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Charulata

  • 1964
  • Tous publics
  • 1h 57m
IMDb RATING
8.1/10
7.7K
YOUR RATING
Charulata (1964)
DramaRomance

The lonely wife of a newspaper editor falls in love with her visiting cousin-in-law, who shares her love for literature.The lonely wife of a newspaper editor falls in love with her visiting cousin-in-law, who shares her love for literature.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
    • Satyajit Ray
  • Stars
    • Soumitra Chatterjee
    • Madhavi Mukherjee
    • Shailen Mukherjee
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    8.1/10
    7.7K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Satyajit Ray
    • Writers
      • Rabindranath Tagore
      • Satyajit Ray
    • Stars
      • Soumitra Chatterjee
      • Madhavi Mukherjee
      • Shailen Mukherjee
    • 46User reviews
    • 68Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 8 wins & 2 nominations total

    Photos52

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    Top cast18

    Edit
    Soumitra Chatterjee
    Soumitra Chatterjee
    • Amal…
    Madhavi Mukherjee
    Madhavi Mukherjee
    • Charulata
    • (as Madhabi Mukherjee)
    • …
    Shailen Mukherjee
    • Bhupati
    • (as Sailen Mukherjee)
    • …
    Shyamal Ghoshal
    Shyamal Ghoshal
    • Umapada…
    Gitali Roy
    • Mandakini…
    Dilip Bose
    • Shashanka
    Nilotpal Dey
    • Joydeb
    Bankim Ghosh
    • Jagannath
    Bholanath Koyal
    • Braja
    Kamu Mukherjee
    • Fellow Liberal at the Party
    Suku Mukherjee
    • Nishikanta
    Subrata Sensharma
    • Motilal
    • (as Subrata Sen)
    Tarapada Basu
    Gopaldas Bhattacharya
    Ramesh Chandra Chandra
    Sunilkanta Dasgupta
    Ajit Gupta
    Prabhat Sarkar
    • Director
      • Satyajit Ray
    • Writers
      • Rabindranath Tagore
      • Satyajit Ray
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews46

    8.17.6K
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    Featured reviews

    ioana-marinescu

    A subtle feminist perspective on love and work

    Charulata displays a subtle story about the contradictions facing a cultivated and intelligent - yet idle - woman in a male-dominated society. Charulata's husband is a very rich man, a liberal intellectual and the editor of a journal "The Sentinel", dedicated to the "propagation of the truth". Unfortunately, the husband, though an honest man and an idealist, fails to give enough attention to his wife Charulata. The latter is interested in romantic Bengali literature, not politics. Her intellectual perspective thus clashes with that of her husband, who looks down on literature, and in particular on that literature which relates to love.

    Through a unique understated sentimental experience, which forms the core of the movie, Charulata reveals to herself and her husband a power to act on the world. After a series of difficulties that affect her husband's newspaper and her own sentimental self, Charulata finally takes a step forward and proposes to collaborate with her husband. However, the director makes us doubt that love and work can be reconciled by referring to the title of the Tagore literary work the movie is adapted from, the "broken nest".

    Contrary to what my comments above may suggest, this is NOT a movie with a heavy and obvious political message. The cinematographic style is thus often reminiscent of Jean Renoir's "Une Partie de Campagne", with, in particular, the use of a swing. The movie has little dialogue and uses the subtlety of symbols and the actors' facial expressions to convey what the characters go through. The characters are the center of the story as individuals, not archetypes, but it is because they are so credible and complex as individuals that they can make us think about universal questions.
    10Himadri

    Absolute perfection

    As cinema appears to become ever more loud and brash, a work as delicate, subtle and understated as this may easily pass unnoticed, or mistaken as insipid. That is a great shame, since this is obviously a great masterpiece. Set in India in the last century, Charulata is trapped in a dull, stifling marriage. What starts off as innocent flirting with her brother-in-law soon sets off emotions that none of them, decent though they all are, can really control. There is no adultery as such - the betrayal is all in the mind - but the trust implicit in marriage is broken, and the future can only be faced with uncertainty.

    This is a film of great grace and elegance, and also of considerable wit. But underneath the surface charm is a great seriousness. As always, Ray depicts the development of the characters with great insight and sensitivity, and coaxes fine performances from his cast. Western critics, in discussing this film, often draw parallels with the works of Chekhov or of Henry James, but Ray's inspiration was actually the great Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore, on whose short novel this film was based. As a piece of film-making, it is absolute perfection - a real gem.
    10manendra-lodhi

    Beautiful.

    The film is the masterpiece from Satyajit ray. Even he confessed that it was his best work. The film is obviously the slowest that I have ever seen but its beauty lies in the fact that it gradually develops the relationships and emotions which is very difficult to be filmed. The story revolves around a woman named Charulata who has an inherent talent of writing but is not able to make use of this. She finds it very difficult to pass her time. Brother of her husband comes to live with them and then she started to find solace in his company. How relationships gradually changed as the time passed is portrayed beautifully in this wonderful film from a master filmmaker.

    PROS:

    The best thing I found in the film was the acting by Charu. Her eyes said more than was required. Cinematography too was nice and noticeable. The development of affection between two people is the key strength here. The film is definitely slow paced but it certainly kept me interested every minute. The thing that I liked in the cinematography most was the very slow movement of the camera around the two people when they were talking. The story is good and normal but the way it was perceived by Ray and his power to display it is fantastic.

    MESSAGE: "Some things just happen. You cannot have control over them."

    VERDICT: "Most recommended Indian Film."
    10abhishek-saha

    The most perfect Ray movie

    Charulata is Satyajit Ray's masterpiece. No other movie is so brilliantly subtle, so timeless in quality. Indeed, Ray himself described Charulata as the only flawless movie he had directed.

    Like the Apu trilogy, and many other Ray movies, Charulata deals with universal themes. Unlike the Apu trilogy, Charulata is set in an urbane, intellectual setting. This might be a turn off for some foreign viewers. When it was released in India in 1964, it was deemed controversial because of its depiction of an extramarital relationship. Yet no movie Ray made, not even the celebrated Apu trilogy, treats the themes of love, growth and loyalty with as much insight and sensitivity as Charulata.

    Every scene in this movie is a gem, there are nuances in every movement, poetry in each look. Richly deserving multiple viewing, Charulata is the most perfect Ray movie.
    Spleen

    It's all there

    I remember reading through Satyajit Ray's list of things that people from outside India would fail to get in "Charulata" – of all his films (up to 1980, anyway) the one he thought was most "superficially" accessible to Westerners – and thinking to myself: "But I DID get all this... at least, more or less."

    In Bengal society (Ray writes) a woman's brother-in-law holds a privileged position; the two are EXPECTED to form a special friendship, and she is allowed to be more intimate with him than with anyone else to whom she's not related by blood (apart, of course, from her husband). Ray is right. Most Westerners don't know this. I certainly didn't. But we're able to infer as much of it as matters from the film itself: we can tell that Amal and Charulata expect, before they fall properly in love, a fair degree of freedom in negotiating their friendship; that this is okay by Bhupati; that this isn't considered odd by any of the participants; that it (probably) WOULD be considered odd were Amal an outsider... and we can tell a good deal more besides; this is, as everyone acknowledges, a film of exceedingly rich characterisations. What we CAN'T tell from the film alone is the extent to which the expectations and roles of the three central characters are duplicated in other marriages across India. But this doesn't matter. This is a chamber drama, not an allegory.

    Ray also lists some literary allusions which Westerners are almost certain to be blind to, but again, I think he's underestimated the extent to which he gets across, in the film alone, all he needs to get across. We can tell, from the way the characters react, what the allusions mean; just as an allusion to Achilles' heel, if properly used, will make sense to (and add depth for) an audience entirely unfamiliar with Greek legend. Even the film's makes sense to outsiders in a way Ray thinks it won't. It's a Scottish tune (I know this because I recognised it, but you can tell it's Scottish even if you don't) with Bengali lyrics; we can tell it's a Western song, from (more or less) the land which currently rules over India, which at least some Indians have adopted as their own, which is popular enough for Amal to expect others to be familiar with it, etc. (I have to admit, though, that something was being conveyed by the lyrics that wasn't being adequately conveyed by the subtitles.)

    It's a tribute to Ray's skill that even he doesn't realise just how much context he's managed to import into "Charulata". Of course, he's right in that nobody will get everything; Ray himself admits to not understanding the meaning of his own (hopeful? cautious? distancing?) final freeze frame ("I only knew that it was the right way to end the film"), and, I need hardly add, I don't either.

    Ray was wrong to think that the allusions fall flat on Western ears or that some of the necessary social context is impenetrable, but the film would still have something to offer even if he weren't: the characters would still be as alive and real, the respect with which they're treated would be just as apparent; the film would still, in short, be a beautiful one.

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Ray once called Charulata his favorite of his own films.
    • Goofs
      when Bhupati shows Amal his weekly newspaper 'The Sentinel', it can be seen that it is published every Saturday and the date shown is 7 April 1879 but actually 7 April 1879 was Monday.
    • Quotes

      Amal: All done with studies, exams, professors, cutting classes.

      Charulata: What's left? Foolishness and mischief?

      Amal: Poetry. Rhythm. You know, I was thinking.

      Charulata: What?

      Amal: All of life is like a rhythm. Birth, death. Day - night. Happiness - sorrow. Meeting - parting. Like the waves on the ocean, now rising - now falling. One complements the other.

    • Alternate versions
      There is an Italian edition of this film on DVD (Extra Movie in "IL LAMENTO SUL SENTIERO"), re-edited with the contribution of film historian Riccardo Cusin. This version is also available for streaming on some platforms.
    • Connections
      Featured in Drôles d'oiseaux (2017)
    • Soundtracks
      God Save The Queen
      (uncredited)

      Music by Thomas Augustine Arne

      Played on the Piano by Amol (Kumar Basu)

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    FAQ

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • June 17, 1981 (France)
    • Country of origin
      • India
    • Official site
      • Satyajit Ray (India)
    • Languages
      • Bengali
      • English
    • Also known as
      • The Lonely Wife
    • Production company
      • R.D.Banshal & Co.
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Gross US & Canada
      • $77,820
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 57 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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