The wide-ranging cinema of Basu Chatterjee, chronicler of Mumbai's quirks

While Basu Chatterjee captured the rhythms of the metropolis like no other filmmaker, his cinema was remarkably wide-ranging

Filmmaker Basu Chatterjee’s oeuvre will forever be associated with the city of Mumbai. Few directors captured the granular realities of the sprawling metropolis and its people with the sustained insight, empathy and good humour that he brought to the task. It wasn’t the grit and grime that he was interested in. He was drawn by the quirks and foibles of Mumbaikars.  
 

While the city may have dominated his cinematic output, Chatterjee’s versatility as an accomplished storyteller was phenomenal. From solemn literary adaptations to serious-minded chronicles of middle-class lives and struggles, and from light-hearted comedies centred on human idiosyncrasies to intense