Ajantrik

1958 film

Ajantrik

Directed by	Ritwik Ghatak
Written by	Subodh Ghosh (short story) Ritwik Ghatak (story elaboration)
Starring	Kali Banerjee Shriman Deepak Kajal Gupta Keshto Mukherjee
Cinematography	Dinen Gupta
Edited by	Ramesh Joshi
Music by	Ali Akbar Khan
Production company	L. B Films International
Release date	23 May 1958
Running time	104 min.
Country	India
Language	Bengali

Ajantrik (known internationally as The Unmechanical, The Mechanical Man or The Pathetic Fallacy)^[1] is a 1958 Indian Bengali film written and directed by revered parallel filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak.^[2] The film is adapted from a Bengali short story of the same name written by Subodh Ghosh.

A comedy-drama film, Ajantrik is one of the earliest Indian films to portray an inanimate object, in this case an automobile, as a character in the story. It achieves this through the use of sounds recorded post-production to emphasize the car's bodily functions and movements.^[3]

The film was considered for a special entry in the Venice Film Festival in 1959.^[4]

Plot

Bimal is a taxi-driver in a small provincial town. He lives alone. His taxi (an old 1920 Chevrolet jalopy which he named Jagaddal) is his only companion and, although very battered, it is the apple of Bimal's eye. The film shows episodes from his life in the industrial wasteland, delivering people from one place to another.^[3]^[5]

Film critic Georges Sadoul shared his experience of watching the film in this way. He said, "What does 'Ajantrik' mean? I don't know and I believe no one in Venice Film Festival knew...I can't tell the whole story of the film...there was no subtitle for the film. But I saw the film spellbound till the very end". According to the noted Bengali poet and German scholar Alokeranjan Dasgupta, "The merciless conflict of ethereal nature and mechanised civilization, through the love of taxi driver Bimal and his pathetic vehicle Jagaddal seems to be a unique gift of...modernism."

Cast

Kali Banerjee as Bimal
Gangapada Basu
Satindra Bhattacharya
Tulsi Chakraborty
Anil Chatterjee
Shriman Deepak
Kajal Gupta as Young woman
Gyanesh Mukherjee as Mechanic
Keshto Mukherjee
Sita Mukherjee as Bulaki

References

^ Holden, Stephen (27 September 1996). "A Film Series On a Director". The New York Times. p. 5.
^ "The Mechanical Man (1958)". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Baseline & All Movie Guide. Archived from the original on 30 January 2013. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
^ ^a ^b Carrigy, Megan (October 2003). "Ritwik Ghatak". Senses of Cinema. Archived from the original on 30 April 2009. Retrieved 3 May 2009.
^ Ghaṭaka, R̥tvikakumāra (2005). Calaccitra, mānusha ebaṃ āro kichu (1. De'ja saṃskaraṇa. ed.). Kalakātā: De'ja Pābaliśiṃ. p. 349. ISBN 81-295-0397-2.
^ Banerjee, Shampa; Anil Srivastava (1988). One Hundred Indian Feature Films: An Annotated Filmography. Taylor & Francis. p. 22. ISBN 0-8240-9483-2.