The tragic lifetime of an Indian cinematic genius

Iconic Indian director and actor Guru Dutt was simply 39 years outdated when he died in 1964 however he left behind a cinematic legacy that continues to resonate many years later.

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

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

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

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

Dutt’s beginnings have 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 could form his cinematic imaginative and prescient later in life.

He dropped his surname – Padukone – after getting into the Bombay movie business within the 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 battle had intensified – impacted the aspiring filmmaker’s prospects.

It was throughout this part that he penned Kashmakash, a narrative rooted in creative frustration and social disillusionment, concepts that may 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 have 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 develop into his defining movie – Pyaasa.

The hard-hitting, haunting movie explored an artist’s battle in a materialistic world and many years later, it could go on to be the one Hindi movie in Time journal’s listing 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, stated that Pyaasa was her brother’s “dream venture” and that “he wished it to be excellent”.

As a director, Dutt was keen on ‘creating’ the movie because it took form on the units, making plenty of modifications within the script and dialogues and experimenting with digital camera methods. Whereas he was identified for scrapping and reshooting scenes, this reached worrying ranges throughout Pyaasa – as an 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 stated.

“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 goals, and his recollections,” she stated.

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

“When the information got here, we rushed to Pali Hill [where he lived],” Lajmi stated. “I knew he was in turmoil. He usually referred to as me, saying we have to discuss 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 large cash using on Pyaasa, Lajmi stated that the household tried to maneuver on, with out absolutely confronting the explanations behind her brother’s inside struggles.

Launched in 1957, Pyaasa was a essential 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 wished to be a director, an actor, make good movies – I’ve achieved all of it. I’ve cash, I’ve all the pieces, but I’ve nothing.”

There was additionally an odd paradox between Dutt’s movies and his private life.

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

To maintain his firm thriving, Dutt had a easy rule: every creative gamble needs 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 demise of the filmmaker after he fails to return to phrases along with his acute loneliness and doomed relationships.

Although now hailed as a traditional, 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 powerful 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 stated, his private life was in extreme turmoil, marked by temper swings.

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

Author Bimal Mitra remembers that Dutt advised him about his battle 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 feel I’ll go loopy.”

One evening, 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 therapy 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 may see his ache, so darkish that even he couldn’t discover a approach out of it.

Just a few days after Dutt was discharged, the taking pictures for Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam resumed as if nothing had occurred.

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

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

However Dutt’s private struggles continued to mount. He separated from his spouse and regardless that he continued performing 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 surprise what might 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 writer of the biography Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story