A still from Madhumati

A Portrait of Dilip Gupta: The artist who painted with light and shade By Champa Roy (Gupta), Champa Roy, Rs 500

Cinematographers are the unsung heroes of the film industry — one does not get to read their biographies very often. They are the real ‘makers’ of cinema, creating the ‘texture’ of light and shade. In many ways, the making of a legendary cinematographer coincides with the evolution in filmmaking over a period of time. Dilip Kumar Dutta Gupta was a stalwart in the black and white era of Indian cinema in an age when the more snobbish term, ‘cameraman’, was in use, instead of ‘cinematographer’.

For this book, Champa Roy (Gupta), Dilip’s daughter, pieced together information from her interviews of her father. In his narration, Gupta related his long cinematic odyssey spanning three decades from the early 1930s. He started off as an actor at New Theatres in Calcutta. He was the second lead in the film Chorkanta, but switched over to photography soon after. He went to study cinematography in the United States of America in the early 1930s, and then attended the New York institute of photography. He had his first brush with Hollywood while working at Paramount Studios with legends like Greta Garbo and Clark Gable. He even learnt animation techniques at the Walt Disney studios. When he was preparing to leave the US in 1935, the celebrated Disney characters, Mickey, Goofy and the Three Little Pigs, sang him a farewell song.

Gupta rejoined New Theatres after his return to India and worked with directors like Pramathesh Barua and Nitin Bose. The Mumbai phase of his career started in the early 1940s, a prolific decade when films like Deedar, Madhumati, Biraj Bahu and Gotama the Buddha were made. He received his first Filmfare award for cinematography for Madhumati, and the President’s award for Gotama the Buddha. Though mainly associated with black and white movies, he shot India’s first colour feature film, Ajit, in 16 mm. It was later blown up to 35 mm.

One of the most striking features of this biography are the comments by celluloid luminaries who were closely associated with Gupta. These give insights into Gupta’s persona and work. Dilip Kumar, for instance, pays tribute to his ‘imaginative photography’, saying that he “devised a method by which the light would give a moving effect and there would be the effect of light and shadow as if the light was breaking up with a fast moving train.” Gautam Ghose said, “Creating day and night in the studio and matching it with actual locations was his forte.” Asha Parekh and Manna De describe him as having been ‘gentle’, ‘soft-spoken’ and ‘affable’.

Dilip Gupta worked at a time when the film industry was technically ill-equipped. He had to overcome many hurdles, but that boosted his creativity. The ‘magic realism’ that permeates Gupta’s frames might not have had an impact had he worked in the era of colour films, with tailor-made sets at his disposal. His cinematography shows where and how black and white photography scores over colour photography. A book like this has been long awaited; one hopes that it will not be the last of its kind.