Director: Chidananda Dasgupta; Writer: Chidananda Das Gupta; Cinematographer: Madhu Ambat; Editor: Ujjwal Nandi; Cast: Piyush Ganguly, Rachana Bannerjee, Ashoke Mukherjee, Anusree Das, Tathagata Sanyal, Aparna Sen, Kankana Sen, Ashoke Basu, Dhiman Chakraborty, Sipra Basu, Devika
Duration: 01:38:08; Aspect Ratio: 1.335:1; Hue: 340.000; Saturation: 0.084; Lightness: 0.123; Volume: 0.136; Cuts per Minute: 3.057
Summary: Noted critic Das Gupta’s comedy is set in the
18th C. when Calcutta was being built and
inviolable norms of Brahmin social hierarchy
often led to absurd situations, e.g. when uppercaste
brides, who could not marry below their
class, ended up marrying infants or muchmarried
males trading on their eligibility. The
irascible Amodini, daughter of a Kulin Brahmin
landlord, is forced to marry a servant in her
house when her scheduled groom abandons
her in favour of a more lucrative alliance. She
promptly kicks the servant boy Pundu out of
her house as soon as the rites are over. The
servant moves to Calcutta (then Sultanuti) and
returns years later having made his fortune in
the British colonial economy, considerably
wealthier than his former employers. Amodini,
determined to get him back, unburdens her
troubles to Pundu’s latest wife and the
threesome live happily ever after. Unlike the
later films of Das Gupta’s mentor Satyajit Ray,
the plot itself becomes secondary to innovative
camerawork, often using minimal light and
high-speed stock, and to stylised references to
popular Bengali artforms.
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