Guru Dutt's 100th birth anniversary: A legendary filmmaker whose life oscillated between the dazzle of cinema and darkness of personal turmoil

Guru Dutt was 39 when he was found dead, directed just eight films and took 104 takes for that searing climax shot of “Pyaasa” where the poet protagonist stands framed in light and shadow as he asks “Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai?”

Guru Dutt’s life can perhaps be summed up in these three numbers - a superbly talented filmmaker and actor who died just too young from a cocktail of alcohol and sleeping pills and whose films went from being easy-breezy to dark and personal, reflecting his own turmoil and struggles with self.

The actor-filmmaker, one of India’s most influential, turns 100 on July 9, moment for cineastes and others to celebrate the work of a man who spelt magic on screen and remains an enigma all these years later.

More from Entertainment

'Jugnuma' Movie Review: Manoj Bajpayee-Deepak Dobriyal’s terrific performances stood out in this beautifully restrained way of storytelling 'Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale' Movie Review: The final goodbye of Julian Fellowes’s beloved British soap

The fragile filmmaker’s family

They have grown up on stories of their grandfather, the fabled Guru Dutt, carry his name with pride and say the best tribute to him would be to work on films that connect with people.

Karuna and Gouri, daughters of Guru Dutt’s son Arun, are both in the film industry and have worked with several filmmakers as assistant directors. As grandchildren of the legendary Guru Dutt and Geeta Dutt, one an actor-filmmaker and the other a singer, the sisters say they don’t introduce themselves when they start a project.

“… We’re not like, ‘Oh, you know who I am’… in the end they’re like, ‘What? You did not tell us this’, and the reaction is happy and big,” Gouri, 37, told PTI.

As the cinema world celebrates the 100th anniversary of the filmmaker who gave Indian cinema a string of classics, including “Pyaasa”, “Kaagaz Ke Phool” and “Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam”, the sisters discuss his enduring legacy.

“I feel the best tribute we could give to him would be by making films that connect with people and have that resonance. We would like to pay a tribute to him through our work,” added Karuna, 40.

They have, of course, never met either grandparent. Guru Dutt died in 1964 when he was just 39. Geeta Dutt died in 1972 at the age of 41. But they have heard many stories from their father, uncle Tarun. And also from granduncle Devi Dutt and grandaunt Lalita Lajmi, Guru Dutt’s brother and sister.

“He (Guru Dutt) was a disciplinarian. Both the children (Arun and Tarun) were quite mischievous growing up. We also hear that he was very generous as a person,” Karuna said.

“Lalita ji used to tell us that he was very fond of sweets. I remember, Devi uncle once told us that after pack up, he would bring sweets for his crew to celebrate the work of the day. So these are these little things, the stories we’ve grown up with,” she said.

Gouri added that she admires the legacy of compassion that Guru Dutt instilled in the family, particularly their love for animals.

“His love for animals got passed down to us as well. Like, from our father and then to us, because he also loved animals. He had a lot of animals,” she said.

The two sisters, both aspiring filmmakers, have reservations about chronicling Guru Dutt’s life through a biopic or a book.

“I don’t know if I’d be able to be objective about it because at the end of the day, he is my grandfather. To make a good biopic on somebody, you do need objectivity to be able to talk about a person’s life as a whole. I would love to help, be a part of that process, but not personally make it.

“In terms of books, there’s so much written about him. We never met him personally, I don’t know what new we would be able to bring or say about him, even if it has to come from his grandchildren’s perspective,” Karuna said.

They said they didn’t know how much their legendary grandfather meant to people until they started engaging with the film community where he is a much revered figure.

“It’s heartening to see how well loved he is even today, and how many people are speaking about him and wanting to celebrate his birth and his contribution to cinema. As his family, it’s a matter of pride because there are so many artists who are so easily forgotten; it’s joyous to see how he’s being celebrated,” Karuna said.

“I feel like that is the legacy he has left behind… that even after so many years, his writing, his direction, his voice as a director is still relatable and has still found a place in people’s hearts,” she said.

Hundred years is a long time but it’s amazing that people remember his body of work as if it was 10 years ago, said Gouri.

The sisters, who were raised in Pune and later moved to Mumbai, recalled the impact Guru Dutt had on the filmmakers they have worked with.

Karuna, who has served as an AD on Anurag Kashyap’s films “Ugly”, “That Girl in Yellow Boots”, and “Gangs of Wasseypur”, said he was working on a screenplay for a biopic on her grandfather.

Kashyap visited her home in Pune to research Dutt’s life, went through family photographs and letters for a biopic that was to be directed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.

“On one of the days of the shoot, I remember him telling me how daunting he had found the task of trying to capture my grandfather’s life in a screenplay. For him, it also came from a moment of being such an ardent fan. ‘How do you do justice’? He had found the process quite difficult,” Karuna said.

Gouri, who has worked as an AD on films like “Victoria and Abdul”, “Tenet”, and “Girls Will Be Girls”, said she often hides her connection with Guru Dutt and finds it amusing when people discover it later.

“People who know him have a lot of curiosity, and they are like, ‘How was he like? What was his life? What do you know?’,” Gouri said.

Her favourite Guru Dutt movie is “Kaagaz Ke Phool”.

Karuna’s two personal favourites are “Pyaasa” and “Mr and Mrs 55”.

“ ‘Pyaasa’ because I feel as somebody in the creative field, you do understand that sense of disillusionment, you kind of connect to that from that perspective, which I feel like for a lot of filmmakers and writers, that’s the feeling for them as well. And ‘Mr and Mrs. 55’, I feel, because it’s a very rare opportunity to see a very lighthearted side of him, which most people don’t discuss very often. I feel like that is why that is one of my personal favourites.” Gouri said it is heartwarming to hear praise for her grandfather from those she works with.

“Last year, I worked with Sudhir Mishra sir, and he’s a huge, huge fan. He said his filmmaking affected by my grandfather’s films. It’s a lot of admiration. Everybody wants to share their side, their connection, how they connected to his work and how that has affected their work, be it a director or an actor or a musician or anyone.”

Mahesh Bhatt remembers Dutt’s wounded take on ache and passion

Guru Dutt’s legacy is not of awards but of silence, the kind that lingers on after the screen fades to black, says Mahesh Bhatt about the legendary filmmaker who “let beauty crumble into truth”.

Dutt, regarded as amongst the greatest filmmakers of Indian cinema with films such as Pyaasa (1957), Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962), would have been 100 on July 9. He was found dead, possibly from a cocktail of sleeping pills and alcohol, in 1964 when he was just 39.

“He took the aching mess of human life, and turned it into poetry that could pierce even silence. Those of us who came after we carried forward the wound. We do not celebrate a hundred years of Guru Dutt. We return to him,” Bhatt told PTI.

The filmmaker said he was captivated when he first saw a large photograph of Dutt at Raj Khosla’s office.

“Guru Dutt’s legacy isn’t made of awards, posters, or reels. It is made of silence. The kind that enters a room after the screen goes black and stays. He was our Vyasa (the sage who wrote Mahabharata),” he said.

“Guru Dutt took private anguish and gave it mythic proportions. He lit his characters with compassion and contradiction. He let the poet in him rage. He let the woman feel to the point of tears. He let beauty crumble into truth. ‘Waqt ne kiya’ that ageless song from Kaagaz ke Phool is a throbbing wound. His legacy is not a style you can copy. It is a wound you must survive,” he added.

The filmmaker-producer said he was working on his 1982 acclaimed film Arth when poet-lyricist Kaifi Azmi remarked that he had inherited Dutt’s pain as a protege of Khosla.

“We were working on a song for Arth. Jagjit Singh was shaping the early melody of ‘Tum Itna Jo Muskura Rahe Ho’. Kaifi saab sat quietly, listening not just to the tune, but to the wound behind it. And then, in his unmistakably gentle voice, he said to me: ‘Tumne Guru Dutt ka dard virasat mein paaya hai. Pain is your legacy’,” said Bhatt.

“He wasn’t romanticising it. He was naming it. I had been Raj Khosla’s assistant, and he had been Guru Dutt’s assistant. That was the line. Not one of fame, but of fracture, not of ambition but ache, wounds passed down like sacred relics. He was right,” The 76-year-old writer-director added.

Arth (1982), Saaransh (1984), Daddy (1989) and Zakhm (1998), Bhatt said, weren’t just films but echoes and testament to what Kaifi Azmi saw that day.

“Proof that pain, if you dare not flee it, becomes your voice. And if that voice refuses to lie it becomes cinema.” Bhatt remembers the first time he watched the 1957 masterpiece Pyaasa in a theatre, and how deeply it touched his soul.

“Guru Dutt is not a memory for me. He is a wound that never healed. He’s not a figure from the past, I carry him inside me. His cinema invaded me as a boy sitting in the front stalls of Citylight cinema. Pyaasa didn’t entertain me; it undressed me. It showed me what it meant to ache without apology,” Bhatt said.

“Even today, when the lights dim and I hear the rustle of silence before a scene, it is his ghost I meet. He is the one who taught me that sorrow, when surrendered to, becomes your signature. He is less my inspiration and more my inheritance,” he added.

Bhatt said filmmakers like Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Vishal Bhardwaj, and Mohit Suri, carry forward the same passion that Dutt embodied in their unique way.

“Guru Dutt cannot be reproduced, only echoed. There are filmmakers who carry a similar hunger for truth and beauty like Sanjay Leela Bhansali, in his obsessive pursuit of the lyrical frame, and Vishal Bhardwaj, in his willingness to explore pain through music and poetry, Anurag Kashyap, when he lets his darkness speak without disguise, Mohit Suri in how he listens to silences and centres the unseen through his use of music,” he said.

“These filmmakers may walk different roads, but like Guru Dutt, they understand that cinema, when it dares to feel deeply, becomes poetry in motion and that perhaps, is how the flame continues to burn. Not loudly, but faithfully,” Bhatt concluded.