The Hero

The Hero (1966)

নায়ক

Arindam, a matinee idol, is going by train to collect an acting award. On the train, he is confronted by Aditi, a journalist who somewhat unwillingly starts to take his interview. Arindam, won over by Aditi's naivete, starts to disclose his past, his fears, and his secrets.

Date of release
1966-05-06
TMDB
8.1 / 10 (72)
Runtime
1h 58m
Genres
Drama
Director
Satyajit Ray

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 0. Including: National Film Award for Best Bengali Feature Film

Nayak is a 1966 Indian Bengali-language epic psychological drama written, scored and directed by Satyajit Ray. Produced by R. D. Bansal under the banner of R. D. B. & Co., the film stars Uttam Kumar as a matinee idol on a 24-hour train ride from Kolkata to Delhi to receive a National Award, where he ends up revealing his mistakes, insecurities, and regrets during a multi-part interview to a young journalist, played by Sharmila Tagore.

Production

In a letter Ray wrote in 1966, he said, about the film's development: I wanted a relationship to develop between the Matinee Idol and a girl on the train. Romance was out – the time being so short – but I wanted something with an interesting development. The transition from apathy mixed with a certain dislike, to sympathetic understanding, seemed a promising one.

Ray wrote the screenplay for the film in Darjeeling, where he went during the off-season from filming. While writing, he had Uttam Kumar in mind for the lead—not as an actor, but rather as a "phenomenon". When Ray finished the script, he read it to Tapan Sinha, and said, "I would choose Uttam for this role", to which Sinha replied: "This is the perfect choice.

The role of Aditi was initially offered to Madhabi Mukherjee, the star of Ray's previous films Mahanagar (1963) and Charulata (1964), but Mukherjee rejected the offer for personal reasons. Only then did Ray think of Sharmila Tagore, who he had directed in her first two films years earlier, but had recently been busy filming Hindi films.

The film was shot in the latter half of 1965. The scenes onboard the train were filmed in Studio 1 and 2 of New Theatres' Calcutta studio, where art director Bansi Chandragupta, after observing the construction of train compartments at Santragachi Junction, built a set based on the luxurious train cars of the Rajdhani Express.

Shortly before making Nayak, Kumar had a bout of chickenpox that left pockmarks on his face. He was upset when Ray told him on the first day of filming that he was not going to be wearing any makeup, but Ray reassured him, saying he would not be without makeup for the entire shoot.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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