Ritwik Ghatak at 100: The cloud-capped star of Bangla cinema

Refusing the conventions of mainstream Indian cinema in the 1950s, a group of Bangali filmmakers emerged whose work explored social realism and the wounds of Partition in 1947. This movement later became known as Indian parallel cinema.

Ritwik Ghatak was one of its torchbearers, alongside internationally acclaimed filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray, Tapan Sinha and Mrinal Sen. 

Often hailed as one of Bangla cinema's three maestros — with Ray and Sen — Ghatak found the appreciation he deserved only after his death. He was a meteor flaring through the film industry, a dazzling streak whose true magnitude was only felt in his absence.

Ritwik Ghatak's devotion to cinema was as intense as his ideology and political convictions. He envisioned a society free of exploitation, one devoid of class hierarchies, communal violence, and cultural suppression.

Ashish Rajadhyaksha, a prominent Indian film scholar, described him as a filmmaker without predecessors. His work, Rajadhyaksha argued, belongs "alongside that of the Bangla novelist Manik Bandopadhyay and the teachings of his musical forbearer Ustad Allauddin Khan."

But Ritwik was not like other directors who were solely passionate about cinema; rather, he was more interested in what the medium could offer. He often said, "Film is not a form, it has forms," and what drew him to it was its reach: "It can reach millions of people at one go, which no other medium is capable of." If another art form emerged that could touch more lives, he claimed, he would abandon cinema without hesitation.

The director was born on 4 November 1925 in Zindabazar, Dhaka. After retiring, his father, Suresh Chandra Ghatak, settled in Rajshahi, in a house that is now a homoeopathic college bearing Ritwik's name.

Ritwik's formative years were spent there — at Rajshahi Collegiate School and later Rajshahi College — where he completed his Intermediate of Arts in 1946. However, 1947 changed everything: Partition uprooted his family, forcing them to move to Calcutta. The pain of leaving one's birthplace, of becoming a refugee, was something Ritwik never forgot. It became a wound that bled into his art, shaping his worldview and his films.

Ritwik Ghatak was never the kind of artist who created for awards. He created because he had to, because society's wounds demanded expression. Leaving behind cinema that does not comfort but unsettles, interrogates, and mourns, Ritwik Ghatak remains the mad poet of Bangla cinema.

A poet, a playwright, a visionary — and above all, a filmmaker — Ritwik's creative journey began in words before finding its ultimate expression on celluloid. While studying for an M.A. in English at the University of Calcutta, he developed a keen interest in theatre and, having a love for writing, began scripting plays. That interest gradually shifted towards film and filmmaking.

In a life of just fifty-one years, he completed only eight feature films, ten shorts, and a few documentaries, leaving several projects unfinished. Yet this handful of films was enough to secure him a place among the greatest filmmakers in the world.

His career in cinema began in 1951 with Nemai Ghosh's Chinnamul, in which he appeared as an actor. Two years later, in 1953, he directed his first film, Nagarik. But it was Ajantrik (1958), his second film, that truly established him as a filmmaker.

His films shook the conventional cinematic order, demanding attention to ordinary lives and historical trauma. Soon after, he continued to make one film after another: Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), Komal Gandhar (1961), Subarnarekha (1965), Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1973), and finally Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1977).

Scarred by the famine of 1943 and the displacement of Partition, Ghatak turned to cinema to channel his personal grief and collective memory into powerful storytelling. Meghe Dhaka Tara, Komal Gandhar, and Subarnarekha are often recognised as a trilogy, mapping the alienation, despair, and resilience of displaced communities in Calcutta.

That personal anguish and the lingering sorrow of displacement were always apparent in his work and life. In 1971, during the Bangladesh Liberation War, he could be found on the streets of Kolkata aiding refugees — his art inseparable from activism.

Nearly a decade after a long hiatus, he returned to cinema in 1972, adapting Adwaita Mallabarman's Titash Ekti Nadir Naam. Released in 1973, it was celebrated for the remarkable performance of Prabir Mitra from Bangladesh.

While he was awarded the Padma Shri in 1969 and the National Film Award for Best Story in 1975 for Jukti Takko Aar Gappo, these professional highs came at a great personal cost. After Subarnarekha, he spent years without a project, descending into alcoholism to numb the sting of failure.

On top of that, repeated episodes of fragile mental health culminated in a full breakdown after his final film. He often failed to recognise family and friends, as he struggled with complex schizophrenia — at times violent, at times gentle. He died on 6 February 1976, alone in a hospital ward, aged just fifty-one.

His contemporaries often received accolades and recognition more swiftly, but Ritwik Ghatak was never the kind of artist who created for awards. He created because he had to, because society's wounds demanded expression. Leaving behind cinema that does not comfort but unsettles, interrogates, and mourns, Ritwik Ghatak remains the mad poet of Bangla cinema.