Hemanta Kumar Mukhopadhyay - Movie Production

Movie Production

In the late 1950s, Hemanta ventured into movie production under his own banner Hemanta-Bela productions. The first movie under this banner was a Bengali film directed by Mrinal Sen, titled Neel Akasher Neechey (1959). The story of this film was based on the travails of a Chinese street hawker in Calcutta in the backdrop of India's freedom struggle. The movie went onto win the President's Gold Medal – the highest honour for a movie from Government of India. In the next decade, Hemanta's production company was renamed Geetanjali productions and it produced several Hindi movies such as Bees Saal Baad, Kohraa, Biwi Aur Makaan, Faraar, Rahgir and Khamoshi – all of which had music by Hemanta. Almost all of these, except Bees Saal Baad and Khamoshi, weren't major commercial successes. Back in Bengal, Hemanta scored music for a movie titled Palatak in 1963 where he experimented with merging Bengal Folk Music and light music. This proved to be a major success and Hemanta's composition style changed noticeably for many of his future films in Bengal such as Baghini, and Balika Badhu. In Bengali films Manihar and Adwitiya, both of which were major musical as well as commercial successes, his compositions had a light classical tinge. In 1961, for commemorating Rabindranath Tagore's birth centenary, Gramophone company of India featured Rabindrasangeet by Hemanta in a large portion of its commemorative output. This too proved to be a major commercial success. Hemanta also went on several overseas concert tours in this period including his trip to the West Indies. Overall, in the 1960s decade he retained his position as the major male singer in Bengal, and, as a composer and singer to be reckoned with in Hindi films.

It was in the 1960s that he was the predominant and lead male voice in many of Tagore's musical dramas like "Valmiki Pratibha", "Shyama", "Sapmochan","Chitrangada" and "Chandalika". Together with Kanika Bandopadhyay (1924–2000) and Suchitra Mitra (1924–2010)who were the lead female voices in these, he was part of the Rabindrasangeet triumvirate that was both popular and respected and was referred as 'Hemanta-Kanika-Suchitra' and along with Debabrata Biswas, this quartet was and still continues to be most heard exponents of Tagore compositions.