| 14 | | His premature death by suicide was foreshadowed in the autobiographical Kaagaz Ke Phool. His last film, Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi, was finished by his brother Atma Ram in 1966, with [[Dharmendra |
| | 14 | His premature death by suicide was foreshadowed in the autobiographical Kaagaz Ke Phool. His last film, Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi, was finished by his brother Atma Ram in 1966, with [[Dharmendra Deol|Dharmendra]] in the role Dutt had played. A 2nd film left unfinished, [[K. Asif]]’s [[Love and God]], was eventually released in 1986 in a completely reshot and recast version. As producer, launched the career of his assistant [[Raj Khosla]] with CID. With the darkly romantic [[Pyaasa]], almost certainly inspired by Saratchandra’s novel Srikanta, muted social critique suddenly veers to tragedy as Dutt launched a cycle of films that have remained India’s most spectacular achievement in melodrama. His work encapsulates with great intensity the emotional and social complexities affecting the artist when the reformism associated with Nehruite nationalism disintegrated under the pressures of industrialism and urbanisation, creating the space for Indian modernism but also generating immense social dislocation. Dutt’s work, like his life, is located on the faultline of those conflicting forces and his supreme achievement is to have succeeded, at times, in both using and modifying available aesthetic modes to represent a profoundly contradictory experience, often via a focus on his extraordinary female figures (e.g. Waheeda Rehman) who are made to represent the conflictual dynamics of history. Book-length analysis of his films by Arun Khopkar (1985). |