Letters that Matter: Dreyer, Ghatak, Gandhi and ‘The Word’

On screen Carl Theodor Dreyer during the session on reading of Dreyer’s letters, which was hosted by the Royal Danish Library on 4 February 2019. From the archival andcuratorial point of view, this was a significant event, perhaps first of its kind in the world, photograph courtesy: Eva Novrup Redvall. LETTERS THAT MATTER Dreyer, Ghatak, Gandhi and The Word Amrit Gangar We can find some common resonances through the letters written by Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ritwik Ghatak to the bosses of film companies / studios where they were employed. The letters provide us certain insights into the ‘rules of the game’ at play and the ‘idealism’ walking a tight rope walks. Celebrating a centenary of a letter or letters by any filmmaker/s written to a production company / studio or producer produces a fascinating curatorial curiosity and engagement as they reveal the background processes behind how certain films were made. Once their authenticity and provenance are ascertained, they provide first-hand information and knowledge. In 40 ജൂണ്‍ 2022 India, we don’t think of undertaking such engagements though opportunities and instances are not inadequate. The immediate reference that comes to my mind is the letter Ritwik Ghatak had written to Sashadhar Mukherjee, the big boss of the Bombaybased leading Filmistan studios - at the city’s western suburb of Goregaon West; not far from it was the legendary Bombay Talkies ..................................................................................................................................... studios at the neighboring suburb of Malad West, where Mukherjee had worked but left it after Himansu Rai’s sad demise. He left Bombay Talkies along with Rai Bahadur Chunilal (music director Madan Mohan’s father), Ashok Kumar and Gyan Mukherjee and founded Filmistan in 1943. Through a letter dated 21 October 1955, the Communist Party of India (CPI) expelled Ritwik Ghatak from the party in whose cultural wing the Indian People’s Theatre Association he was active. Around that time, he had already shifted to Bombay, where he had hired a small flat in the suburb of Goregaon (I had seen his photograph at one of my Bengali friends Ruma Benerjee’s railway colony house. Ruma’s father worked in Western Ralways. – A) the correspondence between Ritwik Ghatak and Surama (whom he addressed as Lakshmi / Lokkhi), published in a book form provides us a great a deal of information, though most of it is in Bengali language. Incidentally, in 2016 Ghatak’s letter of 10th April 1956 to Mr Mukherjee of Filmistan studios in Bombay completed its 60th anniversary (Shashti Poorthi) but went unnoticed. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s remarkable Danish film Ordet was just then released. A multi-stranded story about family and faith, Ordet is an examination of religious intolerance which builds to a shattering miraculous conclusion. Dreyer (3 February 1889-20 March 1968) was much older than Ghatak (4 November 1925-6 February 1976) and both had different temperaments (svabhava) and worldviews. However, essentially both Dreyer and Ghatak were uncompromising loners, realizing in their lifetime not a massive output of films: Dreyer ended up making only 13 feature films in a career that spanned nearly 45 years, while Ghatak made only 9 feature films between 1952 and 1974, but both leaving their indelible footprints on the firmament of film history. The Biblical etymology of the ‘word’ firmament would make an interesting reading. Dreyer’s film Ordet (The Word) was based on the mystical play by the martyred poet-vicar Kaj Munk. Through The Word, Dreyer wanted (Left) Sashadhar Mukherjee (29 September 1909-3 November 1990) and Ritwik Ghatak (4 November 1925-6 February 1976) .................................................................................................................................. June 2022 41 to see how people would react to a miracle, since the Christ film would be full of them. In a conversation with the young American Jan Wahl, who had spent time while Dreyer was making the film, the Danish master quoted the Book of the Evangelist, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This is a long winded complicated history, so let us return to the letters that matter. Personally, I find some common resonances of both Dreyer and Ghatak towards their views on lens and the colour and the phenomenon of realism, their differing views on religion / religiosity notwithstanding. Carl Theodor Dreyer wrote the first ever letter of his active film career on 23 March 1919 to W. W. Stæhr, the Nordisk Films Kompagni’s Director. As Isak Thorsen and Eva Novrup Redvall write in their insightful piece (7 April 2021), “The young Dreyer had been employed at the newly established script department of this company since 1913 and in 1918 the company gave him his first chance at directing with Præsidenten (The President, 1919). While in the script department, Dreyer had read a script by Edgard Høyer that he wanted to make into the ambitious film Leaves from Satan’s Book. Written from “Copenhagen F, 23 March 1919, Frederik VII’s Alle 12” and addressed to “Director W. Stæhr, A/S Nordisk Films Kompagni, Mosedalsvej, Valby”, whom young Dreyer addresses as “My dear Director Stæhr”, the letter forms an important part of not only Danish film history but world’s, and when juxtaposed with our own Ritwik Ghatak’s letters to his wife Surama and to the Filmistan boss, they acquire an added significance, I believe. Ironically, only three days later, another letter from Dreyer to Nordisk Films bears witness to a director who has been forced to accept a remarkably reduced frame if he wants to make any film at all. Contrary to the proud and insistent voice in the first letter, painting an image of a director unwilling to Impressions (typewritten first pages) of the letter Carl Theodor Dreyer wrote to W. Stæhr on 23 March 1919 from Copenhagen (left) and Ritwik Ghatak’s letter addressed to Filmistan’s head Sashadhar Mukherjee, on 10 April 1956 from Bombay. Sources: issuu.com and Isak Thorsen and Eva Novrup Redvall, which includes Dreyer’s original letter in Danish language); the Bengali special Ritwik Ghatak number of Chitrabhikshan, April 1976, collage AG 42 ജൂണ്‍ 2022 ..................................................................................................................................... (Left) Ole Olsen (5 May 1863-5 October 1943), Carl Theodor Dreyer (3 February 1889-20 March 1968), collage AG compromise, he now accepts the fact that he cannot make the proposed big film and even argues that ‘the reduced film’ might turn out to be much better and more forceful than the big film’ (see Dreyer’s letter to Ole Olsen). The realities of filmmaking shaped and scaled down his vision, and the film that was made – the silent film classic Leaves from Satan’s Book (Blade af Satans Bog, 1920) was the film that he was able to make at the particular time under the circumstances given. In his letter of 26/27 March 1919, Dreyer wrote to Nordisk Films Kompagni Director General Ole Olsen, “[…] when I relinquished responsibilities yesterday, it was not because I believed that we could not make a good film for 150, 000… or even 120, 000 kroner. Quite the contrary, having reconciled myself to the fact that I must give up hope of making the big film, I am convinced that the reduced film in several ways, and not lest in respect of its dramatic effect, will be much better and more forceful than the big film.” Notwithstanding the fact also that we don’t have letters-in-response from either heads of Nordisk Films (in the case of Dreyer) or from the head of Filmistan (in the case of Ghatak), the ‘letters’ do ‘matter’ greatly to the archival occupation and engagement, which can fill the gaps and blanks in garnering as many historical records as possible. Very few and selective letters might have been reproduced in books or journals (e.g. Ritwik Ghatk special number of Chitrabhikshan), but to archivists and researchers, the original documents matter. For instance, imagine, the Ingmar Bergman Archives consisting of thousands of documents including around 10, 000 letters to and from Bergman: a unique collection and material from over 60 years of continuous artistic activity! The story of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation began when the Swedish maestro donated his archive – his life’s work – to the Swedish Film Institute, under the condition that they would be administrated by an independent foundation. And so it was that 45 moving boxes containing scripts, notebooks, sketches, photographs and letters arrived in Stockholm from Fårö, the very beginning of the Archives. How many of us really know about the collection and conservation of such letters that the National Film Archives of India has? It could eventually result into a massive ‘translation’ project. The original letters, like films, to my mind, do form an invaluable primary source of information. I am grateful .................................................................................................................................. June 2022 43 to the Danish Film Institute’s Dreyer Collection (well organized and categorized) for providing us an opportunity to see and feel these letters and to Isak Thorsen and Eva Novrup Redvall for providing us English translations of these letters, mainly two that Dreyer had written and reproduced here in this essay, in their partial impressions. In his first letter written to W. Stæhr on 23 March 1919, young Dreyer wrote, “[…] I have already told you, and I repeat it here, that I will make it my goal to produce a work of art which will set a standard for future films. That is my goal. I cannot guarantee, of course, that I will reach my goal, but I can assure you – and I do not believe you doubt it – that I shall not rest until I have given every detail of the film the stamp of quality I wish it to have.” After thirty seven years of Dreyer’s letter, Ritwik Ghatak had written (letter dated 10th April 1956) to the Filmistan studios’ boss Sashadhar Mukherjee,”Make a department for experimental filmmaikng. Appoint persons with necessary flares, put all Carl Dreyer’s letter to Nordisk Films Kompagni Director General Ole Olsen 44 ജൂണ്‍ 2022 ..................................................................................................................................... Carl Theodor Dreyer (left) and Ritwik Ghatak, the two different temperaments and worldviews that find some resonances through letters they wrote to the bosses of film companies / studios where they were employed; they were divided greatly by times, ages, geographies, economics and circumstances too. images Wikimedia commons, collage AG sorts of hurdles before them, a low budget, no stars, no fancy name of technicians, no massive sets, no legendary music director, and also no colour – just ideas. Let them get out of the studios and shoot out of doors, let them know that any story can be a great story with proper treatment, - and also treatment mainly includes camera treatment. Let them see the world through the camera; let them explore possibilities of editing table, creative sound track, camera set-up. […] In his honest blunt tone Ghatak continued, “I personally do not feel like staying here if such a small corner is not made. I do not aspire after position or money but I must feel that I am living a worthy life. It is better to go away anywhere else and fight tooth and nail for such intoxicating filmmaking. I do not see any future in this smug complacency. This environment is fetter.” One hundred years ago, young Dreyer, in his confident self, had so bluntly insisted upon the Nordisk Film Kompagni boss, “But this film cannot be made for less than 230, 000, and you, Director Stæhr, can forget about ways to cut costs, for I am the only person who can judge in this matter since I have every frame of the film as I see it embedded in my mind’s eye.” There is a certain temperamental resonance between Dreyer and Ghatak that we find in their tone of writing, interestingly both Dreyer and Ghatak were of the same age (30-31) when they wrote the letters quoted here. In his letter to W. Stæhr, Dreyer had added, “As I have said, I know that if this film is to be what I want it to be, it must cost 230, 000 kroner. I will not agree to ‘cut a heel and clip a toe’ to make the project ‘go through’, for I would indeed be a remorseless villain if, just to salvage my fee, I should agree to make a film which in my sincere conviction can only be a third-rate or a fourth-rate film.” Well, as Casper Tybjerg wrote, “In his second feature, Dreyer got the chance to make a film on a really big scale, even if Nordisk gave him nowhere near the kind of budget he was asking for.” To think of such ‘money’ was beyond Ghatak’s imagination as he always struggled to get even bare minimum budget to shoot a film, but with all those resource crunches and constraints, he was able to produce films that have etched their marks on the walls of Indian film history. It is the ‘letters’ (and their tonal equivalences) that draw me to bring them together in strange ways. Ritwik Ghatak always talked fondly of Carl Dreyer, particularly of his silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) which was just .................................................................................................................................. June 2022 45 three years away from the former’s birth in 1925.Ghatak had seen Dreyer’s masterpiece while teaching at the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune and once said he had totally lost himself after watching this film. He had joined the FTII in 1964 initially as a Lecturer, becoming Vice Principal in June 1965.10 At the FTII, he was involved in the making of two students’ films, viz. Fear and Rendezvous. He resigned from the FTII the same year. While in Bombay, he wrote the story for Bimal Roy’s film Madhumati (1959) which has the credits in the beginning: Story: Ritwik Ghatak, Dialogues: Rajinder Singh Bedi, Dialogue Direction: S. Paul Mahendra. Madhumati is considered to be one of the earliest films to deal with reincarnation, and several critics also found in it a gothic and noir feel. “In Madhumati (1959), the Indian gothic is gradually naturalized through a more direct relationship between rebirth, spirits and ghosts,” writes the film scholar Vijay Mishra in his book Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, Routledge, 2002, p.57) In Dreyer’s oeuvre, we find many gothic elements. In our present context, what is, however, of significance is the Royal Danish Library hosting an event on ‘Film Letters’ at which actors read classic letters by, to or about famous Clara Pontoppidan in Carl Dreyer’s film 0from Satan’s Book (1921), pc Wikimedia commons 46 ജൂണ്‍ 2022 Danish people associated with cinema in combination with short clips from their films accompanied by live piano. Among them, as Isak Thorsen and Eva Novrup Redvall inform us were the Dreyer letters from 1919 as well as a collection of letters linked to silent film stars Asta Nielsen and Clara Pontoppidan. Around 2008 my wife Kuntal and I had visited Nordisk Films studios at Valby (a Copehhagen suburb) where we saw posters of Asta Nielsen (11 September 1881-24 May 1972) and Clara Pontoppidan nee Rasmussen (23 April 1883-22 January 1975). Clara Pontoppidan appears in two films by Dreyer. She plays Siri, a telegraph operator’s wife, in the fourth episode of Leaves from Satan’s Book (1920) and the lead role as the princess of Illyria in Once Upon a Time (1922). Inspired by D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916, Danish premiere in1918), Leaves from Satan’s Book is divided into four episodes set in four different historical eras. In each episode we follow Satan, who has been cursed by God and is doomed to tempt man. He will be redeemed only if he is resisted. In episode 1 Satan in the guise of a Pharisee tempts Judas to betray Jesus. In episode 2set in 16th century Spain, Satan is a grand inquisitor who compels a monk, Don Fernandez, to commit a heinous rape. Episode 3 takes place during the French Revolution. Satan is now a Jacobin leader who convinces young Joseph to betray his noble master and thwart a plan that could have saved Queen Marie Antoinette from death at the guillotine. In episode 4 Satan is a former monk who leads a gang of Red Guards during the Finnish civil war in 1918. He threatens to kill the family of telegraph operator, Siri, unless she helps lure a group of government soldiers into an ambush. She resists, however, committing suicide rather than becoming a traitor. When in 2008 Kuntal, my wife, our friend from Aarhus, Birthe Mølhave, a teacher of comparative religion and I went to Nordisk Films, the world’s oldest and uninterruptedly ..................................................................................................................................... A scene from Carl Dreyer’s 1920 silent film Leaves from Satan’s Book, Dreyer’s first and last Jesus on film. pc Wikimedia commons active studios since 1906, its all the shooting floors were occupied and were abuzz with films and television series being shot. Somewhere a poster showed Asta Nielsen, who had impersonated Hamlet in female role in a 1921 German adaptation of this Shakespearean play, about which I wrote in my article The Indian ‘Silent’ Shakespeare: Recouping an Archive in Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: ‘Local Habitations’.11 As Isak Thorsen records, “The departmentalized mode of production led to a high degree of bureaucratization. Nordisk Film’s lot in Valby was called ‘the film factory’, and Olsen referred to the films as the ‘company’s film-fabricata, or consumer film-goods’. The clear directions about the content of the films, Nordisk Film’s rules and directions propagated elaborate guidelines for fines if an employee was late for work and rules on how to shoot the film most efficiently. For instance, only 100 metres of film at a time were handed out to a director. If the director did not turn in anything useful on those one-hundred metres, He had to prepare a report about his failure before he was given the next hundred metres. The efficient production peaked in 1915, with a total of 174 films, of which ninety-six were long films, corresponding to about two feature films per week.12 The Carl Theodor Dreyer Collection at the Danish Film Institute While at the DFI we also saw the collection founded on donations from .................................................................................................................................. June 2022 47 Kuntal Gangar with a Danish studio floor manager at the Nordisk Film, Valby, Copenhagen, photographerd by Birthe Mølhave. Dreyer’s estate that was transferred to the Danish film Museum (now the DFI / Archive and Cinematheque) in 1975. Among Dreyer’s papers are original manuscripts and research materials for several of his unrealized film projects, including The Life of Jesus (Jesus of Nazareth) and Mary Stuart, as well as personal letters, photographs, clippings and many other memorabilia and artifacts.13 All such attitudes of the studio owners and masters do somehow indicate the battles that the directors such as Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ritwik Ghatak fought within the system and without, struggling to retain their sensitivity as delicately and sharply as they could. The letters provide us certain insights into the ‘rules of the game’ at play and the ‘idealism’ walking a tight rope walks. The history of cinema is not as silvery or shining as we see or think. Since the release of Leaves from Satan’s Book Dreyer was dreaming to make The Life of 48 ജൂണ്‍ 2022 Jesus (or Jesus of Nazareth). On 26th September 1955, Dreyer (from 81 Dalgas Boulevard, Frederiksberg F., Copenhagen) wrote to Jan Wahl that he intended doing the Jesus film in color and for widescreen (CinemaScope). “As to the person of Christ, I do not see him at all, but the first time I happen to meet him I’ll know it is HE!”14 In fact, Dreyer had written the script for the Jesus film in the late 1940s and The Word (Ordet) was a trial run for that project, “a tantalizing sketch in preparation for the ultimate goal,” as Jan Wahl writes in his book. But why did I bring in Gandhiji into the title of this essay? It was precisely in the context of his Jesus film, Dreyer had referred to Gandhi all the way in the remote Danish capital of Copenhagen! As the film grew on him though vexingly, Dreyer also grew in his command of the problems he must wrestle with. He wanted to include all the parables and miracles in the film, no matter in theory, the spiritual fact had to be shown in the film. Here, I think, both Jesus and Gandhi came to his rescue to a great extent and that shows how he thought of his films. He said, “Jesus was a brilliant rabbi fulfilling a divine Messianic mission. Jesus the liberator antedated the philosophy of Gandhi in our own time.”15 When in 1955, Dreyer was intensely dreaming of realizing his film The Life of Jesus, Ghatak had completed a short documentary (in Hindi for Government of Bihar) Life of the Adivasis; somewhere the ‘archetypes’ were in confluence on the path of history!! Somewhere the Word (Ordet) was still moving like a mysterious cell… Notes 1. 2. 3. Even after Devika Rani’s retirement, Bombay Talkies continued to survive and produce films until 1953. Sometime the Ordet year is mentioned as 1956. In Biblical cosmology, firmament is the vast solid dome created by God on the second day of his ..................................................................................................................................... 4. 5. creation of the world to divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that thte dry land could appear. The concept was adopted into the subsequent Classical / Medieval model of heavenly spheres, but was dropped with advance in astronomy in the 16th and 17th centuries. Today it survives as a synonym for ‘sky’ or ‘heaven’. Kaj Harald Leininger Munk (commonly called Kaj Munk) (13 January 1898 – 4 January 1944) was a Danish playwright and Lutheran pastor, known for his cultural engagement and his martyrdom during the Occupation of Denmark of World War II. He is commemorated as a martyr in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on 14 August, alongside Maximilian Kolbe (8 January 189414 August 1941). Veneraed as saint, Kolbe was a Polish Catholic priest and Convental Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a man named Franciszek Gajownicsek in the German concentration camp of Auschwitz. Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ordet: My Summer with the Danish Filmmaker, Jan Wahl, University Press of Kentucky, USA, 2012. Andrei Tarkovsky’s film 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. An early Nordisk Films Kompagni logo put Copenhagen at the centre of the world, and the polar bear on top of it. Image:public domain. 15. Sacrifice (1986) refers to these words in its beginning when Alexander has a monologue with his son addressed as a ‘Little Man’. The year of this film is mentioned varyingly (1919, 1920, and 1921) in different sources, I have retained 1920 from the book A History of Danish Cinema, Eds.C. Claire Thomson, Isak Thorsen and Pei-Sze Chow, Edibnburgh University Press, 2021. The Carl Theodor Dreyer Collection founded donation from Dreyer’s estate that transferred the Danish Film Museum (now the Danish Film Institute / Archive & Cinematheque) in 1975. Among Dreyer’s papers are original manuscripts and research materials for several of his unrealized film projects, including Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Stuart as well as personal letters, photos, clippins, film awards and parts of his book collection. And to this the DFI’s clippings maerials and its collection of books and articles. Ritwik Number, Chitrabhikshan, https://www.carlthdreyer.dk/en/carlthdreyer/ films/features/leaves-satans-book When established in 1960 by Government of India it was known as Film Institute of India, which in 1971 came to be known as the Film & Television Institute of India. It soon started in-service training programme for Doordarshan. Poonam Trivedi and Paromita Chakravartti (Eds.), Routledge, New York 2019. Asta Nielsen was one of the most popular leding ladies of the 1910s, who became the first international movie stars. Seventy of Danish Nielsen’s seventy-four films were made in Germay where she was known simply as Die Asta or The Asta. Thorsen, I. Nordisk Films Kompagni, 1906–1924: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Bear, KINtop Studies in Early Cinema, vol. 5. East Barnet, UK: John Libbey Publishing Ltd. Our friend at the DFI and Manager of the Cinematheque Jesper Andersen has always been kind and helpful; we owe our gratitude to him. Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ordet: My Summer with the Danish Filmmaker, Jan Wahl, University Press of Kentucky, USA, 2012. Ritwik Ghatak too had his sad share of incomplete or unrealized films. In fact, when Jan Wahl had completed writing the book on Carl Dreyer who had written a letter dated 18th April 1959, Ghatak had left the film Kato Ajanare behind incomplete. Ibid .................................................................................................................................. June 2022 49