As film aficionados around South Asia and the diaspora remember Guru Dutt in his birth centenary year, there is nostalgia and deep affection for the legendary filmmaker who died on October 10, 1964. 

Whether it was suicide or an accidental overdoes of sleeping pills, this gifted auteur would have turned 40 the following year. Tragically, his life was cut short - perhaps by his own despair and despondency and the many vicissitudes that punctuated his personal life and professional trajectory.

An auteur filmmaker

The concept of the auteur filmmaker has its genesis in post-World War II French film criticism of the late 1940s with figures like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard being key proponents. An auteur is a filmmaker, usually a director, whose personal vision and artistic style are strongly reflected in their work, marking them as the ‘author’ of the film. Furthermore, auteur directors exert significant personal control over all aspects of production and their films often exhibit recurring themes, stylistic choices, music, lyrics and a recognizable celluloid signature.

While there were other director-producer-actor filmmakers in Bombay (later Mumbai) at that time, such as Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, Guru Dutt is distinctive as an auteur. While he directed only eight films – each is memorable for a different reason. Alas, his aesthetic imprint on Indian cinema remained relatively under-acknowledged during his life and the films now recognized as masterpieces and cult classics were resurrected two decades after his demise.

The most celebrated films in the Dutt oeuvre -  Pyaasa (1957) and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), explored themes of societal alienation and unfulfilled love respectively. Dutt’s USP or unique selling point – in these two gems was his sensitive exploration of the angst of the committed artist  and the struggles of the human spirit, making him  the unsung  poet of Indian cinema. 

TIME magazine included Pyaasa in its ‘100 Best Films of All Time’. This is beautifully envisioned, exquisitely filmed (thanks to Dutt’s cameraman V.K. Murthy) and deeply poignant story of abject materialism and true love that cannot be pursued. Dutt plays the lead role as the disillusioned poet Vijay with debutant Waheeda Rahman as the female protagonist – the sex worker Gulabo who believes in the poet and loves him, even when society has cast him aside as a failure. 

The poet becomes increasingly bitter and cynical about capitalism and the depredations of  market forces, rejecting the world and at the end of the film, cries out in anguish – ‘yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye toh kya hai’ (what does it mean , even if you win this universe?)

Haunting songs

The songs in both films are haunting and the biographical overtones with Dutt’s own troubled life are more than evident in Kaagaz ke Phool where Dutt plays Suresh Sinha – the highly successful filmmaker who mourns: 

Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam /Tum rahe na tum, hum rahe na hum / Beqarar dil is tarah mile / Jis tarah kabhi hum juda na the /Tum bhi kho gaye, hum bhi kho gaye / Ek raah par chalke do kadam      

(Time has wrought such beautiful tragedy / You're no longer you and I'm no longer me/Our restless hearts met in such a way as if / We were never apart / You were lost and so was I / As we walked a few footsteps on the same path)

Light and shade

It would be misleading to see Guru Dutt as a dark and brooding filmmaker. His filmography is varied and though his best works exude that texture. Dutt’s first film as a director (Baazi, 1951) a stylish crime drama with mass appeal, was made with his lifelong friend Dev Anand under the Navketan banner. 

The next four years saw Dutt at his box-office peak. Audiences loved Aar Paar (1954) with the impish song ‘Sun sun zaalima’ and Mr. & Mrs. 55 (1955) a romantic comedy with social undertones. Evocative music and import-laden lyrics burnished the film’s nuanced wit and humor – who can forget Johnny Walker as the ‘champiwala’ masseuse and the song ‘sar jo tera chakraya’ –  hallmarks of the Guru Dutt films of that period.

For sheer feminine beauty, grace and delicate sensuousness captured on celluloid, I believe nothing can match Dutt’s picturization of Waheeda Rehman in Chaudhvi ka Chand and the title song is mesmerizing. 

Among the great filmmakers of the last century, the Russian maestro Andrei Tarkovsky (1932 - 1986) was an auteur and his concept of ‘sculpting in time’ referred to his distinctive style of filmmaking. The temporal becomes a malleable element, akin to clay for the sculptor - and critics aver that Tarkovsky created a cinematic experience which “immersed viewers in the flow of time, using long takes, unedited footage, and a focus on the subtle relationships between moments.”

Guru Dutt used light and shade in a distinctive manner in all his films, with bewitching close-up shots. It merits repetition that much of the magic was due to his accomplished camera artist Murthy.  “Sculpting with light” in Mani Kaul’s words,  to illuminate the darkness of life with a chiseled yet delicate touch, was an amazing feat of cinematic conception and technical execution – given the rudimentary nature of the cameras, lenses and related equipment that were available at the time.

Belated recognition

While a deep and brooding darkness engulfed Guru Dutt in the last few years of his life, a glowing light is now being focused on his amazing body of work – from Baazi (1951) to Baharen Phir Bhi yengi which was incomplete when the filmmaker died and was completed by his team and released in 1966.

Posterity has been kinder to Guru Dutt and the resurrection of this genius in his birth centenary will hopefully accord him the recognition as a gifted auteur that eluded him in his life.

(The writer is a retired armed forces veteran, strategic analyst and an occasional commentator on the arts and cinema. This piece is published by Sapan in collaboration with South Asia Monitor.)