Madhabi Mukherjee
| Madhabi Mukherjee | |
|---|---|
| Born |
10 February 1942 (age 74) Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India (now Kolkata, West Bengal, India) |
| Other names | Madhabi Chakraborty, Madhabi Mukhopadhyay , Madhuri |
| Notable work | Charulata |
Madhabi Mukherjee née Chakraborty (born 10 February 1942) is an Indian Bengali actress who has won the National Film Award for Best Actress for the Bengali film Dibratrir Kabya. She has acted in some of the most critically acclaimed films in Bengali cinema.
Her major role was the title role of Charu in Satyajit Ray's masterpiece Charulata. Her impact was such that Madhabi Mukherjee is still considered among the all-time greats of Bengali cinema.
Madhabi Mukherjee was born on 10 February 1942, originally Madhuri Mukherjee. She was raised with her sister Manjari by their mother in Kolkata, in what was then Bengal, India. As a young girl, she became involved in the theatre.
She worked on stage with doyens like Sisir Bhaduri, Ahindra Choudhury, Nirmalendu Lahiri and Chhabi Biswas. Some of the plays she acted in included Naa and Kalarah. She made her film debut as a child artist in Premendra Mitra's Kankantala Light Railway (1950).
Madhabi first made a major impact with Mrinal Sen's Baishey Shravan (Wedding Day) in 1960. The film is set in a Bengal village just before and during the horrific famine of 1943 in Bengal that saw over 5 million die. Madhabi plays a 16-year-old girl who marries a middle-aged man. Initially she brightens up his life but then World War II and the Bengal Famine hits them. The couple's marriage disintegrates.
Her next major film was Ritwik Ghatak's Subarnarekha (The Golden Thread ) made in 1962 but released in 1965 – the last in a trilogy examining the socio-economic implications of partition, the other two being Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star) (1960) and Komal Gandhar (E-Flat) (1961). It is also perhaps Ritwik Ghatak's most complex film. In the film Ghatak depicts the great economic and socio-political crisis eating up the very entrails of the existence of Bengal from 1948 to 1962 ; how the crisis has first and foremost left one bereft of one's conscience, one's moral sense. Madhabi gives a wonderful performance as Sita, the younger sister of Ishwar (Abhi Bhattacharya) who kills herself when as a prostitute waiting for her first customer, she finds out the customer is none other than her estranged brother.
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