This movie is Ray's first
1. Colored movie 2. Movie whose script is written by Ray himself 3. Movie whose story duration is only one day.
After Kanchenjungha Ray made a number of B/W movies until 1973 when he made second colored movie "The Distant Thunder." In most of his career Ray used to make movies out of novels and stories written by famous BENGALI writers. E.g. his best known works of APU TRILOGY (Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar) are actually movie version of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's novels. In the same way he made movies out of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore's stories and novels (e.g. Three Daughters, Charulata and Ghare-Baire). But this is one of the three movies whose writing credits fully goes to Ray himself (other 2 are Nayak and Agantuk). In all these three movies he in someway tries to speak about his own thoughts and philosophies of life via the characters of these movies. And of course all of these 3 movies are great works of Ray.
Indranath Choudhury (Chhabi Bishwas) along with his whole family goes to the beautiful hilly city of Darjeeling to spend vacation. Members of his family and some other characters of the movie start reacting differently influenced by the immense beauty and power of Kanchenjungha (Highest pick of India, also it is one peak of the mighty Himalayas). Anima (daughter of Indranath) confesses her secret love affair to her husband and assures him to amend the relationship for the betterment of Tuklu (their daughter). Labyanya Roy Choudhury (w/o Indranath) becomes worried for her husband's plan of giving their daughter Monisha's marriage to a more materialistic guy (Banarjee). Ashok, a tormented poor young man also refuses to accept any job offer from Indranath. In fact the mesmerizing effect of Kanchenjungha on the characters of this film is done with incredible perfection. On my judgement, Kanchenjungha along with Nayak are the best movies made by Ray. I also rate those films as two great movies ever made in film history.
