Seven Steps (1961)

Interesting facts

Saptapadi is a 1961 Indian Bengali-language epic romantic drama film by Ajoy Kar, starring Suchitra Sen, Uttam Kumar, Chhabi Biswas and Chhaya Debi. Music direction and playback singing for Kumar's voice was by Hemanta Mukherjee and in Sen's voice by Sandhya Mukherjee. The story is based on a 1958 same name novel by Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay. This is regarded as one of the greatest romantic films in the history of Bengali cinema. The film went on to become the highest grossing Bengali film in 1961. It was featured retrospectively at the 45th IFFI in the "homage section" of Indian panorama.

Production

Saptapadi is a reunion of Kumar and Ajay Kar with their production house Alochaya Productions after the mammoth success of Harano Sur. The film was adapted from Tarashankar's 1958 novel Saptapadi. Kumar was impressed with the story and thus, bought the rights of the novel. The plot was set during the Second World war in 1942 with flashback scenes narrating the past events.

Suchitra Sen was finalized for the film as expected. However, she demanded a high salary of 100,000 rupees, which was far above the standard compensation at the time. After negotiations with the production team, she ultimately agreed to reduce her fee. There were also rumors of an ego clash between Kumar and Sen during this period.

Shooting commenced in late 1959. But during the production Uttam's father dies. So film shooting was stopped. Later in late 1960 shooting started again but Kumar busy with other films and Sen also a busy artists so there lack of days to shoot, finally the film shooting completed in 1961. For the film Kumar and Sen practiced dance and reading Shakespeare.

Kumar was a Mohun Bagan football fan, and in the football match scene he wanted to play in a Mohun Bagan jersey, but there was none available so he don't want to shoot the scene. Sen who was an East Bengal fan hearing this she forced to him to shoot either she leaved the film. So Kumar played instead in an East Bengal jersey.

The famous bike sequence from the song Ei Path Jodi Na Sesh Hoy Uttam and Suchitra did not ride the bike at all that day. The BMW bike on which this song was shot was not on the star duo ar all. Film critic Swapan Kumar Mallick unearths the famous scene in his book Mahanayak Revisited : The World of Uttam Kumar said the director Ajay Kar manipulated the close-up shots to shoot the bike scene. Multiple dummies were used in long shots.

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