In an industry that elevates a new idol every Friday, Mithun Chakraborty’s life has and continues to be one of defiance. On Monday, September 30, 2024, Chakraborty was pronounced a Dadasaheb Phalke Award winner, which is to say that he has never been a slave to image. He has done it all from art house to leading lady flicks to simply trash along the lines meant for front benchers.
Chronicling the career of an array of notable actors, beginning with Mrinal Sen’s Mrigayaa 1976, he is perhaps the only notable actor who moved from art house to mainstream commercial and back successfully. Most of Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri and Smita Patil ventured into mainstream cinema with no or minimal success after establishing their careers in parallel cinema but Mithun is the only one to make it big.
He collaborated with Mrinal Sen, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, and Goutam Ghose in parallel cinema and has won three National Awards in the process. After that, there was no turning back into the mainstream with people like B. Subash, K.C. Bokadia, Manmohan Desai, and Parto Ghosh who made him his fans available films like Disco Dancer, Dance Dance, Pyar Jhukta Nahi, Ganga Jumna Saraswati, Agneepath, and Dalaal. Mithun’s dancing and acting got him tremendous exposure internationally owing to Disco Dancer directed by B. Subash where the film made big bucks in the markets of Soviet Union, Japan and China apart from India. Some time in the middle of eighties he was probably the most prominent Indian to be known out. Mithun, himself, neither confining nor being confined within the boundaries defined by the hot shot duo, Salim-Javed, during that era of Hindi film, the Angry Young Man saga of the felt triumphs box office with the aid of Disco Dancer where Bappi Lahiri composed music and Mithun acted out compulsory dance routines for repeat clientele.
Other than for some brief period during late 80s, he was divided with Amitabh Bachchan for the top post in the Hindi Film Industry. This made Desai, who was often rejected under those circumstances as he directed films where all heroes were supporting actors, ready to promise him a powerful role in Ganga Jamunaa Saraswati.
It is, however, in the area of serious cinema that Mithun has the most lasting legacy – Tahader Katha, Kaalpurush, Swami Vivekanand and Gudiya are his best works. He rendered enough of restrained performances in independent films to counter the stereotype that an action star of Bollywood has no business doing neo realism. In fact, Films like Tahader Katha, Kaalpurush, Swami Vivekanand and Mrigayaa, every one of them won a National Award providing Mithun with his own corner in grave art with both mass and market starting from first morning show to festivals.
Nevertheless, there is an important area in Mithun’s career which has been lost. He is, perhaps, the first A-grade star to feature in movies intended for less selective audience. In the mid-1990s, Mithun changed the economic model of cinema thanks to the base of films shot in Ooty with fixed cast comprising of Hemant Birje, Gautami, Deepti Bhatnagar, Kiran Kumar, Raza Murad with music by Dilip Sen-Sameer Sen. These films, m a shoe-string budget of about ₹ 40 Lakh, these movies were made finished in a month or thereabouts, and released without much of publicity in smaller centres. There were films like Jallad, Chandaal, Dada, Hitler, The Don and Cheetah which were not heard of in the metropolises, but the producers made considerable profit from them in addition to satisfying the hardcore fans of Mithun in small towns. Between G. V. Iyer and Mithun’s Swami Vivekanand, the period of the latter’s biopic proved to be shorter by 10 years as the avid star had already completed over 20 films in the meantime!
Mithun, in the last days, was involved in minor but well known movies such as The Kashmir Files and The Tashkent Files, the cheap and forgettable attempts at movies that must have helped Mithun Chakraborty, to some degree, win the support of the members consisting of former Dadasaheb awardee Asha Parekh, actress-politician Khushbu Sundar and filmmaker Vipul Amrutlal Shah for the highest award in the Indian film industry.
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