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The Big City (Mahanagar), dir. Satyajit Ray, 1963)

“There’s a saying in English,” Bhombol (Anil Chatterjee) says to his wife, Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee): “ ‘a woman’s place is in the home’.” When Arati asks if he really believes that, Bhombol tells her that he does, that he’s like his father, very conservative.

But for Arati, this is an important issue. Her household – consisting of herself, her husband, their son, Pintu, and Bhombol’s parents and sister Binu (Jaya Bhaduri) is struggling on just Bhombol’s salary. There is barely enough money to keep the household running, and when Arati hears that a friend’s wife has taken a job, Arati decides that she, too, must find employment. Her reasoning is that it’s not right for her husband to have to be responsible for this whole household.

Bhombol may be conservative, but he is not so traditional that...

★★★★★ The years 1964-5 saw the release of Satyajit Ray's arguable masterpiece The Lonely Wife (Charulata) and the smaller variation on a theme, The Coward (Kapurush), both now reissued in pristine Blu-ray versions by distributor Artificial Eye. Set in the closing years of the nineteenth century, The Lonely Wife tells the story of a privileged woman, Charulata (played by the luminous Madhabi Mukherjee), whose wealthy husband Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee) is committed to producing a political newspaper, and whose main pleasure is the smell of newsprint and the sound of his own voice.

With the arrival of her brother-in-law, the Bohemian poet Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), Charulata begins to realise her yearning for something different both in finding her voice as a writer and her unfulfilled romantic longings in the lighter more attractive brother. Ray takes the conventional premise of the desperate housewife and creates something astonishing, a subtle and measured examination of frustration,...

That 2012 began with an overwrought hyper-melodramatic brutal and tumultuous remake of Agneepath and ended with Yash Chopra’s muted mellow all-heart-no-malice ode to romance Jab Tak Hai Jaan seems indicative of the direction that Bollywood seems headed for. The journey, as we can see, is unpredictable and largely exciting. Looking back, some films of 2012 that fetched hype-star ratings seem bloated and over-eager to please either critics or the masses, but never both. Luckily the films that were truly meritorious did get a place under the swoon.

Each year Bollywood surprises us, and not always in a good way. 2012 seems like a watershed year even by the continuously evolving standards of filmmaking set by envelope-pushing directors who have filtered into filmdom during the past years. 2012 was the year when Tigmanshu Dhulia, Sujoy Ghosh and Shoojit Sircar came into their own with films that took mainstream cinema to new heights. It was...

Haradhan Bandopadhyay had been a veteran actor in the Bengali Film Industry. He recently, at the age of 87 made his mark in a very successful film of Bollywood titled “Barfi”. The film starred Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra and newcomer Ileana D’Cruz. This film was also India’s official entry to the Oscar’s, though it never made it to the final list of films. However, the talented actor breathed his last on the 5th of January, 2013. Haradhan Bandopadhay played the character of that of a head of a mental asylum. He was fondly named as ‘Daju’ by Priyanka’s character Jhilmil in the film.Priyanka Chopra made no delay in tweetin...

Kolkata, Jan 5: Noted Bengali screen and stage actor Haradhan Bandopadhyay, who had starred in many celluloid classics of legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray, passed away Saturday after a brief illness. He was 86 and is survived by his wife and two sons.

Bandopadhyay died in a city hospital where he was being treated for pneumonia.

Bandopadhyay had featured in celebrated films like "Mahanagar", "Sakh a Prasakha", "Sonar Kella" and "Jai Baba Felunath", directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Ray.

Bandopadhyay, who was active till very recently, also acted in Ranbir Kapoor-Priyanka Chopra starrer 'Barfi!', directed.

Veteran Bengali actor Haradhan Bandyopadhyay, 86, passed away in Kolkata today after being hospitalized for fifteen days.

Bandyopadhyay acted in sixty-six films in his acting career spanning six decades. He worked with Satyajit Ray in films like Mahanagar (1964), Kapurush (1965), Sonar Kella (1974) and Joi Baba Felunath (1979).

He had also acted in recent Hindi films like Barfi! and Parineeta. 

Bandyopadhyay won the National Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2005 and Banga Vibhushan by the Government of West Bengal in 2011.

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