Mrinal Sen on the Croisette in Cannes in May 2010. Picture by Amit Roy

Mrinal Sen arrived in Cannes from Calcutta on his 87th birthday (May 14), quite exhausted after missing his connecting flight in Frankfurt. To be sure, he missed his wife, Gita Sen.

“I wish my wife was here — we have been married for a very long time,” he said looking just a little lost.

But a Bengali artiste cannot live by marriage alone. After a couple of days enjoying the sun, sea and sand in the south of France, he looked in remarkably good form.

He received the adulation of a discriminating audience after a special screening of a restored copy of Khandahar, which was first shown in 1984; had a leisurely breakfast with his son, Kunal, and daughter-in-law Nisha, who had come over from their home in Chicago; took in a couple of movies; met old friends; and popped into the Indian pavilion on the Croisette, where he gave a hug to Derek Malcolm, the veteran British film critic, said kind things about the Indian government and Reliance MediaWorks and signed autographs for pretty girls.

Cannes had once again worked its magic. A Bengali is generally at his unhappiest when he is happy but Sen truly glowed with the joy of life as he confessed: “I feel I have been restored.”

There was time for dinner one evening with two friends, Eliane Stutterheim and Donat Keusch. The latter had represented him in Europe for many years. Keusch and Sen headed for a favourite French restaurant but unfortunately it was full and they had to dine elsewhere.

Another German soulmate waiting for him was Ulrich Gregor, with his wife Erika. For years, Gregor had run a section of the Berlin festival where Mrinal Sen movies always made the menu.

In his hotel lobby one morning, he was greeted effusively by a venerable African gentleman of 70 whom Sen initially failed to recognise. Then he remembered it was the distinguished Mali director, Souleymane Cisse, who had made Yeelen (Light), a coming-of-age film which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1987. Theirs turned out to be an emotional reunion even though a French interpreter had to act as the link with the two men recalling their earlier encounters from long ago.

“Tell him he is my teacher,” Cisse called out as he bid farewell.

One afternoon, Sen made time for a French filmmaker who was making a documentary on him.

He was also courteous with The Telegraph, though occasionally Kunal, who apparently refers to his father as “bondhu” (friend), had to explain the questions to him.

What did Sen think about the new India, for example, a new Indian that was naturally reflected on screen?

“We are very optimistic,” responded Sen, speaking possibly for his generation, “but then at the same time we have to be very, very careful (about the direction of the country).”

His German friend, Gregor, who was listening in, cut in helpfully, remembering what the mood in Calcutta had been like when Sen was in his prime.

“There was a lot of excitement about the cinema being made in India, about social change,” observed Gregor. “Is that same spirit still there?”

Sen did not make the mistake of giving an old man’s answer which is the usual one that “things are not quite as good as they were when we were young”. For a start, he had heard that “this young boy”, Vikramaditya Motwane, had made Udaan — “I am told he has made a very good film, I have to catch it”.

He was now also confident of India’s technical expertise in being able to restore films, having seen how Khandahar had been miraculously repaired. The future suddenly looks much more promising so far as restoring classics is concerned, according to Sen. “There are others who are also very good filmmakers. India can restore films, India can organise good quality control (even for films from other countries).”

He did not think that filmmakers should rest on their laurels, probably meaning that artistes should always seek to grow. “You have to correct your own conclusions. When I see my own films, I wish I could redo them. In matters of art, nothing is the last word. Correcting one’s conclusions is very, very important.”

Sen did enter a couple of qualifications as he compared “then” with “now”. “The situation today is going the other way,” he commented carefully. “Think of us when we were making films in the 1970s. Mr (Satyajit) Ray was there. If he made one film, the whole world was shaken. And then (Ritwik) Ghatak was there. I was partly there. Every time we made a film, there was a lot of noise in the city. It became the talk of the town. It’s very, very sad but that doesn’t happen these days.”

He also expressed concern about the films picked for the President’s Award. “I don’t think I personally am very happy about the films that are getting the award. Something wrong is happening.”

As for Indian films not getting into competition at Cannes with the pleasing regularity that they once used to, he said he had been on enough juries to realise that “there is no easy solution”.

At the same time, “we must not leave things as they are. We have to see how we can improve ourselves. Our boys also have to be taken into it. They have to see how they can be part of the world process.”

As for Khandahar, “a film dying its natural death has been revived”.

He appeared to be indicating that spiritually and artistically, much the same could be said about him.