Charulata [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Satyajit Ray Satyajit Ray

Overview

This film by Satyajit Ray, India's most renowned filmmaker, tells the story of Charu (Madhabi Mukherjee), a woman in late 19th-century Calcutta. She is neglected by her busy husband, Bhupati (Shailen Mukherjee), a politically active newspaper publisher. When Bhupati's younger cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), a sensitive, intellectual student on break from the university, comes for an extended visit, Charu enjoys Amal's company, and the two while away the hours in conversation. But as their relationship grows closer, Charu falls in love with Amal. The film, based on a popular Indian novel, marks a significant point in Ray's career, as it bears the influence of Western film on his directorial style. Shown at the 1965 Berlin Film Festival, the film was curiously and inexplicably rejected by the committee at the Cannes Film Festival.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/20/2013
UPC:	0715515109116
Original Release:	1964
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:59:00
Sales rank:	632

Special Features

New interview program with actors Madhabi Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee; Adapting Tagore, a new interview program featuring Indian film scholar Moinak Biswas and Bengali cultural historian Supriya Chaudhuri; Archival audio interview with Director Satyajit Ray, conducted by film historian Gideon Bachmann; Plus: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Kemp and a 1980s interview with Ray by his biographer Andrew Robinson

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Soumitra Chatterjee	Amal
Madhabi Mukherjee	Charulata,Bhupati,Nisikanta,Actor
Shyamal Ghoshal	Umapada
Gitali Roy	Manda
Bholanath Koyal	Braja
Dilip Bose	Sasanka
Subrata Sen Sharma	Motilal
Joydeb	Nilatpal Dey
Bankim Ghosh	Jagannath
Nilotpal Dey	Joydeb
Ajit Gupta	Actor

Technical Credits

Satyajit Ray	Director
R.D. Bansal	Producer
Jyoti Chatterjee	Sound Effects
Sujit Sarkar	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Satyajit Ray's Charulata, one of the films of which the director was most proud, begins and ends with two sequences of beautiful, and justly praised, cinematic poetry. The film opens on Charu (Madhabi Mukherjee), a sheltered 19th century housewife, viewing the world outside her bedroom windows through a pair of opera glasses. She then goes into the hallway, where her husband, Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee), walks by absorbed in a book. As he walks away she turns her opera glasses on him. This dialogue-less sequence deftly establishes her character and her relationship to the world and her husband. The film's famous conclusion, a series of freeze frames, beautifully crystallizes their now greatly changed relationship. Between these two points, Charu will transform herself from traditional, kept housewife to modern woman, with the help of Bhupati's brother, the charmingly wayward poet Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee). Filled with moments that can only be called "pure cinema," Charulata is both the story of a love triangle and a microcosm of a traditional society moving slowly and painfully into modernity.

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