Remembering Devdas

Who does not know about the Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Madhuri Dixit starrer Bollywood  blockbuster DEVDAS based on Sharat Chandra Chatterjee's Bengali Novel of same title where Shah Rukh Khan played the lead role of Devdas? But had it

been the first time that  Devdas of Sharat Chandra was transformed into another form of captivance, from literary words to  words of pictures, captured in the tiny frames of celluloid. If we look back into the history of Indian Cinema Devdas was first filmed in the year 1935 in Bengali. The lead role of Devdas was played by a newbie in the arena of Indian Film Industry who changed the face of Indian Cinema. This aficionado gentleman was no one else but Pramathesh Baruah who hailed from Gauripur of

Assam. A 1924 Bachelor of Science, graduated from Presidency College of Calcutta, had his schooling done at Hare School, Calcutta, was born on October 24, 1903 to Raja Prabhat Chandra Baruah of the Gauripur royal family, the Zamindar of Gauripur of Assam. After completion of graduation he went to Europe where he got his maiden exposure to film making. Returning home he served  as legislator of Assam Legislative Assembly in1928. He was selected once again in 1930 and was offered a ministerial post which he refused to accept and joined the Swaraj Party of Chittaranjan Das. But this gentleman who already had the taste of the exotic world of film making left the field of politics and finally moved to Kolkata to begin a career in film industry. Pramathes Barua's father Raja Prabhat Chandra Baruah was much annoyed at this act of his son. By then Dhirendranath Ganguly, Dada Saheb Falke Award winner, popularly known as DG had to leave Hyderabad following order of Nizam who was enraged because of portrayal of a Muslim princess who fell in love with a Hindu in the film Razia Begum. DG was the distributor of this film. Returning to Kolkata DG formed his third film production company British Dominion Films. Pramathesh Barua invested some amount in this company. Pramathesh Barua went to London to learn more about movie making. Moved to Paris for procuring lighting equipments and then came back to Kolkata to start his film production company Barua Pictures Limited. Here DG also joined Pramathesh Barua. It's first major production was "Aparadhi" in 1931, followed by another film "Bhagyalakshmi",1932. Aparadhi, directed by Debaki Bose, starred Pramathesh Barua. In Bhagyalakshmi Pramathesh played the role of a villain. But before late both DG and Pramathesh joined B.N. Sircar's New Theatres.Devdas, a romantic film based on Saratchandra Chatterjee’s novel was a production of New Theatres in Bengali  in 1935. It was directed by Pramathesh Baruah and he himself played the role of Devdas. His third wife Jamuna Baruah played the role of Parvati(Paro). It was a He then did a remake of the same film in Hindi with Kundanlal Saigal in the lead role in 1936.

This Hindi version of Devdas became incredibly successful throughout India and Pramathesh Baruah became one of the top notch Indian Cinema Directors. Devdas essentially brought revolution to Indian Cinema and changed the look of social melodrama in cinemas with his unique treatment towards it. In Devdas he did not follow the contemporarily prevalent style of presentation and kept off the trend of extreme theatricality in acting and dialogue delivery. Rather he opened up a new avenue of natural style of acting impervious of stereotype melodrama. Pramathesh Baruah had exposure to European naturalistic trends in cinemas and that perhaps had been influencing factor to adopt a style of  dialogue which is somewhat like speaking in real life. Thus Pramathesh Baruah had been able to make Devdas a decent tragedy.Devdas was released on 26 April 1935 at Chitra Talkies. It was an instant all time Box Office Hit and it turned Pramathesh into a star overnight. Pramathesh created the climax of Devdas in a different way which was not present in Saratchandra's origin novel. Having seen Devdas Sarat Chandra said to Pramathesh -"It appears that I was born to write Devdas because you were born to recreate it  in cinema."

This legendary film director and actor and one of successful great Assamese died in the year 1951 at the age of 48 making Devdas a folk hero. He said-"No one has the right to live beyond the age of 50".