The Bengali Film Industry Has Become Bankrupt

Goutam Ghose is one of the last remaining stalwarts of the Bengali parallel movie movement, along with Sandip Ray. Although he is a product of the new wave cinema, his style is quite different from that of doyens of the industry like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak. In an exclusive interview with THE WEEK, Ghose talks about the masters of the new wave movement and the dramatic decline of Bengali cinema.

- Rabi Banerjee

INTERVIEW/ Goutam Ghose, director

Edited excerpts:

Q/ Why is Pather Panchali considered to be the first modern Indian film?

A/ Before Pather Panchali, the Kolkata audience had never seen an Indian village in cinema. The movie had such a detailed structure and it was such a perfect art form. The social circle reviews and intellectual discussions in Kolkata, which were strong back then unlike today, gave the film a new life. It was a new cinematic experience, which ultimately became timeless.

Q/ Was Satyajit Ray the first Indian director whose works were shown abroad?

A/ No. Debaki Bose was the first director whose film was shown in Venice. Ray, however, took cinema to an international level in a different way as a classical art form. Bose was a cameraman before turning director. Another cameraman who became director was Nitin Bose. Then came Pramathesh Barua. They were ignored because of Pather Panchali.

Q/ Why was it so?

A/ Ray was a class act. He followed the advice of [French director] Jean Renoir and got influenced by [Italian director Vittorio] De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. His research on European and Hollywood films took his first film to a new level.

Q/ How was the interaction between Ray and Renoir?