Filmmaker Tarun Majumdar, who died in Kolkata on Tuesday at the age of 92, was beloved by the average Bengali moviegoer for the “middle-of-the-road” cinema that was, in a different part of the country and in another language, identified with Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee. His films, such as Balika Badhu (1967), Shriman Prithviraj (1973) and Dadar Kirti (1980), bridged the gulf between arthouse and commercial films, drawing droves to the theatres with their gently-told tales, while also charming critics with their literary sensibility and deft direction.
Although he made brief forays into Hindi cinema with remakes — Balika Badhu (1976) and Rahgir (1969, based on Palatak) — Majumdar’s large, influential corpus is mostly unknown outside Bengal. This could be put down to what is described by critics as the essential “Bengaliness” of his films, which was not easily rendered in other languages and cultures. While the holy triad of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen continues to dominate how the world views Bengali cinema, that untranslatable quality, which draws from the well of Bengali life and literature, has ensured Majumdar’s own place in the pantheon.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on July 6, 2022, under the title, ‘Gentle storyteller’.
