Tribute To A Master

His work set a standard that others could hope to equal or surpass but, regrettably,none did in this country in the last 47 years. While film history hasbeen extremely kind to Satyajit Ray, it has, in equal measure, been unkind toSubrata Mitra.

Cinema, the pundits tell us, is a director's medium just as the theatre isthe actor's. Both of the observations, to say the least, are erroneous. Thecinematographer -- the cameraman, of old -- was and still continues to be theone who captures the director's vision on film and creates the ground forits interpretation. It is he who gives the viewer a glimpse into the director's mindand soul. It would not be wrong to suggest that Satyajit Ray's prodigious growth as a filmmaker was indirect proportion to Mitra's as a cinematographer.

Afterall, he photographed Ray's finest work. Who can forget The Apu Trilogy,Paras Pathar, Devi, Jalsaghar, Kanchanjanga, Mahanagar, Charulata andNayak? With his departure, the visual quality in Ray's films, and, onoccasion, the artistic quality as well deteriorated, though the change wassubtle.  

The post-Mitra films wore a more home-made look; their elegancemore approachable. Mitra was succeeded by his modest and worthy assistantSoumendu Roy in the unit, who was literally reduced to doing the lighting,which he did very well, while the director took over as camera operator -- inretrospect, limiting the visual possibilities in many of the latter films.

Ray and Mitra fell out because of the former's tendency to try and operatethe camera, which is a specialist's job. He tried that once or twice duringthe shooting of Charulata and then again in Nayak, much to the chagrin ofhis gifted cameraman. Time has decided in Mitra's favour. The films that hephotographed for Ray are visually and on the whole artistically,discernibly superior to the ones that were produced after his departure.

His career was to an extent thwarted by his pride in his work. He did notcount the cost, when he turned down project after project in the secondhalf of his career because they were below his artistic expectations. Buthe did go to Bombay at the insistence of Shailendra, the legendary lyricistof Hindi cinema who produced Teesri Kasam. His black and white photographyadded stature to this bitter-sweet love story that had Waheeda Rehman andRaj Kapoor in the lead. 

His lambent visuals in two other B/W filmsShakespearewala, and before that The Householder directed by James Ivoryfor the Merchant-Ivory banner came in for lavish praise. He did one moreHindi film after that -- New Delhi Times, a stylish political thriller incolour directed by Ramesh Sharma in 1989. The film won him his firstnational award for cinematography. 

He should have got many more.

His work in colour opened new vistas for Indian cameramen as his B/Wefforts had done earlier. Kanchenjunga (1962) was the most refined colourexperiment in our cinema. This was made possible despite the fact thatcolour processing and printing in India was in its infancy those days. Hisother noteworthy work in this medium is Victor Bannerjee's An AugustRequiem (1981). Mention must also be made of his exquisite handling ofcolour in Rumtek, a documentary on a Buddhist Tibetan monastery nearDarjeeling, also directed by Ramesh Sharma.

The parting of ways with Merchant-Ivory productions came in the early 1970sallegedly because of his temperament and fussy nature.  He supposedlyslowed things down by treating every shot as if it were the most importantone in the film. He had, however, done in the meanwhile two more films, also incolour -- The Guru and Bombay Talkie -- for them,  with his usual quiet elegance.

It is indeed a pity that his career was limited to twenty feature films -fifteen in B/W and five in colour and two or three documentaries.Filmmakers, young and old were afraid to approach him because of his grave,and on occasion, forbidding appearance and of course his principledattitude. His work was however greatly appreciated abroad, particularly bythe French.

In the final years of his life he was a visiting professor at the SatyajitRay Film and Television Institute, Calcutta, where he won a set of admirersamongst the young. Till the very end he remained a champion ofsource-lighting, a technique of establishing the direction of lightilluminating a shot in a film and, because of it, defining its visual logicand mood. His other commitment was to poetic realism, which he thought wasthe recipe for memorable cinema. 

In art and in life he was always his ownman, full of feeling but no mush.