The Golden Fortress (1974)

A young boy becomes a target for crooks, after he claims to remember his past life and mentions precious jewels in a golden fortress.

Director:

Satyajit Ray

Writers:

Hridayesh Pandey (hindi dialogue), Satyajit Ray (screenplay)

Stars:

Soumitra Chatterjee, Santanu Bagchi, Ajoy Banerjee

Top Rated Indian Movies #15 | 2 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Soumitra Chatterjee	...	Prodosh Mitra (Feluda) (as Soumitra Chattopadhyay)
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Santanu Bagchi	...	Mukul 2
Ajoy Banerjee	...	Amiyanath Burman
Haradhan Bannerjee	...	Tapesh's father
Kushal Chakraborty	...	Mukul Dhar
Bimal Chatterjee	...	Advocate
Dibyendu Chatterjee
Rekha Chatterjee	...	Tapesh's mother
Santi Chatterjee
Siddhartha Chatterjee	...	Tapesh (Topshe)
Harindranath Chattopadhyay	...	Uncle Sidhu
Santosh Dutta	...	Lalmohan Ganguly (Jatayu)
Uday Singh Gailol
Sujit Ganguly	...	(as Dr. Sujit Ganguly)
Nemai Ghosh	...	Photographer

Storyline

Mukul, a six year old boy, is obsessed with drawing pictures of a golden fortress, and claims to have lived there in a past life. Hoping to better understand the boy's condition, parapsychologist Dr. Hajra accompanies Mukul to search for the fortress. However, a newspaper story alerts a pair of crooks to the possibility of a hidden treasure. The boy's father fears Mukul is in danger, and hires private detective Prodosh "Feluda" Mitra and his cousin Topshe to join Hajra and Mukul in Rajasthan. But the danger may already be closer than they realize.

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Plot Keywords:

private detective | drawing | newspaper clipping | snakes and ladders | scorpion | 

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Genres:

Adventure | Family

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

India

Language:

Bengali

Release Date:

27 December 1974 (India)

Also Known As:

A Fortaleza de Ouro

Company Credits

Production Co:

Angel Digital Private Limited, Government of West Bengal

Technical Specs

Runtime:

120 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Did You Know?

Trivia

The title means "The Golden Fortress", a reference to the fort at Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India, which is built of a kind of sandstone that resembles gold.

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Connections

Followed by Royal Bengal Rahasya (2011)

User Reviews

Another example of Ray's versatility.

First of all, I think I'll add a short introduction to Feluda stories. Among over two-hundred novels and stories Ray had written especially for teenagers, the detective stories of Feluda are by far the most popular. With calculated amounts of wit, suspense, action and humor, the stories are considered classics of modern Bengali literature. So it was not surprising that he would make one of them for the screen.

As a book, "Sonar Kella" is one of the all-time bestsellers. Now I have seen the film about ten times and what fascinated me is how Ray changed the whole structure of the book while making this film. The novel is a fantastic detection story with sharp plot twists. But Ray thought the concept of detection as a theme in this film will not make the viewers see it more than once. So he makes it more like a modern thriller -- he showed the crime and criminals at first and now the theme becomes how Feluda unfolds it. That's why crime and detection is not the only theme of this film. There is plenty of humor and excellent visionary of Rajasthan too. Ray primarily directed the film to his readers but also made sure it satisfies all kinds of audience.

Another point I want to make: if the viewer doesn't know Bengali and relies on subtitles, he/she misses a good percentage of its fun. That part lies on its extremely witty screenplay where often Ray literally played with the words. Among the actors, Soumitra Chatterjee is quite good as Feluda, at least he was the best for this part in that time. Santosh Dutta virtually created the character of Jatayu. It became his trademark role. And one must mention the flamboyant and passionate performance of Kamu Mukherjee as the villain Mandar Bose.

The film features all of Ray's trademark styles -- in artwork, in script, in the camera angles and original music. And it remains an all-time family classic in the history of Indian cinema.