Gyan Mukherjee

Early career

Mukherjee started his career with New Theatres in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and subsequently joined Bombay Talkies as a supervising technician. Soon became a trendsetter of "formula film" starting with first directorial venture Geeta (1940) based on the theme, "Crime-doesn't-pay", "Boy meets girl" was used in Jhoola (1941).^[1]

1943—1956

In 1943, he reused the formula of Geeta to direct the biggest hit of his career, Kismet (1943), which also add another formula of "lost-and-found", which remained popular for several decades in Hindi films.^[1] The film had Ashok Kumar, the leading star of the era, playing an anti-hero and also appearing in a double role. The film had a strong-anti British sentiment and also featured the noted patriotic song, "Door hato O Duniya walon, Hindustan Hamara Hai" (Leave People of World, India is Ours) by Kavi Pradeep,^[2][3] and went on to run at Roxy Cinema in Calcutta for 3 years and 8 months.^[4][5][6] Subhash K. Jha has called Kismet as one of the most influential films of all times" in Indian cinema.^[7]

After death of Himanshu Rai, founder of Bombay Talkies Studio in 1940, a group led by producer Sashadhar Mukherjee along with production controller Rai Bahadur Chunilal,^[8] actor Ashok Kumar and Mukherjee, broke away to establish the Filmistan studio in March 1943 at the premises of old Sharada Movietone studios in Goregaon, Mumbai.^[9][10] He retouched the concept of anti-hero in Sangram (1950), today his works are seen as early depictions of the underworld and the anti-hero in Indian cinema.^[1]

While working at Bombay Talkies, auteur Guru Dutt trained under him, though he also assisted Amiya Chakravarty, Dutt emulated Mukherjee's formula-based film style in his early films and eventually dedicated his classic, Pyaasa (1957) to Mukherjee,^[1][6] Another noted director, who assisted him at Bombay Talkies, was Shakti Samanta, who later made Aradhana (1969) and Amar Prem (1972).^[11]