, which was a self-absorbed tale of a famous director (played by Guru Dutt) who falls in love with an actress (played by Waheeda Rehman, Dutt’s real-life love interest). Kaagaz Ke Phool failed at the box office and Dutt was devastated. All subsequent films from his studio were, thereafter, officially helmed by other directors since Guru Dutt felt that his name is anathema to box office.
11- Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, a box office flop, was directed by his protege, writer Abrar Alvi, which won him the Filmfare Best Director’s award. The film’s star Waheeda Rehman denied rumors that the film was ghost-directed by Guru Dutt himself. Guru Dutt also has his influence on his last box office smash hit Chaudhvin Ka Chand.
12- Pyaasa was rated as one of the best 100 films of all time by Time Magazine. In the 2002 Sight & Sound critics’ and directors’ poll, two of his films,Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool, were among the top 160 greatest films of all time. The same 2002 Sight & Sound poll ranked Dutt at #73 in its list of all-time greatest directors, thus making him the eighth highest-ranking Asian filmmaker in the poll.
Now this weekend, I am planning to watch at least pyaasa. hope that can get its CD!
June 13, 2009
I am here
Few days back, I was surfing through Vaibhav Sir’s blog …. and was really impressed with the look-n-feel of WordPress. Now I am here and will start writing here. So bye bye Blogspot
my old blog here: http://silicongermanium.blogspot.com/
