Madhumati is one of the biggest cult Classics of its time. ‘Madhumati’ is 1958 paranormal romance, the film is directed and produced by Bimal Roy, written by Ritwik Ghatak and Rajinder Singh Bedi. ‘Madhumati’ bagged a National Award for best feature film and has won the second largest number of Filmfare awards in several categories
This was revealed by the writer, columnist, documentary filmmaker Rinki Roy Bhattacharya, daughter of the legend Bimal Roy.
The vice chairperson of the ‘Children’s film society of India’ and the founder of Bimal Roy Memorial and Film Society’, pointed out how the idea was born after her extempore speech at the Bimal Roy Memorial awards given away recently. “Since everyone talks of the gold standard his body of work set in Indian filmmaking, I just asked the gathering if they would want to watch my father’s work again. And just like that, the response was that they would want to watch ‘Madhumati’,” she told DNA and added, “I wanted to measure if people were serious and sent out a paper for people to register with names and numbers and the response was tremendous.” She feels this reaffirms her faith in the audience’s taste for good cinema.
Rinki is still resentful about how the 2007 Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone starrer mega-hit ‘Om Shanti Om’ was a worst such offender. “There may be those who believe imitation is the best form of flattery. Not me. This was an original story by the celebrated filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak commissioned by my father. Ghatak had also done the screenplay. The least the makers of ‘Om Shanti Om’ could have done was inform me.”
Rinki who Came out with the book Bimal Roy’s Madhumati: Untold Stories from Behind the Scenes (2014) described: “After shooting in Ghorakhal (now Uttarakhand) when Baba found the footage excessively foggy. He then found this place en route to Igatpuri off Khodala where he re-shot some portions along with the song Aaja Re Mein Toh Kabse Khadi Iss Paar. This also worked since Dilip Kumar was shooting Ganga-Jamuna in the same neighborhood.”
Rinki herself has watched the film over 10 times and says she finds newer differences and aspects every time, “I want audiences to enjoy the same on the big screen.”