There are actors, and then there are institutions. In the
history of Bengali cinema, Uttam Kumar belongs firmly to the second category.
For nearly three decades, from the early 1950s until his sudden death in 1980,
he did not simply appear in Bengali films. He defined what a Bengali film was
supposed to feel like. To an entire generation of viewers in Calcutta and
across Bengal, the word "hero" and the name "Uttam" became
almost interchangeable. Even today, more than four decades after his...
