(Guru Dutt is yet another key figure in Indian cinema whose biography unfortunately resonates with the tormented and self-destructive Devdas.) Indeed, as Gayatri Chatterjee suggests, Devdas is the archetype of what she tentatively calls “the genre of the self-destructive urban hero” in Indian cinema. In addition to these many “official” versions of Devdas, the story and its tragic characters have also served as crucial referents for such major Hindi films as Guru Dutt’s PYAASA (1957) and especially his KAAGAZ KE PHOOL (1959), which involves a dissolute director remaking Devdas as a film within the film. Rao, 1936), Malayalam (Ownbelt Mani, 1989), and two Telegu verions (Vedantam Raghavaiah, 1953 and Vijayanirmala, 1974), as well as a Bengali remake (Dilip Roy, 1979), though its most prominent versions following Barua’s film featuring Saigal are undoubtedly the remakes in Hindi by Bimal Roy starring Dilip Kumar in 1955, and by Sanjay Leela Bhansali starring Shah Rukh Khan in 2002.

Devdas also exists in at least one Tamil (P. (Kundun Lal) Saigal (who has a cameo role singing two songs in the Bengali film) starred in the extremely popular Hindi version because both Barua and Saigal suffered from their character’s alcoholism, the suggestion of a pathological identification with the role of Devdas has haunted later figures attracted to the story as well. Barua cast himself as Devdas in the (recently rediscovered) Bengali version, and the legendary pre-playback singing star K. (Pramathesh Chandra) Barua, son of the Raja of Gauripur. An adaptation starring Phani Burma (later a notable Bengali director) was filmed in 1928 by Naresh Chandra Mitra, but the first widely influential version was directed simultaneously in Hindi and Bengali in 1935 for New Theatres by P.C. The story has since become one of the touchstones of popular Indian cinema.

The tragic triangle linking the self-destructive Devdas, his forbidden childhood love Paro and the reformed prostitute Chandramukhi was first told in the popular and influential 1917 Bengali novella by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay (1876-1938).

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