Hrishikesh Mukherjee; filmmaker (Guardian)
Hyfler/Rosner
Filmmaker who put India's new educated middle class on
Bollywood screens
Lalit Mohan Joshi
Saturday September 2, 2006
Guardian
With films such as Guddi (1971), Abhimaan (Pride, 1973) and
Mili (1975), Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who has died aged 84,
pioneered the "middle of the road" cinema which came out of
Mumbai (Bombay) in the 1970s. Reflecting the conflicts and
aspirations of India's educated middle class, steering clear
of the stark realism of director Shyam Benegal's new cinema
and the sheer escapism of popular Hindi cinema, Mukherjee
created a new audience that found in his films a mirror on
their lives.
Mukherjee rated Satyakam (1969) his best work. It remains a
seminal film about the post-independence decline of social
morality and idealism. Based on Narayan Sanyal's novel -
itself from a true story - the film reflects the
disillusionment of an engineer, Satyapriya (Dharmendra),
with a system within which he finds himself totally
isolated. The protagonist feels that the end of the Raj in
1947 has changed nothing, except replacing "white skin
political power with the native brown skin".
Another landmark was Anand (1971), based on a short story
written by the filmmaker. Made on a shoestring budget, Anand
is about a terminally ill cancer patient who brings laughter
to everyone he meets but knows full well that his time is
up. The subtext is an exposure of the poverty and the lack
of sanitation and health care in Mumbai's slums. The title
role, taken by the 1970s star Rajesh Khanna, proved his
career best while, as the honest, moody Dr Bhaskar, Amitabh
Bachchan got noticed for the first time as an actor of
substance.
Mukherjee graduated in science from Calcutta University. He
started his career as a teacher and a freelance artist at
the All India Radio.
His love of films drew him to Calcutta's prestigious New
Theatres in 1945, where he rose from a laboratory assistant
to film editor. His innovations, like inserting close-ups
between incompatible shots, became established as editing
conventions of popular Indian cinema. Before turning to
filmmaking, his editing credits included regional language
films like Ramu Kariat's Malayalam epic Chemmeen (1965).
Mukherjee's status was legendary as an editor who could
salvage any film that had gone out of control during
shooting.
Mukherjee was shaped as a filmmaker by Bimal Roy, known for
works like Udayer Pathe (The New Dawn, 1944), Do Bigha Zamin
(Two Acres of Land, 1953), Devdas (1955), Sujata (1959) and
Bandini (The Prisoner, 1963), documenting the exploitation
of the rural and urban poor. Such films had a lasting impact
on the three filmmakers of the middle of the road genre -
Mukherjee, Gulzar and Basu Bhattacharya - all of whom had
been Roy's assistants.
Like Satyajit Ray and Roy, Mukherjee was exposed to the best
of the world cinema. Roy's Do Bigha Zamin was influenced by
Italian neorealism, particularly by Vittorio De Sica's
Bicycle Thieves (1948). Mukherjee was chief assistant
director on Do Bigha Zamin, wrote the screenplay and edited
the film. One of the first Indian films to have won critical
acclaim at the Karlovy Vary festival, it proved a dress
rehearsal for Mukherjee's filmmaking career.
Mukherjee's debut film was Musafir (Traveller, 1957) in
which life is reflected through an old house, rented by
three couples at different phases of their lives, dealing
with birth, marriage and death. Anari (Silly Fellow, 1959)
won commercial and critical acclaim while Anuradha (1960) is
a classic of Hindi cinema. It focuses on a visitor's arrival
in the home of a small-town doctor who does not realise how
his idealism and its attendant isolation is impacting upon
his wife. Anuradha's scintillating and soulful music is by
Ravi Shankar.
Mukherjee also made films which were immensely funny,
without being slapstick. But during the last phase of his
life, he became disillusioned with the declining standards
in cinema but remained hopeful that a turning point would
come.
In 2000 he received the state's highest cinema award, the
Dada Saheb Phalke, for a career that spanned almost four
decades and nearly 50 films.
He is survived by three daughters and a son.
· Hrishikesh Mukherjee, filmmaker, editor, screenplay
writer, born September 30 1922; died August 27 2006