‘Guru Dutt taught me that pitying oneself can be beautiful, and that heartbreak is cinematic.’
It felt like stepping back in time on Wednesday, August 6, 2025, evening as cinema enthusiasts came together to celebrate Guru Dutt.
2025 marks 100 years of the legendary film-maker’s birth on July 9, and to celebrate the moment, Javed Akhtar, Hansal Mehta, R Balki, Sudhir Mishra, and senior journalist Bhawanaa Sommaya got together for inspiring conversations on Guru Dutt’s cinematic craft.
The plush multiplex in Mumbai’s Juhu reverberated with S D Burman songs Hum Aapki Aankhon Me and Aaj Sajan Mohe Ang Lagalo in Geeta Dutt and Mohammad Rafi’s melodious voices.
“After my graduation,” recalled Javed Akhtar, “I thought I would go to the film industry and assist Mr Guru Dutt for a couple of years and then I will become a director. When you are 18, things are simpler and easier. It is unfortunate that I came to Bombay in 1964 on October 4 and he passed away on October 10, so I could never see him.”
WATCH: Javed Akhtar reveals why Dilip Kumar turned down Pyaasa
Director Sudhir Mishra said Guru Dutt had a profound influence on him as a film-maker and revealed that he watched the 1962 film Saheb Bibi Aur Ghulam at least six times as a teenager along with his grandmother.
“There is nothing in my life that I have done that is not influenced by him. I haven’t measured up to to him, but I’m trying to. Every film that I’ve done, every shot that I’ve taken, every scene I’ve written, and song that I’ve tried to picturise, I can’t imagine it without Guru Dutt.”
“He taught us how to make films, how to see a scene, how to take a blueprint, which is a script, and he rewrite it in a film,” Mishra added.
WATCH: Sudhir Mishra on the women in Guru Dutt’s films
The event included a screening of the restored version of Pyaasa. Co-written and directed by Dutt, the film shows him as a destitute poet named Vijay who finds encouragement in a tender-hearted prostitute named Gulabo, played by Waheeda Rehman.
“I discovered Guru Dutt’s films much later. Pyaasa is the first film I saw and it left a lasting impression on me. He (Dutt) has taught me that pitying oneself can be beautiful, and that heartbreak is cinematic,” Hansal Mehta noted.
“I wish I can make a film that talks about heartbreak and love to pay tribute to the person who influenced me,” Mehta added.
WATCH: Why Hansal Mehta thinks Guru Dutt wasn’t a ‘great actor’
“(Guru Dutt) inspires me to remember sensitivity, it is important to feel vulnerable and not be understood by many people, you just go on. Today, the pressure is more on artists,” explained R Balki.
“The more I watch his films, I look at the vulnerability of the film-maker, I never look at the craft.”
Guru Dutt’s films Aar Paar, Baaz, Mr & Mrs 55, Chaudhvin Ka Chand, Pyaasa, Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam will be screened across India between August 8 and 14.
