A Selective Study in Post-Colonial Bengali Cinema - always yours

29|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2
One significant question is, is there a single mention of Hiralal Sen in the works of Satyajit Ray and
Ritwik Ghatak? I failed to find any such mention in Satyajit's Bishoy Cholochchitro, Our Films
Their Films and Ritwik Ghatak's Cholochchitro Manush ebong Aro Kichu (which is a complete
collection of his writings about cinema, posthumously published). Most Bengalis themselves have
been conveniently ignorant of the fact that Hiralal Sen was the first film-maker not just in Bengal
but in India, as is noted by Kalish Mukhopadhyay (375-383), who worked relentlessly to establish
this long forgotten fact of history among a people that found a pervert pleasure in its amnesia of its
glorious past. Our film history is in a sorry state, and our acquaintance with our past is abysmal,
thanks to the relentless efforts of the 'progressives'.
There are certain dominant tropes of the communist version of our cinema history which are
repeated to the point of being cliché since the communists took over Bengali intelligentsia: the precommunistic
cinema of the past was generally unregenerate, as opposed to the chosen proletarian
art approved by the Party that will one day occupy the world, according to the Marxist telos. It was
reactionary, not revolutionary, avant-garde and experimental, like the cinema made by the
progressive left-oriented film-makers. It was star-centric, individualist and profit-motivated, as
opposed to the true collective art of people's cinema. It was theatrical and full of overacting, as
opposed to the anti-professional doctrines of neo-realist cinema which believed with a a puritan
zealotry in the non-actors' ability to depict the truth of life.
Sadly, like most of the left-liberal clichés , the progressive fetish against professional actors
too turns out to be hollow. Satyajit Ray recalls an incident where an admirer of his film (named Mrs
Flaherty, who was the wife of renowned director Robert Flaherty) in United States refused to
believe that there were professional actors – and not rustic villagers – in Pather Panchali (Our
Films Their Films 55-56). There was an interesting encounter between Ritwik Ghatak and Chhabi
Biswas (the former was directing the latter in a film titled Koto Ojanare that never got finished and
released) where Ritwik began as sceptical of Chhabi's professional brand of acting and after a day's