Pioneering FILMMAKER

His films used music as a metaphor,as entertainment,as narrative strategy,and as a statement where the stories had social significance and reached beyond the times they were made in as well as the times they reflected. Seeta is the first Indian talkie to be screened at an international film festival the Venice Film Festival where it won an Honorary Diploma,making Debaki Kumar Bose (1898 -1971) the first Indian director to have won an international honour. Sadly,no print of this film has survived the ravages of neglect and time,though it was a box-office hit of that time,starred Durga Khote and Prithviraj Kapoor,and made Bose a household name among film buffs in India.

Bose received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1957) and the Padma Shri (1958). And yet,few of the 50 films he made survive in print. His six silent movies that were once preserved at the National Film Archives in Pune are lost. Bose was renowned for his scholarship on religious saints and their ideological principles. What is less known is the passion with which he placed the lives of these saints and/or their religious preachings on celluloid. His work would have remained archived for eternity because of his oeuvre devotional films soaked in rich music and spiritual songs dedicated to several Indian saints and poet saints. Alas! Such is not the case.

The Tapan Sinha Foundation and Nandan,the West Bengal Governments cultural complex,recently organised a three-day retrospective of his films to celebrate 75 years of Seeta having been recognised in Venice. Kavi (1949) based on a novel by Tarasankar Bandopadhyay,was the inaugural film. Other films screened were Bhagaban Shrikrishna Chaitanya (1954) in two versions,Bengali and Hindi,Pathik (1953),Arghya (1961) Nabajanma (1956) and Sagar Sangame (1959).

The innovator

Bose is also renowned for introducing innovative techniques in cinema,for the unforgettable musical scores of his films,for introducing new actors and singers and for his long oeuvre spread over three decades beginning with silent films. Lesser known are the 17 Hindi movies he directed,often bilinguals drawing a separate acting cast for the two versions depending on the actors knowledge of Hindi. Before Seeta placed him on the international map,Bose had already established himself with Aparadhi (1931) and Puranbhagat (1933). He was the first to introduce artificial lighting in the two-language Aparadhi. He introduced background music in Chandidas (1932).

Puranbhagat featured the blind vocalist and composer,Krishna Chandra Dey,uncle of Manna Dey,in the title-role. Arghya (1961) marked a new form in putting Rabindranath Tagores poems on celluloid. The film was made at the express request of the then-chief minister of West Bengal,Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy,to mark Tagores centenary. The poems chosen were Pujarini,Avhishar,Puraton Britto and Dui Bigha Jomi. This was to be his last film.

But Bose,in his lifetime,introduced actors who later became legends of the silver screen. Among them are Kanan Devi,Chandrabati,Umashashi and Chhaya Devi.

The filmmaker also made several documentaries for Films Division such as Raidas,Bargad Ki Aap Beeti,Andhere Se Ujale Mein and Brahmin. Raidas was a celluloid biography of Indias renowned saint who was a cobbler and composed hymns in praise of God without giving up his traditional occupation. Bargad Ki Aap Beeti is in the form of observations made by an old banyan tree under whose branches incidents in the story unfold. It focussed on the sufferings of people because of their low-caste origins. Andhere Se Ujale Mein was the celluloid adaptation of Suchi,a poem by Rabindranath Tagore. Rooted in the social evil of untouchability,the poem explores the displeasure of the Hindu Gods about the ban on entry of untouchables into temples belonging to Ramanand,the founder of the Ramayat sect. Brahmin was based on a Tagore poem inspired by the story of Satyakam from the Chandogya Upanishad.

His love for music

Boses knowledge of and love for music of the Vaishnavite and Tagore schools are strong elements in most of his films. Chandidas(1932),Puranbhagat,Vidyapati (1937) and Bhagaban Sri Krishna Chaitanya can be bracketed within the genre of musical films with strong biographical references to the religious figures lives on whose they were based. Kabi has a rich musical score and wonderful songs too.

The films based on Tagores poems are lyrical,filled with the litterateurs songs. Boses range spread between thrillers (Nishir Dak/1932) through historicals (Meerabai/1933),mythologicals (Krishna Leela/1946),musical biopics (Chandidas,Vidyapati,Bhagaban Sri Krishna Chaitanya) and socials (Bhalobasha,Sagar Sangamey,Nabajanma) to films based on classical literature (Kabi,Chira Kumar Sabha,Pathik,Arghya) each with a powerful social message.

Sagar Sangamey (1959) was nominated for Golden Bear at the 9th Berlin International Film Festival and it received the prestigious National Film Award for Best Film as well. Sagar Sangamey,a scathing indictment on caste-consciousness among Brahmins based on the man-made premise of high and low births and showed how this could be erased with a single human emotion love. The film starred Bharati Debi as a very rigid,feudal and aristocratic Brahmin widow while Manju Adhikary played a little girl belonging to a group of sex-workers who travelled together to attend the Ganga Sagar Mela.

Boses life had more drama in it than the films he made. Born on November 25,1898 in Akalpoush,Burdwan,Debaki Kumar Bose was the son of a leading advocate. He was thrown out of his home because his parents were outraged by his walking out of the examination hall to join Mahatma Gandhis Non-Cooperation Movement. He went to Brindavan where his aunt lived. He turned into a committed devotee of the Vaishnava cult a branch of Hinduism founded by Shri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Even before he left home,he was deeply attached to Radha-Gobindo,the family icon. He edited a journal called Shakti in Burdwan,while he also earned a pittance from selling gamchhas ( chequered towels woven out of red thread) because his father had disowned him. He was placed behind bars for some time and when released,went on to study Homoeopathy. But his desire was to become a journalist. When he was editing the magazine,Dhiren Ganguly,a noted film personality visiting Burdwan,met him and invited him to write a film script and bring it to Calcutta. This script became the first production of British Dominion Films. It was titled Flames Of Flesh,in which Bose played the male lead opposite Gangulys first wife Premika Devi. Earlier,when he was studying at the Vidyasagar College in Kolkata,he met Natyacharya Sisirkumar Bhaduri and acted in some of his plays,the most memorable among them being his portrayal of an army general in Sohrab Rustom in 1919.

Over a span of three long decades as filmmaker,Bose made movies in other genres too. But the history of his life and his career in films could have become a powerful movies with a strong storyline.

Seetas significance to Hindi film music

Trivia hunters would be surprised to know that Seeta also marked the debut of K.C.Deys assistant Sachin Dev Burman as a playback singer,who was to get his break as composer with Eight Days and Shikari a full 12 years later. And S.D.Burman in a way repaid his debt to mentor K.C.Dey by composing the song that established Deys other assistant,nephew and future Phalke laureate Manna Dey in his true calling as playback singer with Oopar gagan vishal in Mashal (1950).

– Rajiv Vijayakar