Director: Sunil Bannerjee; Writer: Sunil Bannerjee; Producer: B.N. Roy; Cinematographer: Bijoy Ghosh; Editor: Ardhendu Chatterjee; Cast: Uttam Kumar, Tanuja, Lolita Chatterjee, Asit Baran, Chhaya Devi, Haridhan, Ruma Guha- Thakurta, Jahar Roy, Ashim Kumar, Haradhan Bannerjee, Kamal Majumdar, Mani Srimani, Soma Chowdhury, Meena Bai, Nando Bandyopadhyay, Ratan Banerjee, Bhanu Bannerjee, Nirmal Bhattacharya, A.M. Borgomha, Jiben Bose, Amiya Chakraborty, Sushil Chakraborty, Khagesh Chakravarti, Ajit Chatterjee, Biren Chatterjee, Nripati Chatterjee, Mukunda Chattopadhyay, Asit Chowdhury, J. Dala, Leo Daniels, R. Daniels, Sushil Das, Asha Devi, Pramatha Gangopadhyay, Bubu Ganguly, R. Haslam, Carol Knight, Prashanta Kumar, Samar Kumar, Tarun Kumar, Shyam Laha, Preeti Majumdar, V. Meyers, M. Milderd, Biju Mitra, Ashok Mukherjee, Manmatha Mukhopadhyay, Khagen Pathak, M. Peters, M. Ridler, Derek Roach, W.E. Shelverton
Summary: Reformist musical recounting the legend of a Portuguese-Indian who in the early 19th C. became a famous Bengali poet-musician (in the Kabigan genre). Antony Firingee [Antony the Foreigner] (U. Kumar) falls in love with the famous courtesan Shakila (Tanuja). At first she rejects him, but later reveals her tragic story: she is a widow who escaped when she was forced to commit sati (ritual immolation) and was later raped. She then agrees to marry Antony and they try to overcome social ostracisation when, under her tutelage, he defeats a series of famous poets (e.g. Bhola Moira) in the tradition of the Kabir Larai (contest between poets emphasising improvisation). However, he returns home to find his wife killed by a mob and resigns himself to being a social outcast, ‘the fate of all poets and foreigners’. Bagchi’s music was the film’s most successful feature.
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