Guru Dutt is a name that needs no introduction. He is considered one of the greatest icons of Indian cinema, a filmmaker who was ahead of his time and the creator of timeless classics, who contributed a lot to the golden age of Bollywood. Both his real and reel life was nothing less than extraordinary. Here we will discuss about Guru Dutt, a filmmaker who was ahead of his time:

Guru Dutt made movies that were deeply personal and very humane. His movies portrayed human emotions so beautifully and his artistic style of making movies have a poetic sense that often appeared in his movies. His movie Pyaasa was only one of three movies that found a place in Time magazine’s ‘All-Time 100 Best Movies’.

Guru Dutt was a highly sensitive man and it was reflected in his poetic movies. Guru Dutt came from an estranged family and had a very lonely childhood and that must be the reason most of his movies had sad and tragic stories. He started his career as a director with Dev Anand starrer Baazi that portrayed a hero with negative shades, a rarity in those times when heroes were supposed to be morally good people. The movie was inspired by the film noir genre of Hollywood with a morally abstruse hero, the contravening heroine, and the usage of shadow lighting. He went on to make two more movies Jaal and CID with Dev Anand. He started having creative differences with DevAnand’s brother Chetan Anand and both parted ways. After that Guru Dutt made movies mostly with himself as the lead hero.

His golden period as a filmmaker started with Pyaasa in 1957 when he made movies that totally resonated with his beliefs and thinking. Pyaasa was a movie about a poet in the commercially driven world, and it’s considered one of the best Indian movies ever. His next movie KaagazkePhool was semi-autobiographical that told the story of a director’s rise and fall. Despite having good music, and a great story with good performances and direction, KaagazkePhool flopped badly and the reason behind it is that in a newly independent India where people are fighting for survival and basic needs, they never understood the internal conflict of a movie director.

According to the general view of the public those days were like this guy wear suits, smokes a costly pipe, must be having a house of his own, and never had to worry about where to get his next meal, why on earth he is sad, but today KaagazkePhool is considered a classic. Just like his reel life, his real-life was also tragic as he had a troubled marriage and he died after an overdose of sleeping tablets and alcohol. But irrespective of whatever happened in his real life, he is an inspiration for generations of filmmakers till today.