The beautiful face of Suchitra Sen did not launch a thousand products, but created a strong brand that lasted half a century.

“It’s sad that such a vibrant and glamorous image did not endorse anything other than her own films,” said an ad filmmaker.

Shekhar Das, film director, said her celluloid image was created bit by bit during the fifties and sixties.

“She knew how to behave in close-ups. Her cinematic magic was a mixture of a glamorous presence before the camera and the endeavour of cinematographers to capture the image,” he said.

Her co-stars and producers were amenable to Suchitra’s insistence that her name topped the film title. Her films and her silverscreen persona thrived on each other’s glory. Nevertheless, in her glory days, Suchitra seldom appeared in public.

But whenever she did attend a charity cricket match or award function of the Bengal Film Journalists’ Association, she carried off her hallmarked charisma.    

How she perpetuated her image is the stuff of legends.

She fiercely guarded her privacy, hardly gave interviews and allowed access with discreet ‘permission’. Even unknown photographers were told not to shoot.

In her later but active years, one got fleeting glances of her face hidden behind a pair of dark glasses. It soon became her signature style statement, especially during the seventies.   

After her last film  Pranay Pasha  (1978) bombed at the box office, Suchitra retired to complete seclusion. She stopped making public appearances.

In 2005, when she was approached for the Dada Shaeb Phalke award, the actress reportedly expressed her unwillingness to be physically present to receive it.

If her restricted public appearances heightened her ‘designed’ charm, her enigmatic abstention from public view froze Suchitra’s limelight image forever.  

For the last 35 years, the mystique that had grown around her image remained unassailed. Today, bowing to her wishes, she was bid adieu in a carriage with darkened glass.

jayanta.mallick@thehindu.co.in

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