RIP Basu Chatterjee: Master storyteller who made the common man his hero

The 1970s had been maybe the heyday of star energy in Hindi movies. In the period of the ‘angry young man’, two administrators, specifically Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee, made the ‘middle-class’ the centre piece of their tales. In the passing away of Babu Chatterjee on Thursday, it’s the finish of the highway for what got here to be often called the middle-of-the-road cinema in Hindi movie world.

Basu Chatterjee’s entry into the movie world was quite late in life. Born in Ajmer in 1930, Basu Chatterjee labored as an illustrator and cartoonist with the weekly tabloid Blitz, run by the charismatic Russi Karanjia, for 18 lengthy years. His first brush with filmmaking would occur solely in 1966, when he assisted Basu Bhattacharya within the Raj Kapoor and Waheeda Rehman starrer Teesri Kasam. Then in 1969, he made his directorial debut with Sara Akash.

Basu Chatterjee gave us gems akin to Vidya Sinha’s Rajnigandha; Amol Palekar’s Chhoti Si Baat, Chitchor and Baton Baton Mein; and Ashok Kumar, Rakesh Roshan and Bindiya Goswami’s Khatta Meetha, amongst others. The heroes by no means punched villains black and blue, the heroines principally wore saris, the houses proven in these movies had been completely satisfied and sunny however minus any fancy trappings. The tales had been at all times these of the widespread women and men, with their on a regular basis considerations.

Basu Chatterjee, after all, did extra – his characters had been actual individuals – they’d each the nice and the dangerous, like in all of us. They had their egos, vainness, their quarrels but in addition their massive hearts, their intrinsic niceness and all of it confirmed in his movies. Nothing was black and white, however numerous shades of gray. In Rajnigandha, for example, Vidya Sinha’s character is torn between her two lovers, her current Sanjay (Amol Palekar) and her pal from the previous, Navin (performed by Dinesh Thakur). She likes them each for various causes, however should choose one.

Also learn: Basu Chatterjee, director of Baaton Baaton Mein and Rajnigandha, dies at 90

Basu Chatterjee labored with nearly all the large names within the trade dominating the trade in that period — Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Rajesh Khanna, Mithun Chakraborty, Jeetendra, Neetu Singh, Dev Anand, Mousumee Chatterjee and Tina Munim to call just a few. However, his finest works occurred with the troika – Amol Palekar, Vidya Sinha and Zareena Wahab. With these actors fronting his tales, he may discover middle-class the way in which he appreciated.

His most profitable movies embody Us Paar (Vinod Khanna and Mousumee Chatterjee), Chhoti Si Baat (Amol Palekar, Tina Munim 1975), Chitchor (1976); Rajnigandha (1974); Piya Ka Ghar (Jaya Bhaduri and Anil Dhawan, 1972), Khatta Meetha, Baton Baton Mein (1979), Priyatama (Jeetendra, Neetu Singh, Rakesh Roshan, 1977), Man Pasand (Dev Anand and Tina Munim), Hamari Bahu Alka (Rakesh roshan, Bindiya Goswami, Utpal Dutt), Shaukeen (Rati Agnihotri and Mithun Chakraborty, 1982), and Chameli Ki Shaadi (1986).

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