Utpal Dutt

  • Satyajit Ray – Heerak Rajar Deshe aka Kingdom of Diamonds (1980)

    1971-1980AsianClassicsIndiaSatyajit Ray

    Synopsis

    Hirak Rajar Deshe is the second movie of the Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne series directed by Satyajit Ray. An unique aspect of the film is that most of the dialogues exchanged by the protagonists of the film are rhyming. Satyajit Ray was initially apprehensive whether this approach would be liked by people as it was a novel one but it was a great success.Read More »

  • Satyajit Ray – Agantuk AKA The Stranger (1991)

    Satyajit Ray1991-2000DramaIndia

    Quote:
    Satyajit Ray’s valedictory film is a multifaceted character study that contains both humor and melancholy rumination. Based on the filmmaker’s own story, The Stranger involves a bourgeois couple who are taken off guard when a man claiming to be the wife’s long-lost uncle sends word that he will be coming to stay with them after years of travel. Though they fear he’s an impostor, they tentatively let the man into their home, commencing an eye-opening emotional journey for the family. A humanist exploration of class, faith, and tradition versus progress, The Stranger is a bittersweet good-bye from one of the world’s most important filmmakers.Read More »

  • Satyajit Ray – Sukumar Ray (1987)

    1981-1990AsianDocumentaryIndiaSatyajit Ray

    Synopsis
    In 1987, Satyajit Ray made a documentary on a legend of Bengali Literature – Sukumar Ray – incidentally also the father of the filmmaker. Sukumar ray was an extraordinary individual. He was a gifted artist, photographer, activist and a person who gathered the cream of intellectuals in renaissance bengal around him. Yet he is remembered as the greatest humourist Bengal has ever produced, equalling great literateurs like Lewis Carrol and Edward Lear. The documentary tries to give us a glimpse into the mind of this genius and capture for its audience the wonderful poetry and compositions of Sukumar Ray.Read More »

  • Satyajit Ray – Joi Baba Felunath AKA The Elephant God (1979)

    1971-1980AdventureCrimeIndiaSatyajit Ray

    This is the second film about the detective Feluda (Soumitra Chatterjee) set in the holy city of Benares, where he (along with his cousin, Topshe and friend, Lalmohan Ganguly) goes for a holiday. But the theft of a priceless deity of Lord Ganesh (the Elephant God) from a local household forces him to start investigation. Feluda comes in direct confrontation with Maganlal Meghraj (Utpal Dutt), a ruthless trader. Maganlal makes the mild-mannered Lalmohan a knife-thrower’s target and threatens Felu to stop investigation. But there are several other suspects as an innocent artisan is brutally murdered, a shady ‘holy man’ holds court on the banks of the Ganges and an adventure-loving little boy (and his grand-father), brought up on crime thrillers. The climax is a shoot-out on the Ganges, followed by the unraveling of the mystery.Read More »

  • Mrinal Sen – Chorus (1975)

    1971-1980FantasyIndiaMrinal SenPolitics

    Synopsis:

    Starting out as a fantasy mythological with the gods, entrenched in their fortress, deciding to create 100 jobs, the film becomes an exemplary fairy tale when 30,000 applicants start queuing up for work. The fairy tale then becomes a didactic tragedy with realist sequences (media men interviewing individuals in the crowd of applicants) when the people realise the job scheme is grossly inadequate and popular discontent grows into a desire to storm the citadel. Freely mixing different styles and modes of storytelling including direct address to the camera, with the chorus both as narrator and as political agitator (R. Ghosh, who also plays god and the sutradhara), Sen continues exploring the possibilities of a cinematic narrative that would be both enlightening and emotionally involving without descending into authoritarian sloganising. Having gone as far in this direction as he could, Sen deploys the lessons of his experiments with complex and stylistically diverse cinematic idioms in his next feature, Mrigaya (1976).Read More »

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