India,
1964, 117 min
Shown in 1965
CREDITS
- dir
-
Satyajit Ray
- scr
-
Satyajit Ray
- cam
-
Subrata Mitra
- editor
-
Dulal Dutta
- mus
-
Satyajit Ray
- cast
-
Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee, Sailen Mukherjee, Shyamal Ghoshal, Geetali Roy
- prod co
-
R.D. Banshal & Co.
- source
-
NFDC R.D. Bansal Productions
OTHER
Charulata, Satyajit Ray's most nearly flawless film apart from his great Apu trilogy, is a flowing, opulent tale that seems to be lit from inside like a velvet-lined carriage with a lantern in it rocked by a hot monsoon wind. The film carries an exquisite period flavor of the 1870s in Bengal. We are in a sunny garden with a swing on long ropes and statues of fat little cupids; a house with a birdcage shaken financially by a sudden storm, and curlicue banisters, and embroidered rugs; a Chekhovian atmosphere in which men lie on cushions eating sweetmeats and talking of Bentham and Mill. Charulata is the heroine of the film which was adapted from a Rabindranath Tagore novel. Her husband is a bearded intellectual who runs an anti-British radical newspaper. To keep his bored wife amused, he sends for his young cousin Amal, who encourages her to write. A powerful sexual bond grows between them, though it is never acknowledged openly. Charulata is beautifully written, and sometimes very funny. Along with everything else, the picture is a fascinating fable about the bequest of Empire in India. The film is triumphant in its comprehension of a period.
—Penelope Gilliatt, The New Yorker
FACTOID #180
According to the Chronicle’s Herb Caen, producer David O. Selznick’s ’last letter and last phone call were to [SFIFF administrator] Shirley Temple Black to whom he said, ’I can’t wait to see you at the Festival.’’ Selznick was the namesake for a series of awards at the San Francisco International.
