This superstar went into depression after his last film flopped, attempted suicide twice, was found dead at 39 due to...

He was 39 when he was found dead, directed just eight films and took 104 takes for that searing climax shot of Pyaasa where the poet protagonist stands framed in light and shadow as he asks "Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai?". Guru Dutt’s life can perhaps be summed up in these three numbers - a superbly talented filmmaker and actor who died just too young from a cocktail of alcohol and sleeping pills and whose films went from being easy-breezy to dark and personal, reflecting his own turmoil and struggles with self. 

The actor-filmmaker, one of India’s most influential, turns 100 on July 9, moment for cineastes and others to celebrate the work of a man who spelt magic on screen and remains an enigma all these years later. Never perhaps has there been a showbiz personality -- his life and work both underscored by tragedy -- who has left such a profound impact and so many unanswered questions. His films, some which he produced and others he directed, include Kagaaz Ke Phool, Baazi, Aar Paar, Chaudhavin Ka Chaand, Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam and Pyaasa. 

In Pyaasa, Dutt’s role as Vijay, the anguished poet, epitomises not just his artistic mastery as actor and director but also the man he probably was -- an obsessive and uncompromising artist at odds with society and its rules. In his biography Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story, author Yasser Usman quotes close friend Dev Anand as saying Dutt would reshoot a lot and scrap most of it if he did not find it perfect. "By the time he made Pyaasa in 1957, the indecisiveness had magnified manifold. He would shoot and shoot and was unsure about what he really wanted in a particular scene. Even with himself, for the famous climax sequence in Pyaasa, he shot one hundred and four takes!", Usman writes. 

Pyaasa carries the disillusionment that manifests again in his last directorial Kaagaz Ke Phool, the semi-autobiographical story about a director unwilling to compromise. He made it when his relationship with wife Geeta Dutt was going through a difficult time and never really recovered from the debacle of the film he termed a "still born child". He sank into depression after that and told friends he didn't have it in him to direct successful films. Th 1959 romantic drama turned out to be his last directorial.

The marriage between the two Dutts, one a top playback singer who delivered gem after gem in his films and the other a director on the rise, didn't have the fairytale ending that people thought it would. It took its inevitable toll. "Guru Dutt and Geeta Dutt had realised that their marriage was not working. Geeta Dutt, too, had taken to alcohol and sleeping pills majorly," Guru's sister Lalita Lajmi recalled in an interview with Usman. Guru Dutt tried to commit suicide twice. Once, during the making of Pyaasa, and again a few years later when Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962) was in production. “The second time, it was an overdose of sleeping pills. He was unconscious for three days. Then, on the fourth day, we heard his scream. The first person he asked for was Geeta. It was strange because their relationship was going through hell," she is quoted as saying in Usman’s article for The Print. 

Guru Dutt died on October 10, 1964. Geeta Dutt died eight years later on July 20, 1972 of liver cirrhosis at the age of 41. The personal turmoil seeped into the director's works, many of his films as an actor and filmmaker seeped in fatalism and despair. Their son Arun Dutt - the couple had three children Tarun, Arun and Nina - said in an interview with WildFilmsIndia that his father was a mix of Vijay from Pyaasa and Suresh Sinha from Kaagaz Ke Phool, a serious and melancholic personality. Before his death, he was starring and producing Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi, which finally released in 1966 and was reshot with Dharmendra as the leading man. 

Guru Dutt was born Vasanth Kumar Shivashankar Padukone to a banker Shivashanker Rao Padukone and a teacher Vasanthi Padukone on July 9, 1925, in Bangalore as the eldest of four children but spent his formative years in Kolkata where he picked up not just the language but a close affinity to its culture. It was a disturbed childhood, his sister has recalled in Usman's book. As a young child, he was obsessed with shadow play on the wall - a fascination that carried into his films which stand out for their stark interplay of light and dark and evocative song picturisation; most famously perhaps in Sakhiya Aaj Neend Nahin Aayegi in Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, and Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam in Kaagaz Ke Phool. 

When he was just 16, Guru Dutt had to discontinue his education to supplement the family's income. He first worked as a telephone operator, hated the job, left it after a month and joined Hindustan Lever's Calcutta office. But influenced by his uncle B.B. Benegal, a film publicist and painter, Guru Dutt started to nurture a different dream. That was around the time he decided to pursue his passion for dance and joined renowned Uday Shankar who called him to Almora to join his dance academy. Guru Dutt later joined Prabhat Film Company in Pune as a choreographer and assistant director. It's here that he met Dev Anand, who went on to become a close friend. 

In 1951, Dev Anand roped him in to direct Baazi, a massive success at the time and one that set the tone for noir style filmmaking in Hindi movies. Written by actor-writer Balraj Sahni, it featured Geeta Dutt's voice in most of the songs. Remember Tadbeer se bigdi hui taqdeer bana le? This is where Geeta and Guru Dutt met and fell in love. They married two years later in 1953. Baazi was followed by Jaal, again starring Dev Anand and Geeta Bali, was another success in the noir tradition. 

In 1954, Guru Dutt starred and directed Aar Paar, a hit with classics like Ye Lo Main Haari Piya and Babuji Dheere Chalna in Geeta Dutt's voice and the often remixed Kabhi Aar, Kabhi Paar in Shamshad Begum's voice. He next directed and acted in Mr and Mrs 55 with Madhubala. After that came CID, starring Dev Anand and directed by his protégé Raj Khosla. Guru Dutt's next Sailaab was a box office failure the same year and led to Pyaasa, a story he had written years ago when he was out of a job.

Pyaasa marks a change in Guru Dutt's directorial style as he poured everything in this dream project and brought back Waheeda Rehman, the newcomer he had discovered for CID and with whom he formed one of the most successful pairings of Hindi cinema. Many of his films, whether happy or sad, centre around a struggling hero caught between two women. In Pyaasa, poet Vijay is torn between Meena (Mala Sinha) who chooses money over love and self sacrificing sex worker Gulabo (Rehman). In Kaagaz Ke Phool, the director struggles with an unhappy marriage while he finds his muse in his leading heroine Shanti (Rehman). The relationship remains unfulfilled and without definition. 

Through his career and many ups and downs, both in his personal and professional lives, the one constant was the core team he built painstakingly after his first hit Baazi. These included writer Abrar Alvi, cinematographer V K Murthy, Waheeda Rehman and comedian Johny Walker, all of whom rallied around him in his moments of despair and encouraged him to not wallow in pity but look ahead. 

One outcome of this was Chaudhvin Ka Chand in 1960, very different in mood and tenor from Kaagaz ke Phool. After the success of the film, Guru Dutt started dreaming again and convinced writer Bimal Mitra to write the screenplay of Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, his last film. By then, of course, the artist was drowning in personal tragedy. Close friends and family have gone on record to say that he was given to depressive episodes and the problem was further compounded by alcoholism and reliance on sleeping pills.

(With inputs from PTI)

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