Shakti Samanta : Tum mujhe youn bhula na paaoge
Noted film maker of Indian film industry, Shakti Samanta passed away this evening in Mumbai at the age of 83. He was recovering after suffering a stroke recently.
Since his directorial debut with Bahu in 1954, he had given us some of the most memorable films of last fifty years including Howrah Bridge, China Town, Kashmir Ki Kali, An Evening in Paris, Aradhana, Kati Patang, Amar Prem, Amanush, Mehbooba and Anand Ashram. He was a stylish film maker but could also connect with the audience thru emotional quotient served in his films and most of his films enjoyed commercial success at the box office. His films will also be remembered for great and immortal melodies, like one of the songs in Pagla Kahin Ka has writing on the wall “Jab kabhi bhi sunoge geet mere, sang sang tum bhi gungunaaoge.. Tum mujhe youn bhula na paaoge”
Apart from film making under his banner Shakti Films, Shakti Samanta also served the industry as the Chairman of Censor Board (CBFC) and President of IMPAA (Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association) for many years.
PFC Pays Tribute to the Legendary Film Maker.
May his soul rest in peace!
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
Sad news. May his soul rest in peace.
His contribution to Hindi cinema can never be forgotten. Man gave so many good films to hindi cinema.
A kind of soft touch remained a constant factor of most of his films and it was certainly USP of his films.
It’s little hard to accept that same man who directed Aradhana, Kati Patang, Anurodh, Anurag, Amanush, Amar Prem, also directed Howrah Bridge, China Town and most notably The Great Gambler starring Amitabh Bachchan.
TGG was quite different in his filmgraphy. Stylish and what a good music it had.
We should dedicate one-two days to write only on his films.
I can never get the images of aradhana out of my head and whenever I see a train on a hillstation – there are only two movies I think of – Aradhana and Moondram Pirai (Sadma).
The song ‘Yeh shaam mastaani’ from Kati patang is another one I will take to my grave.
It is an end of a journey and one more dignified film maker kicks the bucket – who is there to replace him?
Such Achievers cant be replaced. Others can try to follow similiar path on which these guys were walking.
It is hard to imagine that today’s directors would like to walk on that path where films had soft sensitivities.
Now they keep elements in films to give shock value to the audiences. Things are included as parts of gimicks.
Moreover today’s directors dont watch Old hindi films or Indian films. Most of the time They watch DVDs of filmmakers of other countries . they take inspiration from films based on other type of stories set in different culture hence a patching work is visible in almost all the films made by majority of today’s directors.
It will not be a surprise that if an honest survey is done then 80% of the directors might not have seen films of Indian masters. It may be hard to find DVDs of old Indian master filmmakers at their home in their vast DVD collection.
Once in a while they might have seen few films here and there but not seriously.
and this lack of Interest in old films is reflected in their films because they always seem like set in false land. No connection with collective presentation of this country. Totally foreign material.
This was the beauty of filmmakers like Shakti Samanta that they could make beauiful films representing Indian literature, Indian people and Indian understanding. Nothing was borrowed there. that made their films authentic and appealing.
Shaktida will remain evergreen in our memories through his movies.He had a lot of variety be it an Aradhana,Amar Prem,Amanush etc which were more artistic or outright entertainers like Kati Patang,The Great Gambler,Barsaat Ki Raat,Kashmir Ki Kali etc.The best thing about his movies is that all of them had lovely music- be it a Chingari Koi Bhadke, Roop Tera Mastana,Pyar Deewana Hota Hai,Do Lafzon Ki Hai,Dil Aisa Kisi ne merea thoda etc- all of them were gems.End of an era- May his soul RIP.
Hum Tumhein yoon bhula na payenge..
Thanks a ton for movies like Aradhana, Amanush, Amar Prem and the stylish The Great Gambler
@RK
Seriously Man,however unrealistic the premise may be,but old hindi films still make great entertainment.One artist friend of mine, pointed that realism in painting and sculptures is actually derived from west, whereas our art form like of Ajantha sculptures and paintings are more surrealistic.And The old Hindi films still made us believe in the unrealistic premise and even today it still holds our attention.Technique might not be great,but emotions are portrayed were powerful mixtures,experimentation was there and surprisingly it was accepted by people.May be then films were treated as unique project which makes money. Today it is much more like assembly line.I think today we have many good businessman and few good filmmakers,and we definitely miss someone Shakti Samant who understands and respects both art and business. Anyway there so much to learn from old hindi
The good filmmakers of past were well versed in portraying emotions and sentiments while catering for Indian sensibilities. I don’t see the movies with same sentiments and emotions anymore. So while Dev.D can be ‘cinematically’ a very good movie it still leaves me dissatisfied seeing the things have become so materialistic.
After Bimal Roy, Shakti Samanta was another example of sheer talent to start from scratch and changing the face of Hindi films forever.
His creations are immortal and loved by all.
His Bengali films Amanush and Anusandhan (the bong version of Barsaat ki ek raat) were very popular too.
He will always be remembered as one of the greatest contributors to Indian film Industry and Hindi film msuic.
May his soul RIP.
Loved his Kati Patang, Amanush, Amar Prem, Evening in Paris, Aaradhana, Kashmir Ki Kali. I can still watch his entertainers again and again over some of the “slick” assembly line stuff we keep getting. I thought The Great Gambler was quite well shot, pretty slick for its times, dunno why it was such a big flop.
Last but not the least, his movies had fabulous songs.
Baar Baar Dekho- Chinatown
All the songs from Kashmir Ki Kali, Evening in Paris, Kati Patang, Amar Prem, Aaradhana.
Do Lafzon ki hai dil ki Kahani-Great Gambler
Saara Pyaar Tumhara- Anand Ashram
Hum Dono Do Premi, Bheegi bheegi raaton Mein-Ajnabee
Na Poocho Koi Humein- Amanush
Dil Aisa Kisine Mera Toda- Amanush
Anand Ashram to me remains one of Shakti Da’s more underrated movies, very personal, very touching. Loved Uttam Kumar in both Anand Ashram, and Amanush. Sadly could not see many movies of his more, barring Ray’s Nayak.
Shakti Da’s best flicks seemed to come when set in Bengal or Kolkata- Amar Prem, Howrah Bridge, China Town, Anand Ashram, Amanush. Maybe it was the familiarity of the milieu for him.
In many ways Shakti Da also came up with great concepts. He shot movies totally abroad( Evening in Paris, Great Gambler). China Town came up with this concept of look alikes-one good, one bad, good guy replaces bad guy, something which was later implemented in Sacha Jhootha and Don.
Shakti Da, Rajesh Khanna, RDB made one last ditch attempt to re create their magic with Alag Alag, however the movie was a massive failure, and i think after that Shakti Da, was not very active. In fact one reason for RDB being sideline during the 80’s was that two of his most persistent backers Shakti Samanta and Nasir Hussain, were not as active as they were during the 70’s.
sad news for movie-lovers all across the country. may his soul rest in peace.
as ratnakar has mentinoed, shakti-da became very inactive after some of his later movies were massive flops. besides, the age and bad-health was catching up with him.
for those who are not updated about the bengali movie-scene, Shakti-da had also directed “Debdas” around the same time as the SLB (over-the-top, IMO) version, where Prosenjit played Debdas, and Tapas Paul played Chunni babu.
i remember our next-door neighbour’s son was approached by Shakti-da’s production house (throgh some source, i do not know…) to play the role of the childhood Debdas, and on one such occassion, he came over to our building to talk shop with the boy. unfortunately i was in the office at tht time, so cudnt meet him.
the point i want to make here is abt the simple and down-to-earth attitude shakti-da had even at that age, for a virtual non-entity like the boy who wud play the junior-debdas, so much as to come over personally to meet the boy’s parents, and even describe the role-requirement to them.
i asked the boy’s parents, and they said shakti-da had personally come to convince them that their kidwud b safe with his production house, and they need not worry abt the child being swayed by the limelight. shakti-da had also promised that if he finds enough spark in the boy, he might even consider him for his future projects.
unfortunately, that never happened. (whether the boy had spark/promise, i do not know yet..)
salute to such a humble personality..
May his soul Rest in Peace. Need to catch up on a lot of his movies.
May his soul rest in peace… his movies have made him immortal… long live…
Shaktibabu was not a maestro in world cinema. But he achieved commercial success while trying to keep up with times. He had been hardly active in the last decade or so, but till the mid-80s he kept making films with an indeliable imprint.
It must not have been easy for someone from Burdwan to make it SO big in Mumbai. I am sure his innovations played a part.
He served the Bangla film industry well too. He truned towards Tollygunje at the peak of his career and there, too, he did not conform to the existing pattern of commercial films.
Many people have sneered at him for starting a trend of ‘Bombaisation’ of Bangla films, they have failed to appreciate his novelty. Making Uttam Kumar tick in a film like Amanush despite his middle-age bulge or garnering such a confident performance in Bangla from Amitabh Bachchan in Anusandhan was commendable as was the way he presented Mithun Chakraborty in Anyay Abichar. It’s sad that AA can’t be watched by more Hindi film lovers.
Come to think of that, it could have been Tollygunje’s Ghulami with some techincal finesse. But what he could achieve within the constraints of the Bangla film industry by blending his Bollywood experience/connection is just hats off!
We will be greatful to him for presenting one of the very few celluloid portrayals of Sunderban that we have in Amanush and AA.
Personally, I will remember him every time I take the Hill Cart Road from Siliguri to Darjeeling. And I know, I will try to compere the Paradise on Earth with his film whenever I visit Kashmir for the first time.
Niyoti Amar Bhaggo Loye Je Nishidin Khela Kore/Bedonar Baluchore
(Nemesis plays a game day and night with my destiny/On the sandbank of suffering)… Amanush
RIP
Amar Prem is one of my most favourite films.Specially the climax was done briliantly.He has given us sooo many hit films all having great music.Shammi Kapoor,Sharmila and Rajesh Khanna did some of their biggest hits with him.But still I would like to remember Howrah Bridge because at that time the cabarets were very new in hindi films.I never forget the image of Madhubala singing “aayiye meherban”.And of course as mentioned earlier whenever we see a hill station,”mere sapno ki rani” comes to our mind.Any song picturised on car/train in hill station will always be comapred to this evergreen song which gave us two biggest superstars in hindi cinema-Rajesh Khanna and Kishore Kumar.Another notable fact about his films was that a lot of actresses got their only filmfare in his films.For example Sharmila(Aradhana) and Asha Parekh(Kati Patang) got their only best actress award in his films even though they have done a lot of movies.
@ 10>>
Ratnakar, You stay in Bhubaneswar, if I am not wrong. If that is the case then you can easily watch Uttam Kumar’s films on ETV Bangla which is available from cablewallas in Odisa. The channel, like other Bangla channels (which I am not sure are available in the state or not), runs Uttam-films quite regularly. Not all of them are great, though. Of course, you will have to endure the irritation of advertisemnets popping up every now and then.