Amitabh was Bachcha for Mrinal Sen | Bengali movie news

His severe and severe behavior masked a storyteller. The iconic filmmaker Mrinal Sen could tell you a great story whenever he wants. Here is one on Amitabh Bachchan, while he was desperately looking for a break in the movies.

It came in 1969, when the Big B was a "bachcha", as Mrinal-da said.

After filming Bhuvan Shome in Bhavnagar (Gujarat), Sen was in Bombay filming the film. One day, he visited his friend KA Abbas, the screenwriter, who worked on Saath Hindustani. Abbas was surrounded by a group of people who were waiting to be screened in his movie.

Sen told him that he was looking for a good voice, preferably a new voice, to be the narrator of his film.

A big boy came out of the rally saying "Friend Bangla jaaney" (I know Bengali). Sen told the "boy" that his Bengali was bad but that his voice was good; good enough for a narration in Hindi. Abbas let the boy take the job.

With the work done, Sen told the boy that he could not pay him much. The boy said that he had not done it for money. Sen, however, insisted and paid. The boy asked if his name would appear in the titles. Sen nodded "Yes".

"In the title, put only Amitabh." Do not write Bachchan, "pleaded the boy.

In the credits of Sen & # 39; s Bhuvan Shome, the artist name of the voice-over "Amitabh" is the last – perhaps even the only film in which Bachchan's name appears in the end and even whole. Seeing the movie in the 1970s, I did not notice this detail. I also did not record the baritone voice of the narrator – heard less than five minutes at the beginning and end of the film – which would become famous.

At the last meeting with Sen, in 2002, during a retrospective of his films in Delhi, he told me this story and asked me to pay attention to the voice.

Bhuvan Shome won many laurels, including the national award in 1970. When the director and his voiceover performer went to a meeting of an badociation of film journalists in Calcutta, they saw Amitabh , a reporter interviewed by Sen: "Is he your next hero?" ? "Sen liked the idea:" But I have to find a role that suits him. "Amitabh himself wanted to play in a Sen movie that wanted to launch it in Interview The problem was that Sen wanted a person d & rsquo; "Ordinary appearance." And Amitabh, even then, was a striking personality ".

Sen m badured that "the boy" remembers all of this. A few years ago, Amitabh corrected a critical view that his first voice-over was not in 1983 for Shatranj ke Khiladi of Satyajit Ray, but for Bhuvan Shome. But, Sen recalls, "Amitabh said I paid him 500 rupees, it was only 300. He does not remember."