Charulata (1964)

The lonely wife of a newspaper editor falls in love with her visiting cousin-in-law, who shares her love for literature.

Director:

Satyajit Ray

Writers:

Rabindranath Tagore (from the story "Nastaneer"), Satyajit Ray (scenario)

Stars:

Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee, Shailen Mukherjee

Top Rated Indian Movies #67 | 2 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Soumitra Chatterjee	...	Amal
Madhabi Mukherjee	...	Charulata
Shailen Mukherjee	...	Bhupati Dutta (as Sailen Mukherjee)
Shyamal Ghoshal	...	Umapada
Gitali Roy	...	Mandakini
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Tarapada Basu
Gopaldas Bhattacharya
Dilip Bose	...	Shashanka
Ramesh Chandra Chandra
Sunilkanta Dasgupta
Nilotpal Dey	...	Joydeb
Bankim Ghosh	...	Jagannath
Ajit Gupta
Bholanath Koyal	...	Braja
Kamu Mukherjee

Storyline

Charu lives a lonely and idle life in 1870s India. Although her husband Bhupati devotes more time to his newspaper than to their marriage, he sees her loneliness and asks his brother-in-law,Umapada to keep her company. At the same time Bhupati's own cousin, Amal, a would-be writer comes home finishing his college education. However, after several months, Charu and Amal's feelings for each other move beyond literary friendship.

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Plot Keywords:

youtube | character name as title | forename as title | newspaper | literature | 

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Did You Know?

Trivia

Ray once called Charulata his favorite of his own films.

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Goofs

When Bhupati shows Amal his weekly newspaper 'The Sentinel', he reads the details as " 24th issue of the sentinel dated April the 9th, 1879' but when Amal sees it, the date is printed on the newspaper as 7 April, 1879.

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Quotes

Bhupati Dutta: You think we can't keep the paper going? The only way is the way of honesty. What you're suggesting isn't honest. It's the way of prostitution.

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Connections

Featured in Strange Birds (2017)

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Soundtracks

God Save The Queen
(uncredited)
Music by Thomas Augustine Arne
Played on the Piano by Amol (Kumar Basu)

User Reviews

Ray's finest, if one has to pick

Much as I love this film, I wish that any new viewer might first encounter it on a big screen, with its lovely, rhapsodic recreation of its late 19th Century setting is most apparent. The Chekhov parallels are overwhelming-- same period, same bittersweet attention to over-privileged lives, more than anything else the same rare affinity for female characters.

Details

Country:

India

Language:

Bengali

Release Date:

17 April 1964 (India)

Also Known As:

Charulata: The Lonely Wife

Box Office

Gross USA:

$77,820

Company Credits

Production Co:

R.D.Banshal & Co.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

117 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1