Bengali Cinema - West Bengal Film Industry

West Bengal Film Industry

The contribution of Bengali film industry to Indian film is quite significant. Based in Tollygunge, an area of South Kolkata, West Bengal and is more elite and artistically-inclined than the usual musical cinema fare in India. In the past, it enjoyed a large, even disproportionate, representation in Indian cinema, and produced film directors like Satyajit Ray, who was an Academy Honorary Award winner, and the recipient of India and France's greatest civilian honours, the Bharat Ratna and Legion of Honor respectively, and Mrinal Sen, who is the recipient of the French distinction of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and the Russian Order of Friendship. The early nickname for the Tollygunge film industry, "Tollywood", was also the very first Hollywood-inspired name, dating back to a 1932 article in the American Cinematographer by Wilford E. Deming (due to Tollygunge rhyming with Hollywood) and went on to inspire the name "Bollywood" and other similar names.

Other prominent film makers in the Bengali film industry are Bimal Roy, Ritwik Ghatak, and Aparna Sen. The Bengali film industry has produced classics such as Nagarik (1952) The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), Jalsaghar (1958), Ajantrik (1958), Neel Akasher Neechey (1959), Devdas, Devi (1960), Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), the Calcutta trilogies (1971–1976), etc. In particular, The Apu Trilogy is now frequently listed among the greatest films of all time.

The most well known Bengali actor to date has been Uttam Kumar; he and co-star Suchitra Sen were known as The Eternal Pair in the early 1950s. Soumitra Chatterjee is a notable actor, having acted in several Satyajit Ray films, and considered as a rival to Uttam Kumar in the 1960s He is famous for the characterization of Feluda in Sonar Kella (1974) and Joy Baba Felunath (1978), written and directed by Ray. He also played the adult version of Apu in The World of Apu (1959), also directed by Ray. One of the most well known Bengali actresses was Sharmila Tagore, who debuted in Ray's The World of Apu, and became a major actress in Bengali cinema as well as Bollywood.

The pioneers in Bengali film music include Raichand Boral, Pankaj Mullick and K. C. Dey, all associated with New Theatres Calcutta. Other famous playback singers in Bengali film music were Hemanta Mukherjee, Manna Dey, Shyamal Mitra, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay and Kishore Kumar.

In the 1980s, however, the Bengal film industry went through a period of turmoil, with a shift from its traditional artistic and emotional inclinations to an approach more imitating the increasingly more popular Hindi films, along with a decline in the audience and critical appreciation, with notable exceptions of the works of directors like Gautam Ghose. However, even at this time, a number of actors and actresses enjoyed popularity, including Tapas Paul, Prosenjit, Chiranjit, Rituparna Sengupta and others. However, toward the end of the 90s, with the a number of directors coming increasingly into prominence, including Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Rituparno Ghosh, Gautam Ghose, Aparna Sen, Sandip Ray among others, a number of popular and critically acclaimed movies have come out of the Bengali film industry in recent years. These include, Unishe April, Titli, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Bombaiyer Bombete, Antaheen, etc. and signal a resurgence of the Bengali film industry. Now after 2000 their rise another group of actor (Jeet, Dev, Parambrata, Rudranil), actress(Koel Mallik), (Srabanti Chatterjee), Directors Anjan Dutt, Sekhar Das, Aniruddha Roychodhury, Kaushik Ganguly, Atanu Ghosh, Srijit Mukherji, Raj Chakrobarty, Musicians (Jeet Ganguly). Some of the film like Madly Bangali, Antaheen have truly depicted the image of urban youths.Sekhar das on the other hand took interest in the rural sections of the country and made his first trilogy 'Mahulbanir Sereng',Krantikaal' and 'Kaler Rakhal,'Mahulbanir Sereng' has been highly popular for its novelty of the subject as it portrayed for the first time the lives in the Indian forest.

The female director league from West Bengal consists of Aparna Sen, Sanghamitra Chaudhuri, Satabdi Roy, Satarupa Sanyal, Urmi Chakravarty and Reshmi Mitra.

Jahar Kanungo’s 'Nisshabd' made in 2005 has been critically acclaimed for its originality in the treatment of image and sound.

Eminent Sound Engineers like Anup Mukherjee, Dipankar Jojo Chaki, Bishwadeep Chatterjee have brought a completely different approach to sound design of Bengali films. Sound is now considered to be a very important element of Bengali Cinema. Quite a few films are gathering international acclaim for the same.

The market for Bengali films has expanded to a 340-million-strong Bengali audience in Bangladesh, West Bengal, Tripura and Assam. The industry could truly flourish if films from this state have a proper distribution network. While around 50 films are produced in West Bengal every year, only 30 make it to the theatres.