5. Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960)
Alternative title: The Cloud-capped Star
Language: Bengali
Director: Ritwik Ghatak
Running time: 134 mins
Starring: Supriya Choudhury, Anil Chatterjee, Bijon Bhattacharya, Geeta De
Company: Chitrakalpa
Ghatak tells the story of a young working woman in his cinematic exploration of class and gender in post-independence Bengal. The film's low-key photography intensified the visceral invocation of the heroine's claustrophobic existence as she toils away in a relentlessly humid and rainy world to make ends meet for her family. The members of the family, meanwhile, are caught in their private logics bordering on paranoid self-seeking greed and can only helplessly watch beauty wither away. The director's use of folk and classical musical motifs in the quieter moments of the film alternating with melodramatic action set within the ritualistic details of the brahmanical everyday underline his attempts to imbue the drama with epic dimensions. Extra-diegetic sound effects like the whiplash accompanying the heroine's silent shell-shocked walk back home after discovering her fiancé's infidelity with her sister have become representative of the best of Indian cinema.
