BIMAL ROY- the genius and master craftsman

Born on july 12/1909 was an Indian film director. He is particularly noted for his realistic and socialistic films like Do Bigha Zamin,Devdas, Parineeta, Biraj Bahu, Madhumati, Sujata, and Bandini, making him an important director of Hindi cinema.He was born into an old landholding family in former East Bengal, (Bangladesh). After his father’s death, Roy was thrown out of the Zamindari by the estate manager. Young, penniless, he moved to Calcutta with his widowed mother and infant brothers.

Bimal Roy’s debut feature film Udayer Pathewas made in Bengali in 1944. The film was subsequently released in Hindi as Humraahi .The most significant Information from that film is that the film featured three songs of Rabindranath Tagore, most significantly the full version of “Jana Gana Mana”, which later became India’s national anthem.The 3.2-minute version was composed by RC Boral and rendered by a chorus. Bimal da used it in the film’s opening credits

Roy came to Mumbai, apparently at Ashok Kumar’s behest, to direct Bombay Talkies’s Maa(1952).

With Bombay Talkies on a downward spiral, Ashok Kumar asked Roy to direct his own production Parineeta (1953), starring Meena Kumari and himself. Influenced by the neo-realist Italian cinema,though Parineeta, based on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel, was a sweet little love story about neighbours, conventions and inhibitions; but the deeply humanist Do Bigha Zameen which involves us in a poor peasant’s visceral struggle to save his patch of land won wide acclaim at Cannes and Karlovy Vary Film Festivals and went on to become a cinematic reference point back home.Madhumati was his all time Hit that won Roy Filmfare’s Best Director Award setting off another hat-trick with awards for Sujata and Parakh.

The women in his movies played powerful, defining roles like the orphan and untouchable Sujata (played by Nutan) in ‘Sujata’ and a tribal girl, Madhumati (played by Vyjayantimala) whose songs have a haunting feel in ‘Madhumati’

Roy’s collaboration with Nutan resulted in two dramatic classics. Sujata (1959), the first, charmingly and convincingly argued for a more humanistic society where caste differences did not determine a person’s destiny.The other Bandini was based on a novel by Jarasandha. Roy and Nutan brought to startling life a remarkable woman whose binding love for a revolutionary brings about her ruination as well as deliverance.

After Bandini, Roy was to start a film, but death claimed him in 1966(8th Jan). Roy was only 57,