Flashback to the 1970s, 80s and 90s. You could be walking down any street in India and all around you would find posters of films. There they were on walls, kiosks, facades of buildings and even lamp posts, with their bold colours and strokes, artfully arranged photos coupled with stylish typography.
“Those days we would see a poster and immediately recognise whose work it was — a Purnendu Pattrea or an O.C. Ganguly,” says the 88-year-old Calcutta-based Amar Paul. “We would stop in the middle of a busy street amidst noisy trams just to admire them... the posters of Eki Ange Eto Rup (1965) or Hansuli Banker Upakatha (1962), such extraordinary work!” An artist himself, Paul worked with HMV and was the man behind all those LP covers.
Unlike their digital progeny that flash and vanish, the hand-painted or handcrafted film posters come with a wealth of backstories should you care to lend an ear.
The 70-something Sheikh Abdul Rehman of Mumbai has his own story to tell. “I have worked for theatres in Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Baroda...,” he tells The Telegraph over video call. His first poster, he recalls, was for Seema, a 1955 film directed by Amiya Chakraborty and starring Nutan and Balraj Sahni. But what really got him recognition was his poster of Mughal-e-Azam (1960), and the rest followed. These days Rehman works mostly at home but had his workshop at Alfred Talkies, a single-screen theatre.
Rehman’s work adorns his home. The display of Chaudhvin Ka Chand catches the eye. It is painted in bright red, black and white, and the romance between Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman is palpable. He pulls out posters of Pyaasa, Kaagaz ke Phool, Mr. and Mrs. 55. The artist recreates posters of memorable films for whoever places an
order. “Chahne wale hain... people want my work,” he says, with both pride and humility.
Paul was the go-to artist for directors such as Tarun Majumdar. He made the poster for the 1983 film Amar Geeti. Says he, “The woman is sitting with a tanpura, her fingers on the strings, and the man with his hand on her shoulder. It conveyed the touch and music. Tarunbabu liked it very much.”
Those days, posters used to come in three sizes — 20” by 30”, 30” by 40” and “six sheet”, which referred to a joint spread of three 30” by 40” sheets on top and three below.
“The big ones were the difficult ones,” says Paul. “One had to plan it in such a way that the eyes, nose, lips would be in sync from sheet to sheet.” And that explains the rare instances when the contours didn’t match upon pasting, making for a curiosity of its own kind.
“Someone would cycle down to my house at say 10 in the night and say, Amarda, here’s the material. Please do the needful,” he laughs. “At times, Tarunbabu would sit in my house sketching or doing some other work while I did mine,” he adds.
Talking about six-sheeters, Anup Ray recalls his poster of Agun (1988). “It was totally hand-painted. Apart from Victor Bannerjee, there were Utpal Dutt, Tanuja... I don’t even recall all the names. But I do remember that it took me seven days,” the 75-year-old artist says. His first such work was for Khandhar (1984). Ray recalls the forlorn face of Shabana Azmi he painted amidst the ruins. For Paar (1984), he drew countless pigs crossing the river with the figures of Shabana and Naseeruddin Shah crafted at the bottom.
Paul recalls his first interaction with Mrinal Sen. “He called me for a poster for Mahaprithibi (1991), at 6 in the morning! The first thing he asked was, ‘Do you know French?’ I was flabbergasted. Anyway, he then gave me all the material and requested me to do whatever I thought was suitable.”
The greats had their favourites. Rehman’s is Madhubala. They also had their distinctive styles. “Amarda was extremely good with his brush; his speciality was typography. We have often collaborated — he did the typography and I did the visual part,” says Goutam Barat, who has been creating film posters since 1983-1984. His father Ratan Barat too was in the trade.
Those days, the Bengali film industry had both black-and-white and colour films. Black-and-white films did not necessarily have black-and-white posters. Artists sometimes used stills of the actors and hand-painted over them for effect. At other times, the photos remained black-and-white but were set against a colourful background.
Barat gives the example of Debi Choudhurani (1974): “The film is black-and-white but the poster has bright yellow and red.”
Barat has painted posters for both popular and serious films. He recalls how he created the poster for Biplab Chatterjee’s Abhimanyu, a film about a wagon-breaker. He says, “I had to think of something different. I especially shot a sequence in which Chatterjee is running towards the camera, selected a still and recreated it — in an attempt to freeze the action.” Barat’s poster of Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (2002), directed by Buddhadeb Dasgupta, was written about in Bild, a German publication.
Rehman talks about the poster of Navrang (1959). He says, “I used nine colours in the background with Sandhya and Mahipal in the foreground. Director V. Shantaram really liked the idea.” Some directors, he points out, preferred spartan posters. “Bimal Roy. If you see the poster of Sujata, there is little else apart from Nutan wearing an udaas look and the film title. So also for Bandini. But others like Manmohan Desai would want every character to be represented. He’d say, “Arre, where is Kader Khan, he’s the life of the film!’”
Barat is planning a book on poster art. He says, “What we lack here is the archiving effort.” Rehman misses the applause from the old days. “People would see a poster and ask, ‘Whose hand is this?’”
And that is the plain truth. The handcrafted posters have all but disappeared, except for those in the memory drive.