Teen Kanya (1961)

Based on popular Indian stories of the great writer Rabindranath Tagore, these short films reveal definitive moments in the lives of three young girls.

Director:

Satyajit Ray

Writers:

Satyajit Ray (screenplay), Rabindranath Tagore (stories)

Stars:

Anil Chatterjee, Chandana Banerjee, Aparna Sen

Top Rated Indian Movies #33 | 1 win.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Anil Chatterjee	...	Nandal (segment "Postmaster") (as Anil Chattopadhyay)
Chandana Banerjee	...	Ratan (segment "Postmaster") (as Chandana Bandyopadhyay)
Nripati Chatterjee	...	Bishey (segment "Postmaster") (as Nripati Chattopadhyay)
Khagen Pathak	...	Khagen (segment "Postmaster")
Gopal Sen	...	Bilash (segment "Postmaster")
Krishnakamal Bhattacharya	...	(segment "Postmaster")
Haridhan Nag	...	(segment "Postmaster")
Narayan Ghosh	...	(segment "Postmaster")
Batakrishna Nandan	...	(segment "Postmaster")
Haricharan Nag	...	(segment "Postmaster")
Khana Roy Chowdhury	...	(narrator) (segment "Postmaster")
Kali Bannerjee	...	Phanibhushan Saha (segment "Monihara") (as Kali Bannerji)
Kanika Majumdar	...	Manimalika (segment "Monihara")
Kumar Roy	...	Madhusudan (segment "Monihara")
Govinda Chakravarti	...	Schoolmaster and narrator (segment "Monihara") (as Gobinda Chakrabarti)

Storyline

The first story is about Nanda, a young man who leaves Calcutta to work as a postmaster in an isolated malaria-infested village. The postmaster is looked after by a young orphan girl, Ratan. His only solace in the village is in teaching Ratan how to read and write. The second story is about a student, Amulya, who returns to his village after finishing his exams. His widowed mother is very anxious for him to marry, and has already picked out a girl. He rejects his mother's choice and, being forced to choose some girl, marries a lively tomboy who is not ready to give up her freedom.

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Plot Keywords:

india | 

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama

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Certificate:

Passed

Details

Country:

India

Language:

Bengali

Release Date:

5 May 1961 (India)

Also Known As:

Three Daughters

Box Office

Gross USA:

$81,200

Company Credits

Production Co:

Satyajit Ray Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

173 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Collection of three short films: "Postmaster", "Monihara" and "Samapti". "Monihara" was dropped for the "Two Daughters" version.

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Alternate Versions

Monihara segment is missing from the international version.

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Connections

Features Conversation with James Ivory (2010)

User Reviews

Magnificent, emotionally wrenching early film by the great Satyajit Ray

This film, called TEEN KANYA in Bengali and TWO DAUGHTERS in English, was made six years after Ray's first film, PATHER PANCHALI (1955), which was the first of the famous APU TRILOGY. Having finished that trilogy as well as another of his haunting masterpieces, THE MUSIC ROOM, Ray turned his attention to two wonderful short stories by Rabindranath Tagore, so that this film is therefore a diptych, composed of two separate films of those two stories. The first of them is entitled THE POSTMASTER, and most of it is filmed in and around a small hut inhabited by a young man who has just become a village postmaster. Along with the hut and the job, he has acquired a servant named Ratan who is a 10 year-old orphan girl who never knew her mother and father. The previous postmaster beat her and treated her badly, but the new one is very kind, and she becomes attached to him. This is the first time she has ever allowed herself to feel anything for anyone, in her harsh young life. The story is one of the saddest and most heart-breaking ever filmed. The intensity of the acting by the young girl, played by Chandana Banerjee, is one of the most powerful child screen performances in the history of world cinema. This young girl only made one other film, KAA, in 1966, and after that, nothing is recorded of her life or her fate. She was able to convey so much with her eyes without speaking, that it was like cinematic telepathy. The ending of this film is unforgettable, and will haunt any sensitive person always. The second film is not a sad story but an odd and amusing one. It concerns a girl in her late teens who is a wildly eccentric tomboy. She and her family live in a shack by the river bank, having lost their home and all their possessions in one of the many floods which continually afflict Bengal (the stories are set in Bengal). She likes to run wild and free, swing from the trees, play with the boys, run and hide in the forest, and always goes barefoot. She is brilliantly played by the young actress Aparna Sen, whose first adult part it was (she had appeared in one film previously as a child). She went on to become one of India's most famous serious film actresses, and has appeared in 62 films, including others by Satyajit Ray such as DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST (1970) and THE MIDDLEMAN (1976). She also appeared in James Ivory's THE GURU (1969) with Michael York and Rita Tushingham, as well as James Ivory's BOMBAY TALKIE (1970) with Felicity Kendal. In this film, Sen evokes the mystery and the animal energy of the wild young creature in an unforgettable portrayal of a girl in rebellion at becoming a woman and a wife and thus forfeiting her freedom. These days the film should be adopted by feminists as a manifesto statement. Satyajit Ray was notable for making many films sympathetic to women, girls, and children, and he had a rare understanding of the vagaries of feminine psychology. His films are often as much psychology lessons as they are high art. And he had the ability to get his actors and actresses to give of their best, and then more besides. Certainly, Ray's films are some of the most emotionally moving and psychologically profound works of cinema ever made. But in addition to that, they are technical masterpieces as well. For this film, Ray was director, producer, writer, and composer of the music. Ray was certainly one of the three great Bengali geniuses of the 20th century, another being Rabindranath Tagore himself, and the third being unquestionably Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, the scientist who collaborated with Albert Einstein, and after whom Bose-Einstein Condensates are named. (But if you have never heard of Bose-Einstein Condensates, you are forgiven, as they are highly technical, and even most physicists have never heard of them.)