Soumitra Chatterjee : Legendary actor, people's superstar and cultural icon passes away at 85

Biswabrata Goswami

Hummingbird News

KRISHNAGAR, 15 NOV: Legendary Indian actor Soumitra Chatterjee, famed for his work with Oscar-winning director Satyajit Ray, has died from Covid complications.

The 85-year-old actor was admitted to hospital in Kolkata city on 6 October after he tested positive for the virus.

He was mourned by fans and critics who avidly followed his six-decade-long career in Bengali language films.

Chatterjee, who starred in more than 300 movies, was also an accomplished playwright, theatre actor and poet.

He tested negative a few weeks after he was admitted to hospital but his condition soon deteriorated and he was put on a ventilator in the last week of October. He died on Sunday morning.

With deep grief I must inform you that my beloved father … my Bapi left us this morning. As a family, we are devastated. Please say a prayer for his soul,” Chatterjee’s daughter, Poulami Bose, informed.

“I humbly and earnestly request you all please do not come over to our place right now. My mother and my sons health is fragile at best. Please do not put them at risk. PLEASE KEEP THE PANDEMIC IN MIND AND PRAY FROM THE SAFETY OF YOUR HOMES. If you all are truly concerned please respect what my father would have wanted.

“Please do not call me or text me. I will speak to everyone when I’m ready. Please give me the space and the privacy that I so desperately need right now. If anyone wishes to meet my mother or my brother please call them. Please please dont contact me now,” she added.

It was Covid-19 encephalopathy that had made his brain weak before eventually turning it unresponsive, leading to a multi-organ failure.

“We declare with heavy heart that Shri Soumitra Chattopadhyay breathed his last at 12-15 pm at Belle Vue Clinic today (15 November 2020). We pay our homage to his soul,” the hospital said in a statement.

Chatterjee had tested positive for coronavirus on October 5 and got admitted to the hospital the very next morning.

He was shooting for a documentary titled ‘Abhijan’ directed by actor Parambrata Chattopadhyay. He last attended shooting at the Bharatlaxmi Studio on October 1. The next shooting schedule was fixed for October 7.

Chatterjee was perhaps best-known for his work with Ray, one of the world's most influential directors and maker of the much-feted Apu Trilogy. The series followed the life of a man who grew up in a Bengali village. The films garnered critical acclaim, winning many awards worldwide, and put Indian cinema on the global map.

The third movie of the trilogy, Apur Sansar, which released in 1959, was also Chatterjee's debut film. He would go on to star as the lead actor in 14 of Ray's films.

Pauline Kael, one of America's most influential and respected film critics, called Chatterjee Ray's "one-man stock company" who moved "so differently in the different roles he plays that he is almost unrecognisable".

Chatterjee was awarded the Dada Saheb Phalke Award, the highest honour in Indian cinema, in 2012 and in 2018, he was given France's highest award, the Legion of Honour.

He began acting when he was in school, where he starred in several plays. He was in college when a friend introduced him to Ray - it was a chance meeting, but it eventually led to Chatterjee's film debut.

"I didn't know what to do when Mr Ray first asked me. I didn't know what was the real difference between stage and screen acting. I was afraid I'd overact," he told Marie Seton, film critic and biographer, in an interview.

Chatterjee's roles in more than a dozen films made by the auteur spanned a wide range.

He played a Sherlock Holmes-like detective in Sonar Kella, an effete bridegroom in Devi, a hot-tempered north Indian taxi driver in Abhijan, a city slicker in Aranyer Din Ratri, and a mild-mannered village priest in Ashani Sanket. He also played what Seton called a "thinly veiled portrait" of Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore in Charulata, one of Ray's most admired films.

"His chief asset was the natural sensitivity of his appearance," Seton wrote of the actor.

Ray, who died in 1992, had said that Chatterjee was an intelligent actor and "given bad material, he turns out a bad performance".

"Not a day passed when I do not think of Ray or discuss him or miss him. He is a constant presence in my life, if not for anything else but for the inspiration I derive when I think about him," Chatterjee told an interviewer.

Chatterjee also played the romantic lead in popular Bengali films, but his appeal, say critics, was more limited than the reigning star, Uttam Kumar.

Over the years, Chatterjee worked with leading directors like Tapan Sinha, Mrinal Sen, Asit Sen, Ajoy Kar, Rituparno Ghosh and Aparna Sen. In 1988, he worked with John Hurt and Hugh Grant in The Bengali Night, a film set in Kolkata.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan, one of India's greatest filmmakers, said that on screen, Chatterjee "became the quintessential Bengali - intellectually inclined, of middle-class orientation, sensitive and likeable".

Courtesy: Info/Images from BBC, Front Line, The Wire and The Statesman.