In Uttam Kumar: A Life in Cinema (2021), author Sayandeb Chowdhury begins with an anecdote about Bengali cinema’s two foremost immortals: Satyajit Ray and Uttam Kumar. The year was 1966. Ray’s film, ...

What does Uttam Kumar mean to you? I consider him the Guru. 45 years has passed but his popularity has grown. I don't know this has happened to anyone else in this world. His charisma, his charm, his ...

When the legendary Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar was launched in Hindi cinema, it was naturally a remake of a Bangla hit the 1954 film Agni Pareeksha. The Hindi version featured Uttam with ...

My appreciation of Uttam Kumar happened quite late in life. I never could really fathom what was so huge about this man. Gradually I have come to understand the greatness of Uttam Kumar. The last and ...

As someone born almost a decade and a half after Uttam Kumar’s death, I should have been immune to his charm. We, who are too far removed from the soft-focus romance of the black-and-white era, too ...

Soumitra wore his celebrity lightly. He tried to live a decidedly regular life. No starry airs or hang-ups, no desire to flaunt any movie-star flamboyance or throw his weight around. He did not even ...

Today, Amitabh Bachchan is often hailed as the “Mahanayak” of Bollywood, but long before Big B earned that title, Indian cinema had its first superstar in Uttam Kumar. Fondly called the “Mahanayak” of ...