Bimal Roy

Bimal Roy Biography

Bimal Roy is perhaps the most talented director of Bollywood cinema. He holds a unique record in Filmfare awards. He has been nominated 7 times for the best director and he has won all those nominations, thus proving himself to be the most eligible director of Bollywood. Maximum awards are earned by him only for the movies – Do bheega zameen, Parineeta, Biraj Bahu, Madhumati, Sujata, Bandini and Parakh. He was the first director to receive Filmfare awards and he made a hat-trick too that time (1954-1956) and then gave it to V.Shantaram in 1957 for Jhanak jhanak paayal baaje. Not only that, he did the magic once again by repeating the hat-trick for the years – 1959-1961. He won best director award once again, for the last time for his movie, Bandini and he died same year itself at a comparatively younger age of 55. It’s indeed a huge loss to Bollywood and Indian film industry that we lost such a talented person when his work was only in the middle. Now also, Bimal Roy’s movies are shown in many international film festivals and his works are often regarded as the modern waves of Indian cinema. His movie ‘madhumati’ has inspired many Indian as well as foreign directors to make movies based on incarnation. Bimal Roy stood as a pillar in between art movies and commercial movies and laid a path of his own through which many directors later walked through.

Bimal Roy was born on 12 July 1909 in Bengal province of British India. Bimal Roy reached Kolkata and his Bollywood journey started as an assistant camera man. He assisted director P.C. Barua on the hit 1935 film Devdas with Saighal in the leading role. Later Bimal Roy delivered many land mark movies of Indian cinema and many of them are still placed among the top 10 Bollywood movies all time.

As a film maker, his movies – Do bheega zameen, Madhumadhi, Sujatha and Bandhini have received best movie award at Filmfare. Nutan and Madhubala have been his most favourites. He has created hat-trick magic on National award section too. He won best feature film award successively for two years – Do bheega zameen (1953) and Biraj bahu (1954). The third year he won National awards for best feature film in Hindi – Devdas. Madhumati helped him to bag best film in Hindi and Sujatha gave him All India Certificate of Merit for the Third Best Feature Film. In 1963, he won Best Feature Film in Hindi for Bandini.  Do Bheega zameen has won International Prize at Canes award functions.

Published: N/A

Updated: May 20, 2014