A postscript on remembering Harisadhan Dasgupta – a forgotten filmaker
iView Author: Biswa Prasun Chatterji (Mumbai, India)
Email: biswaprasun [at] gmail [dot] com
A postscript on remembering Harisadhan Dasgupta – a forgotten filmaker
In response to interest generated by my blog on Harisadhan Dasgupta I
write this as a postscript. I agree,the incidents that I remember about
his eventful life are enough to make a movie spanning several nations and
diverse set of International movers and shakers of a bygone era. Allow me
to recollect one by one. But please be assured that by this article I do
not try to malign anybody, living or dead. These are about interesting
individuals and their far more interesting choices about life. And these
are not figments of my imagination. Harisadhan himself told me and I am
writing these from my memory.
Ingrid Bergman and Isabella Rossellini…..both came to Calcutta to meet
Harisadhan.
Surprised ? Baffled ? I was too when he told me this. I was incredulous
even. Coming from an educated family of Bengal who, for generations,
enjoyed avant garde movies of Hollywood in choicest of Calcutta cinema
halls like Metro, New Empire, Lighthouse, Minerva, Ingrid Bergman was not
unknown to me in 1993. What I knew from Harisadhan is this….Ingrid Bergman
was sweetheart of America in 1940s (Madhuri Dixit of Hollywood…shall I
say, for lack of better description of her iconic status? ). When she fell
for Roberto Rossellini and decided to leave America, the whole nation
erupted in protest. But madly in love, Ingrid married Rossellini and left
for Italy where she gave birth to a daughter Isabella Rossellini.
Rossellini , being a suave womanizer lost interest in Ingrid in no time.
In fact Rossellini household in Italy was not unaware of his penchant for
bringing the ‘surprise’ visitors of fairer sex from distant shores. Sonali
Dasgupta, the much-married wife of Harisadhan was one such surprise. A
sophisticated, fluently English speaking ,doe eyed and dusky lady in sari
became a centre of attraction in Rossellini household in no time. And do
not forget a small kid in tow with her. That kid was adopted by Roberto
Rossellini who named him as Gil Rossellini (Does the name ring a bell in
serious cinephiles ? ). I will come to that later.
Isabella, being a small child at the time Sonali and Gil arrived, became
fond of them. And this fondness continued so much that, in quest of the
past life of her step-mother Sonali , Isabella came to Calcutta to spend a
week or so with Harisadhan. Hari dadu told me he was charmed by this
vivacious daughter of Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman. Touched by
her candor and curiosity Harisadhan went for a deep introspection- a
‘loud soul-searching’, shall I say ? Isabella is a professional model
turned actor turned filmmaker. She listened to his side of the story with
sensitivity. So at the time of leaving Isabella told him that she would
like to make a movie on Harisadhan-Sonali-Rosellini trio and name it as
“No road to escape”. Hari dadu liked this name because it summarily
described his life- his inevitableand relentless trauma and pain. I felt
he was sort of a prisoner of his circumstances from which he could never
escape. After his death, I still remember, his last interview was
published in a popular Bengali magazine ‘Sananda’ with this title “Palabar
poth nei” (Bengali for No road to escape, I still have that paper-cutting
in Kolkata). What an apt title!
How Ingrid Bergman evaded Indian paparazzi I do not know. But Ingrid
indeed visited Harisadhan in Calcutta as I have heard from him. In fact
after she took note of the womanizing habit of Rossellini she divorced him
and left him for good. What I knew from Hari dadu she came to meet
Harisadhan at the last stage of her life when she was battling with breast
cancer. She might have come to lessen his sorrow and share her bad
feelings about Rossellini after her daughter Isabella went back meeting
Harisadhan. But Hari dadu never disclosed much details of Ingrid’s
clandestine visit to me for obvious reasons. I was a kid compared to him.
So by now the reader may have realized how eventful Harisadhan’s life has
been. It was a Gaussian curve.
I end this blog with another fact I remember about Gil Rossellini. Gil,
the younger son of Harisadhan, became a member of Rossellini family by
adoption. He also went on to become a filmmaker. Recently he came to news
for his documentary ‘Kill Gill’ featured in Venice film festival.
Anandabazar Patrika flaunted his Indian origin and Bengal connection. But
I remember Gil Rossellini from an entirely different angle. Gil was the
distributor of the Oscar winning film “Life is beautiful” by Roberto
Benigni. Gil came to India to promote this film in November 2000 , if I
may remember correctly. I saw him in a late night interview in NDTV hosted
by Prannoy Roy. I never knew him but the moment I saw him I exclaimed and
called my mother (she knew Harisadhan too) and we knew he must be
Harisadhan’s son. In a strange irony of fate, Gil Rosselllini , who never
lived with biological father more than a year, resembled Harisadhan
Dasgupta physically ,more than his elder son Raja Dasgupta ever could.
What a life!
I end this blog here.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Fabulous reading all of this. Oh Yes, I know Gil Rossellini and his work in the Italian Film Industry.
In fact, he is now the only connection from Bengal in anyway in Italy!
Sad!!!!
Wow!that was really interesting Biswa.Do keep sharing more such vignettes with us.
Thanks. I have more anecdotes about Ray, Ghatak, Uttam Kumar and others. I will share one by one if you want.
Biswa Prasun
@ biswa- Wow!Ray,Ghatak,Uttam Kumar etc- neki aur pooch pooch, definitely would like to read those.Keep them coming !!!
Extremely interesting and informative narration. I would love to read more personal tales from you about the legends you have mentioned.
Btw, do you have your own blog ?
Thanks UH. But I do not have my own blog.
gil died few months back
Hi Birsa
Are you hari dadu’s grandson ? yes i read about gil’s death.
thanks.
biswa prasun