Face of parallel cinema still captivates hearts

PUNE: In 1973, filmmaker Arun Khopkar, who was then studying direction at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), had just finished his script for his diploma film and was looking for an actress to play the lead. A long search led him to Smita Patil, who was 18 then and was working with Doordarshan. The film, Teevra Madhyam, was her first encounter with the camera before the powerhouse performer went on to become the face of the country's parallel cinema movement of the 1980s.
Khopkar still recounts her dark and intense eyes and how in his 20-minute film, he shot the close up of her face for a minute and a half. "For most of it, she was not doing anything. It was just her face filling up the screen. Her face was the landscape of her great soul," he told TOI in an email response. He said he had showed his script to friends, Mani Kaul being one of them. Kaul directed him to this "face on TV" as the person he was looking for.
Around the same time, Patil made appearances in Jabbar Patel's Saamna and Shyam Benegal's Charandas Chor. Benegal's discovery of Patil is a well-known story. "I saw Smita on Doordarshan and was struck by how photogenic she was. It was through my then sound recordist Hitendra Ghosh, who knew the Patil family, I approached her for the film. When I met her, I decided she will also star in my next film, which was Nishant," said Benegal, who made many films with her in the lead after that.
Benegal credits her spontaneity and instincts for her effortless acting. "You would never know how much effort she used to put in before you saw her perform. She made every character hers, every shooting location hers. She was a star but had no starry airs about her," he adds.
Benegal recalls her preparation for 'Manthan', which was shot in a village in Gujarat. "People came to see the actors of the film from far off places. While they could recognize Girish Karnad, they kept asking me where the actress was. I told them to look at the woman standing against a pillar in conversation with other women in the village. That moment I felt she was perfect for the role as she could easily melt into her character. She adapted to the surroundings of the Goan village, where I shot Bhumika, in a similar way," he said.
For filmmaker Jabbar Patel, Smita was a complete actress. "Smita was working with Theatre Academy when I asked her to work in Saamna, which was shot in Kolhapur. It was Jait re Jait in which she played the lead. She jumped on to the project after listening to the script and later requested me to cast her in all the films. She was intense and knew the art of using body language to emote," he said.
She had the country's finest directors ranging from G Aravindan to Mrinal Sen and Satyajit Ray wanting to work with her, Patel said.
He recalled Patil crying when Vijay Tendulkar's appreciated her work in Umbartha. "She was not the first choice of Tendulkar, who wrote the film. But, I wanted her in the film. Tendulkar was very impressed when the film was screened and personally congratulated Patil. She broke into tears," he said.
Mohan Agashe, Patil's co-actor in several films, said Patil was a sensitive, compassionate and an intense woman. "I knew Smita long before she became an actress and used to study in Perugate Bhave Girls' High School. For me, she is much more than anecdotes. She was not a method actor like Shabana Azmi, but there was something refreshing to her existence. She was so intense that one would be scared of her intensity. I know for a fact that there was not one person she met and did not fall in love with her, even if it was a five-minute meeting," he said.