Renoir's favourite Indian lensman passes away

KOLKATA: Ramananda Sengupta, the doyen of Indian cinematography who had the unique distinction of having worked with Jean Renoir, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Utpal Dutt, passed away in Kolkata on Wednesday morning. He was 101 and is survived by his son and daughter.
In his long career as a cinematographer and one of the founders of Technicians’ Studio along with Satyen Chattopadhyay, Ashutosh Nag, Mrinal Guhathakurata and Debesh Ghosh, the film industry came to regard Sengupta as a wizard behind the lens who moved beyond Hollywood practices to play with darkness in a way that lent depth to every frame of a film.
Born in 1916 in Dhaka, Sengupta’s tryst with movies started he got to assist cinematographer GK Mehta at the Film Corporation. Finally in 1946, Sengupta filmed ‘Purbarag’ – a film that saw the debut of Hemanta Mukhopadhyay as music composer and Jwahar Roy as actor.
Three years later when Renoir came to India to film ‘The River’, Sengupta landed at Calcutta Movietone during the film’s audition to see the master at work. “On that day, there was no clapper boy available on the sets and Baba took a chance. But he forgot to give the clap at one point and was reprimanded by the producer’s representative. The then cinematographer told Renoir that Baba had come to the sets as his friend. Renoir told Baba that they had mistakenly insulted him and that he could coordinate with his assistant director Harisadhan Dasgupta to know the shooting locations,” said his son Debananda Sengupta.
Once while location-hunting between Barrackpore and Diamond Harbour, there was some discussion on how to shoot a scene with a boat. “There were some issues about how to place a net when Sengupta had volunteered to give the cue for the shot. This smartness had impressed Renoir a lot. Later on, Renoir had even wanted to get him introduced to Chaplin,” said Dolon Ghosh, who has been closely associated with Sengupta during the last years of his life.
‘The River’ was the first technicolor film ever made and Renoir had sent his nephew Claude and Sengupta to London to specially train in this new technology. Thus started a journey that continued over four decades with both corresponding over letters on issues as varied as cinema to the future of mankind.
While shooting Ghatak’s ‘Nagarik’, the director would often ask Sengupta ‘saheb ki bolechhe’ to know about his experiences with Renoir. It was Sengupta who had told Ghatak about how Renoir was deeply affected by seeing the problems of refugees after Partition and had said he would have made films only on that topic if he were from India. “This probably does not prove that Ghatak made several films on the scar of Partition because of this reason. But this certainly triggers an interesting thought,” said director Utsav Mukherjee who had made a documentary on Sengupta titled ‘Under Exposed’.
Over the years, Sengupta went on to work in films like ‘Shilpi’, ‘Megh’, ‘Nishithe’, ‘Headmaster’, ‘Kankabotir Ghaat’, ‘Teen Bhubaner Pare’ and ‘Raat Bhor’. Among these, cinematographer Soumendu Roy picks ‘Nishithe’ and ‘Headmaster’ as his favourites. “I learnt so much from him,” Roy said. Film scholar Sanjay Mukhopadhyay credits Sengupta for introducing expressionist lighting and low angle camera. “He was the first Indian cameraman who showed that light is the principal protagonist in cinema. Yet, his modesty didn’t allow him to flaunt his contribution,” Mukhopadhyay said.
Stories about his interactions of working with Suchitra Sen and his showdown with Uttam Kumar are also heard in the industry corridors. So are the tales of his contributions for running and helping all major directors to work in the Technicians’ Studio. Mukherjee describes his interaction with him as an ‘experience of a lifetime’. “When I first met him, he was 93. A little skeptical about a young guy who would make a film on him, he was quite surprised as well that someone can make a film on him. I don’t know why but somehow he found something honest in my approach and welcomed me wholeheartedly. As a film maker, I just tried to capture his life the way he had narrated it without trying to make it dramatic either in content or in form,” Mukherjee said. Among the numerous anecdotes that Sengupta had narrated Mukherjee was one of him with Tagore. “He was a student of Santiniketan. He remembered an incident of Tagore directing a dance-drama. He told me about how Tagore came to the rehearsals on a regular basis and used to himself dance to show how to get the steps right,” Mukherjee added.
After his cremation, daughter Nandini Sengupta Chakraborty said Sengupta’s only regret was that Siddhartha Maity’s long-pending biography on him hadn’t released. “My father used to say that his is alive only to see his biography and the documentary being released. I don’t know why he never released it. That’s the only regret my father had till he breathed his last.” Maity, on Wednesday, promised that the book will be released in the next Kolkata Book Fair.