Satyajit Ray’s own favourite of his films, Charulata, is set in late 19-century Bengal and boasts a marvellously vital Victorian heroine: Charulata, spellbindingly portrayed by Madhabi Mukherjee, is beautiful, intellectual and dangerously bored.

Racing from window to window in her vast, ornate mansion, Charulata spies hungrily on the outside world through opera glasses. Her wealthy husband Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee), the high-minded editor of a political journal, is too preoccupied with the latest tax legislation and the forthcoming English election (Disraeli v Gladstone) to pay much attention to his wife. Somewhat unwisely, he invites his charming younger cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee, who previously starred in Ray’s The World of Apu) to come and keep her company. An aspiring writer who shares Charulata’s passion for poetry, Amal is keen to encourage her literary talent...

This is a household of seething, suppressed emotions, subtly revealed by Subrata Mitra’s eloquent camera. A richly atmospheric soundtrack – bird song, horses’ hooves, the cry of the kulfi vendor – evokes the wider world, while Ray’s wistful score and the romantic songs beloved of Charulata and Amal heighten the sense of longing.

Adapted from a 1901 novella, Nastanirh (The Broken Nest) by the great Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore, Charulata was described by its director as “the one film I would make the same way if I had to do it again”.

Enthusiastically received at home and abroad, Charulata was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Direction at the Berlin Film Festival of 1965.

Film	Year	Director
5-Year Diary	1982	Anne Charlotte Robertson
Dodsworth	1936	William Wyler
Late Spring	1949	Yasujirō Ozu
EL	1953	Luis Buñuel
Charulata	1964	Satyajit Ray
Peggy and Fred in Hell	1985	Leslie Thornton
News from Home	1976	Chantal Akerman
L'Atalante	1934	Jean Vigo
A New Leaf	1970	Elaine May
On Dangerous Ground	1951	Nicholas Ray

Nellie Killian

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