100 Years Of Guru Dutt: A Star Lost In His Own Brilliance

It was perhaps the greatest tragedy of the silver screen ever played in real life, the story of a troubled soul who strived to convey his struggles of real life through his movies—Vasanth Kumar Shivshankar Padukone, more popularly known as Guru Dutt. The legendary actor/director not only enriched the Hindi film industry repertoire through his soul-stirring stories during his life but also brought the taboo subject of mental health into the public domain in his death.

Guru Dutt directed just eight films in his whole career, which was brought to an abrupt end with his tragic death in 1964. Starting from a typical masala film, Baazi (1951), produced under the banner of Navketan Films, his cinematic journey as a director progressed towards symbolism, culminating in the cult classic Kaghaz ke Phool (1959), produced by Dutt himself. Kaghaz ke Phool failed miserably at the box office. That broke the artist. He never donned the director’s hat again. Today, Kaghaz ke Phool is hailed as one of his finest works.

Guru Dutt’s genius lay in portraying the complexity of his characters through his craft, which included, apart from the script, cinematography. Much like Satyajit Ray, he played with light and shadows, which added an almost surreal quality to his characters. Who can forget the mesmerising number Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam… from his last film, sung by his wife Geeta Dutt? Geeta is said to have bared her soul in the song, making it immortal. The brilliant use of lights and camera angles adds depth to the characters and brings out the range of emotions they are going through, emotions of love, longing, anguish and surrender.

Anyone familiar with Guru Dutt’s work can correlate his professional and personal lives. From 1951 to 1955, his films offer simple romantic stories or crime thrillers interspersed with light-hearted numbers. The magic of romance that his films were weaving on reel reflected in his personal life too, as Guru Dutt fell in love with famous playback singer Geeta Roy. After a courtship of three years, both tied the knot on May 26, 1953. The year 1956 marked a turn in both his professional and personal life. As his craft shifted towards realism and symbolism, so did his journey as an individual. India was at a crossroads socially, economically and politically. How the exigencies of life affected him can be seen in the movies he directed post 1955, namely, Pyaasa and Kaghaz ke Phool. Both are, in a sense, social commentaries.

In 1956, during the making of Pyaasa, Dutt attempted to end his life for the first time. The family didn’t seek professional help, marking it an act of impulse. It was downhill for him from thereon. On October 10, 1964, the artist surrendered himself to that “impulse”. The director, always in search of perfection, had finally called it quits. He was 39.