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It's a sad end to the glorious era of Bengali cinema. Suchitra Sen will be remembered as an actor with an enormous screen presence and a person with great dignity.
Suchitra's entry to Bengali cinema was in the post-partition years, when the Bengali middle class audience was engrossed in the romanticism of 'perfection'. She went on to become the irreplaceable pair to actor Uttam Kumar, who appealed to the middle class audience's imaginations.
Sen was at her best with directors Ajay Kar and Asit Sen. My personal favourites are Dweep Jele Jai and Saath Paake Bandha. She, along with Uttam Kumar, appealed to that section of the audience and went on to give blockbuster films like Saptapadi, Harano Sur, Agnipariksha and so on.
She ruled the film industry between the 1950s and 1960s. Sen's market was fairly big, as movies were also released in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) along with numerous standalone theatres in Kolkata. Bengali films, in those times, would also run in theatres in Bengali inhabited cities like Allahabad, Varanasi and Delhi.
However, in the late 70s, she chose to become a recluse. She might have wanted to be remembered as the Suchitra Sen of her glorious days.
The dignified exit from the tinsel town did not go down well with the media. From time to time, they tried to encroach upon her private space by teasing the audience's curiosity.
Today, it's an end of a golden chapter in the Bengali cinema.
The author is a film director
