Subhendu Chatterjee was one of the finest actors to emerge out of the Bengali film industry in the 1960s. In an age when Uttam Kumar and Soumitra Chatterjee were the reigning matinee idols, Subhendu made his mark as a perceptive and capable actor at home in both art-house films and commercial movies of the day. As his friend and contemporary Ranjit Mullick remarked after his recent death, "Subhenduda never aspired to be a film star. His greatness as an actor lay in his ability to merge himself completely into his screen character."

Subhendu Chatterjee was born in 1936. After passing out from the Calcutta Medical College he began as his career as a practising doctor. It was during this time he began to dabble in amateur and professional stage and also tried his luck in films. He got his break in Mrinal Sen’s Akash Kusum (1965) where he excelled as a friend who attempts to dissuade the protagonist Ajoy (Soumitra Chatterjee) from taking an illegal route to success. His next major role came in Satyajit Ray’s Chiriakhana(1967) - a detective thriller chronicling the adventures of the much loved fictional sleuth Byomkesh Bakshi created by Saradindu Bannerjee. Subhendu was cast as Bijoy - an orphan who is one of the prime suspects in the brutal slaying of his rich uncle. Subhendu played the role of an weak-willed youth who ditches his plain Jane fiancée and falls for the charms of a more mature woman - who turns out to be the wife and accomplice of the actual murderer – but is ridden with guilt and roundly derided by the rejected girl’s irate father hell-bent on avenging his daughter’s honour. In Chiriakhana, Subhendu acted opposite Uttam Kumar – who played the role of Byomkesh Bakshi - for the first time and he stood out with his finely nuanced acting skills. A few years later, Subhendu Chatterjee would earn national and international recognition with Satyajit Ray’s classic Aranyer Din Ratri(1969). In this film which also had Soumitra Chatterjee, Shamit Bhanja, Robi Ghosh, Pahadi Sanyal and Sharmila Tagore in major roles, Subhendu was excellent as Sanjoy – the quintessential Bengali middle-class young man who is sensitive and intellectually refined but ultimately succumbs to all the moral and social hypocrisies typical of his social position. The scene, towards the end of the film, where the timid Sanjoy refuses the seductive charms of the voluptuous widow Jaya (Kaberi Bose) is a superb illustration of Subhendu’s restrained yet forceful acting style. An older Subhendu would do a reprisal of his role of Sanjoy in Gautam Ghosh’s Abar Aranye (2003) – a film which attempts to examine the same set of characters more than 30 years after the events in Ray's masterpiece. He would re-unite with Satyajit Ray once more in Ganashatru (1989) – an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People – where he played the role of Biresh Gupta – an independent-minded news paper editor who ultimately yields to the pressures of the corrupt local political system.

Although Subhendu Chatterjee made his mark in off-beat films like Chidiakhana it was with Hansa Mithun (1968), opposite Aparna Sen, that he established himself as an actor at home with the popular cinema. Unlike the handsome and ebullient Uttam Kumar who was the perfect romantic icon, Subhendu’s screen persona was of a typical middle class man – someone with whom the common man could identify with. The same year 1968, saw him give one of his most memorable performances in Pinaki Mukherjee’s super-hit film Chowringhee. He played Shankar, a young man who gets introduced to the la dolce vita of the rich and famous when he joins in as a trainee in Hotel Shahjehan, a five-star hotel. In this film also Subhendu made his mark opposite established stars and actors such as Uttam Kumar, Biswajeet and Utpal Dutt.

With the popular success of Hansa Mithun and Chowringhee, Subhendu finally gave up his practise as a physician and became a professional actor. Medicine’s loss was certainly the screen’s gain! He had a succession of commercially successful films in the late 60s and early 70s. Panchashar (1968), Arogya Niketan (1969), Prothom Kodom Phul (1970), Aparna (1972), Chhaddabeshi (1972), Aninidita (1972), Jiban Rahasya (1974) – showcased his talents as an actor who had cut out melodrama yet possessed a charming and thoughtful screen presence. In Arogya Niketan, Subhendu came up against the histrionics of Bikash Roy, Sabitri Chatterjee and Sandhya Roy and more than held his own. In the comedy Chaddabeshi, he was the perfect foil to Uttam Kumar. His association with more cerebral cinema continued with Tapan Sinha’s Aadhar Periye (1973), a film about the disaffected youth of the period and Mrinal Sen’s political fantasy Chorus (1974). Amriter Kumbher Sandhane (1982), a film by Dilip Roy which was based on a famous novel by Samaresh Bose, saw Subhendu Chatterjee give one of his foremost screen performances as an writer who witnesses the great human and social drama of the Purna Kumbh Mela at Prayag.

The late 80s saw Subhendu Chatterjee gracefully slipping into elderly roles in the mindless pot-boilers that were churned out regularly from the studios in Tollygunje. These films lacked the sophistication of that was the hallmark of Bengali cinema of earlier times and were primarily extreme melodramas aimed at the village and small town audiences. In these films Subhendu acted in numerous roles – the elderly father, politician, doctor, zamindar or industrialist – sometimes the typical good one or sometimes the usual evil villain. Amar Shongi (1987)- a smash hit musical which was one of the early successes of Prosenjit – the reigning super star of Bengali screen – saw Subhendu give a strong show as the hero’s father. The Prosenjit-Subhendu combo was to become extremely popular and they acted together in over 30 films. His association with more meaningful cinema continued and he won critical acclaim for his performances in Rituparna Ghosh’s Dahan (1997), Buddhadev Dasgupta’s Lal Dorja (1997) and Raja Sen’s Desh (2002).

Subhendu Chatterjee also acted with aplomb in the commercial theatre and the jatra circuit. From the late 90s till his demise he also appeared in numerous television serials and tele-films. Amar Kantak, a play in which he starred opposite Sabitri Chatterjee, was immensely popular. It had over 500 shows at Kolkata’s Rangmahal Theatre besides numerous call-shows in other parts of West Bengal. Bilkish Begum was another of his major efforts on the commercial stage.

Subhendu Chatterjee was an extremely friendly and jovial person in real life and one who always stood up for the welfare and rights of his colleagues and co-workers in the Bengali film industry. He had long stints as the President and Working President of the Artistes’ Forum – an organisation dedicated to the betterment of the Bengali film industry as a whole.

Subhendu Chatterjee passed away on 5th July,2007 after suffering from lung and respiratory track complications for sometime. In his death Bengali cinema, in the words of Soumitra Chatterjee, ‘lost one its best actors and a perfect gentleman.’

Contributed by Monish K Das, an alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune with specialization in Film Editing, 1992. He now lives and works as a documentary filmmaker and social communication consultant in Kolkata.