Viewing Pather Panchali, Ritwik Kumar Ghatak pointed out a flaw that even director Satyajit Ray could not deny. The scene where Sarbajaya (Karuna Bandopadhyay) stitches in the evening beside a lamp was wrongly conceived. Ritwik Ghatak stated that Ray’s idea of rural Bengal was incorrect. He noted that in the 1950s, no married woman did it once the sun set in the villages.
Ritwik Ghatak was a unique filmmaker in his own right. He wrote and directed only seven films, which are considered classics. His soul was deeply rooted in the pathos of the partition of Bengal and its crisis. Through each of his films, Ritwik Ghatak tackled social issues with bold statements and did not hesitate to call a spade a spade. That made him unpopular among certain film circles, but he cared the least.
Initially working at Mumbai’s Filmistan Studio in the early 50s, Ritwik Ghatak understood that Hindi mindless entertainers were not his cup of tea. So, with the help of a Bengali well-wisher from Nagpur, he shifted base to Kolkata to direct films of his own ideology.
His handling of actors was brilliant and different compared to his contemporaries. Remembers Madhabi Mukherjee, “I worked for Ritwikda in his masterpiece, Subarnarekha. It was mainly a director’s film. He moulded me according to his script and maintained the right balance between my emotional and light scenes.”
The way Ritwik Ghatak extracted peerless performances from Anil Chatterjee and Supriya Chowdhury in Meghe Dhaka Tara and Komal Gandhar are lessons in direction.
Ghatak’s sense of music was unmatched. Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, who composed music for the maestro’s Ajantrik, did confess that it was his best experiment with films in Bengali. The legendary sarod exponent did not hesitate to say that Ghatak’s sense of Indian classical music was better than Satyajit Ray’s.
Eminent film scholar Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay says, “Ritwik Ghatak’s editing pattern was unique in the way he edited long shots. He was never influenced by Hollywood and had a style of his own.”
Even Satyajit Ray agreed that he could not be a true Bengali like Ghatak was.
The lack of balance in his personal life took a heavy toll on Ritwik Ghatak. He got addicted to alcohol, and the discipline that was expected of him started waning away in his later days. As Chairman of FTII, Pune, he introduced a sense of discipline and challenge in film education.
Ritwik Ghatak was uncompromising; he was neither as versatile as Satyajit Ray, nor as politically flexible as Mrinal Sen.
His documentary, Amar Lenin, based on the life of the Communist leader, was liked by some and criticised by Mrinal Sen, who found the research for the non-feature film incomplete. Ghatak experimented with a rare narrative in Jukti Takko Galpo. Shedding their theatrical images, Tripti and Shaoli Mitra delivered perfect performances following the language of cinema.
An affectionate person, Ghatak suffered many tragedies that none of his contemporaries or juniors did. When he passed away in Kolkata, both Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen were by his bedside. Sen said that for the first time, he understood how fearful death is, witnessing the death of Ritwik Ghatak.
On the occasion of his centenary, Kolkata International Film Festival is organizing a retrospective of his films in November 2025. Says Chairman of KIFF, Goutam Ghose, “Ritwikda, along with Ray and Sen, taught the Indian film fraternity the right use of cinematic language. We will certainly show our respect to the great departed soul.”
