Soumitra Chatterjee

All you want to know about Soumitra Chatterjee

Soumitra Chatterjee (Bengali: সৌমিত্র চট্টোপাধ্যায় Shoumitro Chôţţopaddhae) (born January 19, 1935) is a Bengali actor from India, most famous for his frequent collaborations with the great Indian director Satyajit Ray.

A scene from the film, Joy Baba Felunath, depicting (from right to left) Topshe,Santosh Dutta as Jatayu & Soumitra Chatterjee as Feluda
A scene from the film, Joy Baba Felunath, depicting (from right to left) Topshe,Santosh Dutta as Jatayu & Soumitra Chatterjee as Feluda

Contents

Background

Soumitra studied at the Scottish Church College of the University of Calcutta, graduating with honours in Bengali literature. He has lived for a number of years in Calcutta in Satyajit Ray's old apartment.

Satyajit Ray

Soumitra's film debut came in 1959 in Satyajit Ray's Apur Sansar. As noted on the official website for Ray, "At that time, Soumitra Chatterjee was a radio announcer and had only played a small role in a Bengali stage production" [1]. Soumitra would eventually collaborate with Ray on fourteen films. His centrality to Ray's work is akin to other key collaborations in the history of cinema - Mifune & Kurosawa, Mastroianni & Fellini, or De Niro & Scorsese,Dicaprio&Scorsese He also worked with Sharmila Tagore in a number of Ray films.

Other work

Besides working with Ray, Soumitra excelled in collaborations with other well-known Bengali directors such as Mrinal Sen and Tapan Sinha. He played the role of Shekhar in the 1969 Ajoy Kar version of Parineeta. Soumitra has also been active in Bengali theatre as an actor, playwright and director. He is a well-known poetry reciter, and has acted on TV and in indigenous folk drama (jatra).

Honors and awards

Soumitra has received the 'Officier des Arts et Metiers', the highest award for arts given by the French government, and a lifetime achievement award from Italy. He turned down the honorary Padma Shri award from the Indian government in the seventies; more recently, in 2004, he accepted the prestigious Padma Bhushan award from the President of India. He has been the subject of a full-length documentary by French director Catherine Berge.

In a gesture of protest against the National Film Awards committee's bias in awarding popular and mainstream cinema, he turned down the 2001 special jury award for best actor. However, on June 9, 2008, he was selected for the 2007 National Film Award for Best Actor by the Government of India.

Select filmography

Year Film Role Other notes
1959 Apur Sansar Apurba Kumar Ray (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1960 Devi Umaprasad (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1961 Teen Kanya Amulya (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1962 Abhijan Narsingh (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1964 Charulata Amal (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1965 Kapurush Amitabha Roy (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1965 Akash Kusum Ajay Sarkar (dir. Mrinal Sen)
1969 Parineeta Shekhar (dir. Ajoy Kar)
1970 Aranyer Din Ratri Ashim (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1973 Ashani Sanket Gangacharan Chakravarti (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1974 Sonar Kella Pradosh C. Mitter, a.k.a. Feluda (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1978 Joi Baba Felunath Pradosh C. Mitter, a.k.a. Feluda (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1979 Devdas Debdas (dir. Dilip Roy)
1980 Hirak Rajar Deshe Professor Udayan (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1984 Ghare Baire Sandip (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1987 Sukumar Ray Himself (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1988 The Bengali Night Narendra Sen (dir. Nicolas Klotz)
1989 Ganashatru Dr. Ashoke Gupta (dir. Satyajit Ray)
1990 Shakha Proshakha Proshanto, the 2nd son, a.k.a. "Mezda" (dir. Satyajit Ray)

External links

v • d • e
National Film Award for Best Actor
1968-1980

Uttam Kumar (1968) · Ashok Kumar (1969) · Utpal Dutt (1970) · Sanjeev Kumar (1971) · M.G. Ramachandran (1972) · Sanjeev Kumar (1973) · P. J. Antony (1974) · Sadhu Mehr (1975) · M.V. Vasudeva Rao (1976) · Mithun Chakraborty (1977) · Gopi (1978) · Arun Mukherjee (1979) · Naseeruddin Shah (1980)
1981-2000

Balan K. Nair (1981) · Om Puri (1982) · Kamal Haasan (1983) · Om Puri (1984) · Naseeruddin Shah (1985) · Shashi Kapoor (1986) · Chaaru Haasan (1987) · Kamal Haasan (1988) · Premji (1989) · Mammooty (1990) · Amitabh Bachchan (1991) · Mohanlal (1992) · Mithun Chakraborty (1993) · Mammooty (1994) · Nana Patekar (1995) · Rajit Kapur (1996) · Kamal Haasan (1997) · Suresh Gopi and Balachandra Menon (1998) · Mammooty and Ajay Devgan (1999) · Mohanlal (2000)
2001-present

Anil Kapoor (2001) · Murali (2002) · Ajay Devgan (2003) · Vikram (2004) · Saif Ali Khan (2005) · Amitabh Bachchan (2006) · Soumitra Chatterjee (2007)
v • d • e
Cinema of Bengal
History
Directors
Actors
Films
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soumitra_Chatterjee"

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