Cinema
Nagarik
নাগরিক
Ritwik Ghatak · 1977
Synopsis
In post-Partition Calcutta, Ramu, a young graduate, looks for a job among thousands of others. He lives with his parents and his sister Sita in a rented house in a working-class district, far from the large residence the family had before the Partition; poverty earns Sita the humiliations of suitors' families. His only happiness is Uma, also in straitened circumstances; to pay the rent, the family takes in a lodger, Sagar.
Context
Completed in 1952 for the Film Guild, with stage actors, the film bears the mark of its author's training at the Theatre Association and of his work on Chinnamul. It was not released: its forgotten negative lay for twenty-four years in a laboratory in Tollygunge. Found again in 1976, six months after the director's death, and badly damaged, it was saved by technicians who made a duplicate negative and then a new print; the film was released in Calcutta on 20 September 1977. The Internationale can be heard on the soundtrack.
Who it is for
Two hours in Bengali, with no French release; a realist and political melodrama, without incidental music.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the very first Bengali auteur films, shot three years before Pather Panchali; it might have changed the history of Indian auteur cinema.
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