Sonar Kella (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 #16 | 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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Details

Country:

India

Language:

Bengali

Release Date:

27 December 1974 (India)

Also Known As:

A Fortaleza de Ouro

Company Credits

Production Co:

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 Badshahi Angti (2014)

User Reviews

The Golden Fortress is an example of a classically made thriller movie with the suspense never ebbing in iits entire duration

Among all the movies of the "thriller" genre, I would alsways rate this movie as amongst the top in India. Having watched it many dozens of times, I have observed that the movie and Ray's treatment of his story is unique in many ways. Firstly, given the exotic locales in the story, any director would lap up the opportunity of using stunning angles for shots around the various forts (of Jaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner and Jaisalmer in this case), let the camera hover around the desert horizon with the sun setting or the static ripples of sand on a dune. Never for a moment had Ray let the camera linger on any stunning backdrop outside the context of the film. Even in the sunset scene at Ramdeorah railway station, the camera does not lose the subject, that was 'jatayu' loosening up after an arduous camel ride. Even more interesting is Ray's ability to stay focused to the story line again given that the climax inside the Jaisalmer fort, a classic fort with a town inside. It would be easy for any one to yield to the temptation of extending the final moments of the film in the fort in its numerous small streets that wind around the beautiful houses of the town within the fort. However, Ray stuck to telling the story as it was in the book (with some changes of course) where the "Golden Fortress" itself occupies a few minutes of the 120 minute film. The result has been a crisp story where the suspense ramps up from the first scene and never ebbs in the entire course of the film.