The Masters: VK Murthy

26.11.1923 - 07.04.2014

This was not the post I intended to publish next. Amidst feverish work deadlines, I'd been polishing a review of a film adapted from Shakespeare. Last week, on 7th April, when I was putting the final touches to that post, news came in through my feeds - VK Murthy was dead. I had been planning a post on the veteran cinematographer for the past year and a half. It required more research than I had the time for, and I kept putting it off, only pausing to file away the articles I found for reference. Then, my laptop crashed and I lost not just my reference articles, but many drafts, lists, photographs and other important documents. VK Murthy, and my idea of a post on him, slipped into the recesses of my memory. 

It took his death to brush off the cobwebs of my mind and write a tribute to the man and his art. The papers are full of tributes to his death; why write one more? Instead, I decided to go back to my original idea. 'The Masters' category on my blog is an attempt to throw light on the men behind the screen - the directors, music directors, lyricists, scriptwriters, cinematographers, musicians, etc., who help create that magic that the heroes and heroines bring alive on screen. 

Out of those sub-categories, the average cine-goer still recognises singers, directors, music directors and sometimes, lyricists and scriptwriters as well. Other technicians such as background musicians and cinematographers or set designers are practically unheard of outside the industry. 

From the golden era of cinema, the names of two cinematographers stand out more than most - not only because of their craft, but also because of their association with two of the finest directors of the age - Radhu Karmakar, long-time associate of Raj Kapoor, and VK Murthy, Guru Dutt's partner-in-crime where the camera was concerned. With equipment that would seem primitive by today's standards, VK Murthy and his compatriots created magic on screen. 

Venkatrama Pandit Krishnamurthy's journey to becoming VK Murthy, the eminent technician who was known as 'Guru Dutt's eyes' is the stuff films are made of - a rags to riches story that began in the erstwhile princely state of Mysore in 1923. He was quite honest about his desire to work in films - he wanted to be famous. At 15, he ran away from home to join a Bombay college that advertised a course on cinema. With Rs.80 in his pocket, he only reached as far as Bangalore. Luckily, he met a family friend there, who lent him some money that enabled him to reach the city of his dreams. 

The college course never materialised, but fortune favouring the brave (or the foolhardy), the relative with whom he was staying took him to Saraswati Cinetones, a Pune studio, where he managed to find work as a cameraman's assistant. When he found things weren't working out as planned, Murthy returned to Mysore to finish his matriculation. 

Soon, it seemed Lady Luck was offering him another chance. Sri Jayachamarajendra Polytechnic, Bangalore began offering courses related to cinema. Murthy applied but was rejected. Only his prior experience as assistant cameraman (where he was kept many feet away from the camera) tilted the scales in his favour. Again, it was the family friend who stepped up to pay his fees. It is interesting to note that he didn't get to work with a camera at the institute either - it was an internship in Bombay during his second year that first gave him the opportunity to actually fiddle with camera settings. 

During his college days, Murthy had played the violin for a troupe of Bharatanatyam dancers, which gave him an opportunity to play music for a film. Soon after finishing his course, he returned to Bombay, where he began his professional life as fourth assistant to the camera man. Within no time at all, he had moved up the ladder to first assistant. Soon, he was assisting veteran cinematographers such as Fali Mistry and Dronacharya as well. It was while assisting Mistry that he met Guru Dutt, who was then shooting Baazi (1951). 

In an interview with The Times of India in 2008, Murthy describes that meeting. He had suggested that Suno gazar kya gaaye be panned in one shot. Dev Anand is standing at the bar, his back to the dance floor. Murthy suggested that the camera follow the movement of the reflection, shoot in close-ups and pan down to Dev, who then turns and moves towards the dancer. It was a tracking and trolley movement. Dutt wasn't sure that his cameraman (V. Ratra) would be able to execute the shot. With Ratra's permission, VK Murthy executed the shot in one take. Impressed, Guru Dutt offered him his next film, Jaal. Thus began a very satisfying professional relationship that would only end with Dutt's death. 

Guru Dutt was a very demanding director, both of himself (according to Murthy, Dutt took 104 shots before he okayed the iconic crucifix pose in Pyaasa), and his technicians, and VK Murthy was a perfectionist when it came to his craft.  It lead to some fantastic creative work from the two of them but it was not without its fallout. The cast and crew on the sets were often witness to epic battles between two opinionated stalwarts. Guru Dutt was always impatient to begin shooting the scene the way he had conceived it; unfortunately, sometimes, it took time to set up the shot, work out the angles, set up the lighting. It infuriated Dutt, though Murthy asserts that he never interfered. After one dust-up on the sets of Aar Paar, Guru Dutt explained to Murthy that he was under severe pressure to meet deadlines; he promised his cinematographer that when he had the money, he would make a film just for Murthy, and let him have all the time he needed to set up his shots as he wanted. He did make good on that promise - the film was Kaagaz ke Phool.

VK Murthy's contribution to Guru Dutt's films cannot be minimised. All the fabulous scenes one remembers from Dutt's films had their iconic value based firmly not just in the acting and direction, but in the way the shot was composed, and the way light and shade was used to maximum effect. 

There is the scene in the climax of Pyaasa, for example, that is breathtaking in the way it is composed and set up. Vijay (Guru Dutt) has been pronounced dead, and his poems have been published posthumously by Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman). When they realise Vijay is not dead after all, his avaricious brothers, aided by his equally greedy best friend, and the canny publisher, succeed in having him declared insane. When he escapes from the asylum and lands up at his own 'death anniversary', Vijay is disillusioned by what he sees. Dutt framed the initial shot in the doorway with a close-up at the beginning of the song. As the camera pans away from him, to show us the view from the dais, he is shown in silhouette, backlit, his pose heavily symbolic of the crucifixion. (There are plenty of other shots that suggest the that in this film.)

Guru Dutt's obsession with cinema also helped his team innovate. Kaagaz ke Phool was India's first cinemascope film. In an interview, VK Murthy traced the beginnings of that landmark film. Guru Dutt wanted to do something different for his new film. A chance meeting with the manager of 20th Century Fox, gave him what he was looking for. Having come to India to shoot a cinemascope film, the unit had returned leaving the lenses behind. The manager offered to lend them to Guru Dutt to experiment. VK Murthy took some trial shots and Dutt liked the effect so much that he decided to shoot his whole film in that format.

Of course, no post on VK Murthy can be complete without the story behind the fantastic beam shot, even though it's been repeated in every tribute that has ever been written about the director, the film, or now, the cinematographer. Waqt ne kiya was being shot in Natraj Studios, and the director and his camera man walked in to find the light filtering through the windows. Guru Dutt wanted that in his film, but they had no idea how to duplicate it for the shot. Guru Dutt suggested using natural sunlight. Finally, after a lot of experimentation - and inspiration in the form of the light reflecting off a make-up man's mirror - they brought in two mirrors; one was kept outside the studio door in the sun, and the light reflected off that onto the other mirror which was kept on the catwalk. They had exactly an hour to shoot the scene. Guru Dutt added some smoke to add to the effect, and the shot was framed for posterity.  It won for Murthy the Best Cinematographer Award (1959) at the Filmfare Awards.

Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam was another Guru Dutt film where Murthy worked his magic. From the scene where Guru Dutt looks at the ruined haveli and remembers how it looked when he first saw it; a dark night, light spilling out of the haveli's arched windows, chhoti bahu's voice as she sings Koi door se awaaz de chale aao... Or even Saqiya aaj mujhe neend nahin aaye, where the focus is on the main dancer (Minoo Mumtaz) and the Bade Thakur; the background dancers are all in silhouette, backlit. It made for a beautiful tableau. 

Or the shot where Bhootnath first catches a glimpse of Chhoti Bahu. The camera slowly captures his expression as he enters the dimly lit room, and then pans to Chhoti Bahu, moving slowly up from her alta-stained feet to her beautiful face. 

Guru Dutt's suicide hit Murthy hard, both personally and professionally. As he puts it, he didn't know whom to work with any more. (Murthy had also worked with Pramod Chakravorty from the 60s on, helming the camera from 12 o'Clock and Tumse Achcha Kaun Hai, to Warrant, Jugnu, Azaad, and Nastik, amongst others.) So while he did work with Kamal Amrohi (Razia Sultan), (Shyam Benegal (Bharat ek Khoj), and Govind Nihalani (Tamas), the era of colour seemed to make the wizard of light and shadows redundant. As he caustically put it, film-makers didn't know what to do with colour. Besides, the shift system, according to him, only emphasised the unprofessional attitude of the actors, who used that to work on different films simultaneously. 

For a man who Shammi Kapoor once applauded as 'the hero of the film' (after watching 'Kagaz ke Phool'), Murthy has been woefully unrecognised while alive - a couple of Filmfare awards, the Kodak Award for Technical Excellence in Indian cinema (4th MAMI film festival, 2001), the IIFA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005, and rather belatedly, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2008 - he is the only cinematographer to have been awarded the nation's highest cinematic honour. He didn't care much for awards, though, and has been quoted as saying, 'Awards don't fetch films.'

Though a Kannadiga, he preferred to work in Hindi films until 1993, when he became the principal cinematographer for the acclaimed Kannada film Hoovu Hannu, in which he also appeared in a cameo. He taught cinematography workshops at the Kanteerava Studios, Bangalore, as well as in Madras and Travancore. To him, cinematography was both art and science, and the science was the easy part. The master of manipulation of light and shade treated cinematography like a symphony, conveying a depth of emotion that reached across the screen to touch the audience.

The soft-spoken genius moved gracefully away from the limelight to live his years out in Bangalore with his wife and daughter. His passing, at the age of 90, signifies yet another nail in the coffin of a glorious age.