Cinema
The Cloud-Capped Star
মেঘে ঢাকা তারা
Ritwik Ghatak · 1960
Synopsis
A refugee colony near Calcutta, in the fifties. Nita, the eldest, works and gives away everything she earns: to her father, to her mother, to her brother who wants to become a singer, to the younger brother and to the sister whose studies she pays for. She puts off her marriage to the young scientist who is waiting for her. Everyone takes, no one asks her what she wants, and illness overtakes her while the family gets back on its feet.
Context
The film is based on a novel by Shaktipada Rajguru, first published as a serial, whose title the author kept but whose story he rewrote. Released on 14 April 1960 and shot in the colonies that Partition had caused to spring up around Calcutta, it was the greatest public success Ghatak ever had in India. The soundtrack is studied separately: noises amplified to saturation, classical singing, a song by Tagore that the brother sings to his sister, sound treated as a material. A restoration was released by Criterion in 2019.
Who it is for
In Bengali, and one must accept a soundtrack that assaults the ear. It helps to know what the refugee colonies around Calcutta were.
Prizes and reception
Rediscovered decades after its release, it is its author's most widely shown film and the one that opens retrospectives.