| 12.07.1909 * | |
| Place of Birth | Dhaka [now Bangladesh] |
| 07.01.1966 † |
Bimal Roy was born to a landlord's family in former East Bengal. After his father's death he moved to Calcutta with his mother and brothers. He started to work in films as a publicity photographer and assistant cameraman. His talents were discovered by P. C. Barua, a pioneer of Indian talkies, who made movies both in Bengali and Hindi. Barua was the director of the first talkie version of Sarat Chandra's novel Devdas, which he made in Bengali and Hindi. For both versions of Devdas and for other films of Barua Bimal Roy worked as a cinematographer.
Roy's debut as a director was the Bengali film Udayer Pathey. In 1951 the First International Film Festival was held in Bombay. The impact of Ialien neo-realism (especially of Vittorio De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves") on Roy was tremendous. It was under this influence that he made his film Do Bigha Zameen. Winning an award at the Cannes film festival for Do Bigha Zameen, Bimal Roytogether with V. Shantaram was among the first directors of independent India, who won critical acclaim outside India. But Roy never lost the connection to his motherland Bengal. In 1955 he filmed his version of Devdas starring Suchitra Sen as Paro and Dilip Kumar as Devdas.
But Roy's two masterpieces certainly are Sujata and Bandini both starring Nutan in the title role. These two films are the quintessence of the Indian struggle of defining a new modern nation. In these two films Roy is a genious combining the story with well written songs. The songs of these two films were written by S. D. Burman, while the lyrics came from capacties like Majrooh Sultanpuri and Gulzar.
At the time when the star system and colour cinematography made Indian cinema more and more commercial, Roy withdrew from the screen. Roy had influenced a lot of talented people. The most important directors, who can be called his disciples, are Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Sampooran Singh known as Gulzar and Basu Bhattacharya. Bimal Roy died in 1966.