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Nutan had the most piercing screen eyes of any actress in a film-land that
consists of woman of piercing eyes. The only other Hindi actress who could hold
a torch to Nutan's soul searing gaze was her contemporary Suchitra Sen. Her
career spanned over 30 years, she appeared in over 100 films winning 5 Filmfare
(Indian Oscars) Best Actress awards. In Bimal Roy's tragedy, Bandini, Nutan gave
one of greatest performances in Hindi cinema as a woman in an impossible love
affair who commits murder and her search for some form of salvation from her
act.
Nutan, the daughter of actress Shobhana Samarth, grew up full of complexes.
Though renowned for her beauty later, she was dismissed by unfeeling relatives
as skinny and ugly. Undeterred, Shobana Samarth launched her in Humari Beti
(1950). Hum Log (1951) and Nagina (1951) both proved popular but Nutan got her
major breakthrough and respectability as an actress par excellence with Seema
(1955) where she played a delinquent in a reform home. It was a powerhouse
performance and won her the Filmfare Award for Best Actress.
Subsequently whether it was the lighthearted Paying Guest (1957), or Dilli ka
Thug (1958), where she performed with a frothy uninhibitedness comparable only
to Madhubala, or Bimal Roy's intense Sujata (1959), which brought out the best
in her as an artiste, Nutan was always matchless.
In 1959 Nutan married Naval Lieutenant Commander Rajneesh Behl and took a small
break when her son Mohnish was born. She made a stinging comeback with
Navketan's Tere Ghar ke Saamne (1963), a refreshing romantic comedy and Bimal
Roy's Bandini (1963) boasting of possibly her greatest ever performance and
certainly one of the greatest performances of Indian Cinema. The film tells the
story of a woman prisoner charged with murder. Totally devoid of highly charged
emotion and theatrics, Nutan appears as a quiet woman with her passions raging
from within her and plays her role with great delicacy and dignity. One just has
to see the entire gamut of emotions fleeting across her face in the film's key
sequence as she murders her lover's wife. It is a masterful performance by an
artiste supreme.
Nutan's career shone bright right through the 1960s and 1970s with strong
performances in films like Milan (1967), Saraswatichandra (1968), Saudagar
(1973), Sajan Bina Suhagan (1978), Kasturi (1978) and Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki
(1978). She carries the last film entirely on her shoulders even though the
sympathy is with the mistress rather than the wife, (Nutan).
Gradually, she began being saddled with mundane mother roles and barring Meri
Jung (1985) none of her later films even remotely offered her any histrionic
challenges. Even as she continued to act, her diary farm, her bhajan singing
(she was actually blessed with a fine singing voice and did her own playback in
Chabili (1960)) and her search for spirituality took up her time. When she died
of cancer in 1991, Indian Cinema had lost one of its greatest performers.
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