Teetering between sanity and delusional insecurity, guilt and self assertion, she becomes an obsessive, tantrum-throwing wreck. Her Kavita of Arth is a successful actress who is terrified of losing her married lover. In Arth, she played Kulbhushan Kharbanda's actress girlfriend, for whom he leaves his wife, Shabana Azmi. In Bazaar, she played a woman manipulated by her lover into arranging a nubile match for a rich old man. Smita was not afraid to take on grey-tinged roles. The film's promising director Rabindra Dharamaraj, unfortunately, passed away in the year of its release. It gave the film a notoriety and maybe success too.
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Unfortunately, a bathing scene of Smita splashed on the film's posters became the most recognisable symbol of the film. She imbues her performance with a hard-won empathy. In Chakra, Smita looks far removed from the gloss and glamour of Bollywood, blending seamlessly with her character.Īs part of her research for the film she visited slums on Tulsi Pipe Road ( north-central Mumbai), returning home with parched lips and chipped nails. Smita's hopes have survived in her son on whom she has pinned her expectations, but the wheels of fate grind inexorably on. Its hard-hitting credo predates Chandni Bar. It's a Darwinian situation where survival is all that matters.īrimming with squalor and seediness, the story is realistically but grippingly told. Hers is a character that is not romanticised or glorified but drawn with a level eye - she has a couple of affairs (Naseeruddin Shah, Kulbushan Kharbanda). Smita plays a migrant who comes to Mumbai, but finds little succour in the city of dreams.Īfter she loses her husband, she ekes out an existence in the slums. This film won Smita Patil yet another National Award for best actress after Bhumika.Ĭhakra, a surprise box office success, was a strident wake up call, rousing us to the seemingly inescapable ' chakra of fate that governs the lives of millions of Mumbai slum-dwellers. She completely seems to share her character's psychic space. Smita has perhaps never looked as soul-searingly natural and beautiful as she does here.
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This heavily atmospheric film draws you with its magnetism - the Indian film industry, from 1930 to 1950 serves as a fascinating backdrop, the radio broadcasts capture the changing time periods and the sepia tones for the flashbacks scenes all add immeasurably to setting up the mood. You may question Usha's choices as she goes hurtling through her turbulent life, but you can't hide your fascination as she skids off the rails and then struggles to get back on track again.īenegal reveals a genuinely complex vision as he captures the neediness, insecurities and creative temperament (her abandoned child looks at her with such mute, indicative eyes) of a woman who struggles as much with the dichotomy inside her (between her liberated and domesticated selves) as she struggles with a male dominated world outside. She finds that men in her life - whether weak or strong - seek to commodify her or reduce her to 'role' playing a part in their fantasy. The film's inspiration was 1940s actress Hansa Wadkar's autobiography.īhumika's Usha is an actress, whose need to 'find' herself and an illusory contentment encompasses several broken relationships. Govind Nihalani was the cinematographer while Naseeruddin Shah, Amol Palekar, Amrish Puri and Anant Nag played the pivots around whom the life of the heroine (played by Smita) revolved.īhumika proved to be the high point of the art movement in the 1970s.
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Girish Karnad and Satyadev Dubey wrote the screenplay and dialogue on which Vijay Tendulkar also collaborated. The talent involved was uniformly megawatt. The role that established 22-year-old Smita Patil as an actress of extraordinary merit.ĭirector Shyam Benegal scaled this film on a creatively ambitiously level. salutes the incomparable actress in a special series.ĭinesh Raheja and Jitendra Kothari look at some of Smita Patil's BEST films. Smita Patil would have been 60 on October 17 had fate not cruelly snatched her from us in 1986.