Melodrama
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KANCHENJUNGHA (Dir. Satyajit Ray, 1962, India) – ‘Why accept a life of endless submission?’
The title to Ray’s first film in colour shares its name with the third highest mountain in the world. It is perhaps the least seen of his films and the original negative has unfortunately been damaged beyond repair. However, in 2008, The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced the digital restoration of the Continue reading
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AJANTRIK / PATHETIC FALLACY (Dir. Ritwik Ghatak, 1958, India) – Man and Machine
Preceded by ‘Nagarik’ (The Citizen) which only got a release after Ghatak’s death, his second film ‘Ajantrik’ is the quirky story of one man’s undying love for his car, a 1920’s Chevrolet affectionately referred to as Jagaddhal. Ghatak says that he procrastinated over the story for twelve long years before making it into a film. Continue reading
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ANURADHA (Dir. Hrishikesh Mukherjee, 1960, India) – Feminine anxieties
Hrishikesh Mukherjee is often referred to as one of the forgotten film directors of Indian cinema. Admittedly, much of his work has been overlooked for reasons largely to do with an indistinct directorial style and the middle class sensibilities of his protagonists. The fact that Hrishikesh Mukherjee was a Bengali film maker and not an Continue reading
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JOGAN (Dir. Kidar Sharma, 1950, India)
Director Kidar Sharma is a name I stumbled upon repeatedly during my research and his 1950 Hindi film Jogan is one of his most popular works. Sharma is yet another key figure in the evolution of classical Hindi cinema and his output in the 1940s and 1950s offers some distinguished melodramas. What makes Jogan an Continue reading
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ASHA JAOAR MAJHE / LABOUR OF LOVE (Dir. Aditya Vikram Sengupta, 2014, India) – Time and Space
Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s Labour of Love is an intrepid experiment, dispensing entirely with dialogue, relying on sound and images to weave a lyrical narrative about two individuals in Calcutta. Sengupta deploys a hypnotic observational style, dwelling fondly on the micro details of those in-between moments so common to neorealist cinema and particularly De Sica’s films. Continue reading
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