BIMAL ROY (1909-1966)

by Vinay Lal

Few directors have left such a mark on Indian cinema as Bimal Roy. His contemporary, Ritwik Ghatak, himself celebrated as one of the supreme masters of cinema, has written that he worshipped Bimalda (as he was popularly known), and recent works of Hindi cinema, such as the remade version of Devdas (with Shah Rukh Khan) and Lagaan (with Amir Khan) bear testimony to the enduring influence of Bimal Roy’s work. His name is indelibly linked to some of the masterpieces of Indian cinema, including Do Bigha Zameen (1953), Parineeta (1953), Madhumati (1958), Sujata (1959), and Bandini (1963).

Bimal Roy was born into a landholding family in Dacca in then East Bengal. The estate manager is said to have thrown him and his family out of the estate upon the death of Bimal Roy’s father. They made their way to Calcutta, among the many migrants who, in twentieth-century India, have enacted a similar journey. Bimal Roy started working as an assistant cameraman and cameraman on documentaries in 1932-33, but his foray into cinema effectively commenced when he was hired as a publicity photographer by Promothesh Barua, whose Devdas (1935) would become a landmark film. At Calcutta’s famous New Theatres, which helped to define cinema for a bhadralok audience, Roy was engaged as an assistant to cameraman Nitin Bose where he soon won a reputation for his command over lighting and composition. He worked on close to ten films as a cameraman before venturing forth as a director with his film, Udayer Pathey (1944, Bengali; remade in Hindi as Humrahi, 1945), which in many ways echoes the aesthetic, moral, and political sensibility so strongly on display in his films of the 1950s.

The collapse of New Theatres, the pressures of World War II upon Calcutta, and the advent of Bombay cinema all heralded a new phase in the life of Bimal Roy. His own migration to Bombay, one might say with a touch of exaggeration, precipitated his understanding of the migration from rural areas to urban centers as one of the great social phenomena of independent India. Roy directed Maa (Hindi, 1952) for Bombay Talkies, but one can view this as a prelude to his efforts, soon to bear fruit, to leave an ineradicable mark on Indian cinema. Do Bigha Zameen (“Two Acres of Land”, Hindi, 1953) was the inaugural film of Bimal Roy Productions – and if Bimal Roy intended to make a statement upon his arrival in Bombay, he surely did so with this extraordinary film. He elicited a stellar performance from Balraj Sahni, who plays a peasant (Shambu) caught up in a cycle of debt to the local landlord. Desperate to save his land from being auctioned off, Shambu departs for the city and accidentally takes up the work of a cycle rickshawallah. Bimal Roy’s social sensibility and humanity are palpably on display in this superb film, which won him many international accolades.