Stardom and tragedy

UTTAM KUMAR: A LIFE IN CINEMA

Author: Sayandeb Chowdhury

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages:297

Price: Rs 1,299

This is a fascinating book on a movie icon who remains part of the collective consciousness of Bengalis all over the world even 40 years after his death. Biographies of super-achievers (mahanayak, in this case) often fail to go beyond felicitous homages, but Sayandeb Chowdhury, the author of Uttam Kumar: A life in Cinema, has gone off the beaten track. Result: A dispassionate assessment of a phenomenon called Kumar whose life and times come alive due to the perspective the author brings in.

Everyone knows about the meteoric rise of a certain Arunkumar Chattopadhyay into Uttam Kumar, and the book traces that journey with painstaking research. But the best part of the book is the author’s attempt to explain the larger issues of whether the star became a victim of his own success, whether his stardom was a major asset for Bengali cinema, or was it, in the final assessment, a massive liability.

There are no easy answers to these questions but the star’s increasing vulnerability to petitions for miserable, tasteless populism in his later years lends credence to the view that he couldn’t avoid the trap of trying to keep the “hero” in him alive. His diehard admirers would say, of course, that the Bengal film fraternity failed him by continuing to give him insipid roles that did no justice to the actor’s supreme talent. The real truth perhaps lies in between.   

This was destined to end in a moment of heartbreak. And it did. One day in 1980, Kumar accosted Satyajit Ray’s long-time assistant Punu Sen on the precincts of a Tollygunge studio. “Punu, ask Manikda (Ray) if he has any roles for me. Even an insignificant, walk-on role would do. I can’t continue to do anymore the rot I am doing,” Kumar had said in an unguarded moment. The Dantesque descent of the once mighty hero could not have been more telling. Within two days of this conversation with Sen, Kumar was to suffer his fatal cardiac arrest.

Sometime in 1980, months before his death, Kumar wrote in an autobiography, which was released after his death: “No one has ever seen me arriving because I didn’t. I pushed myself in… and then I aimed for the sky. I couldn’t stop as I couldn’t play the assassin of my own soaring drive. But then it has been long. I am now tired….”

One has to agree reluctantly with the author's apparently harsh comment that to avoid the ignominy of being consigned to history while still being alive, Kumar, who didn’t arrive overnight, left in a huff at the young age of 53.

His first real failure was a debacle called Chhoti Si Mulaqat, which was his Bollywood debut as an actor and producer in 1967. It was an expensive film in which the star had invested his own money, but it bombed at the box office, leading not only to a state of despondency and financial ruin but also the first of several cardiac arrests.

The author has a lot of roses to offer to the memory of the actor, too. One of the highlights of the book is the detailed analysis of the enigma — how 40 years into his afterlife, Kumar remains what was when he died: The greatest icon ever to have graced Bengali cinema. Satyajit Ray had summed up his appeal quite succinctly in 1971. “A star is a person on the screen who continues to be expressive and interesting even after he or she has stopped doing anything,” the director with whom Kumar worked in two momentous films – Nayak  and Chiriyakhana  — had said.

In that sense, Kumar’s legacy is unparalleled. One of the explanations for this prolonged hold over the Bengali public imagination is his superlative acting talent; he was essentially a brilliant actor who also became a star. Add to that his ceaseless hard work for close to three decades, charm and his typical bhadralok  good looks.

The anecdotes throughout the book add to its appeal. Did you know, for example, that Kumar’s acting debut was in an unreleased Hindi film in 1947, and that he earned the sobriquet of “flopmaster-general” after a series of duds over five years at the beginning of his career? Just when he was resigned to giving up acting and going back to his job as a clerk at the Calcutta Port Commissioners, Basu Poribar  (1952) and  Sharey Chuattor (1953) happened, the latter launching his fabled pairing with Suchitra Sen. Overnight, the thinly built Kumar, once ridiculed for his crop of oiled back-brushed hair and thick lips, became a matinee idol.

The book goes into details of the famed Uttam-Suchitra partnership which has become part of folklore, and the author comes up with a reality check which takes some the sheen out of the duo’s Midas touch at the box office. Of the 30 films they did together over 22 years, as many as 14 appeared in just three years — from 1956 to 1958 — which turned to be their peak years. But overuse of the screen couple in hastily written films and an over-mining of their commercial appeal led to a sudden and steep decline. None of the films between 1959 and 1962 came even remotely close to the aura at the peak of their success. The screen pair was quick to read the tea leaves and decided to pull out of their partnership by mutual consent.

In Saptapadi, the legendary duo was seen humming that unforgettable song, wishing that the road never ends  (Ei path jodi na sesh hai…) . But the road did end — much sooner than their diehard fans expected, once again exposing the huge gulf between reel life and real life.