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Charulata (The Lonely Wife)
| Year | 1964 |
|---|---|
| Producer | R. D. Bansal |
| Screenplay | Satyajit Ray |
| Based on | The short story Nashtanirh by Rabindranath Tagore |
| Photography | Subrata Mitra |
| Editor | Dulal Dutta |
| Art Director | Bansi Chandragupta |
| Music | Satyajit Ray |
| Sound | Nripen Paul, Atul Chatterjee, Sujit Sarkar |
| Length | 117 min. |
| Black & White |
Cast:
| Charulata | Madhabi Mukherjee |
|---|---|
| Amal | Soumitra Chatterjee |
| Bhupati | Sailen Mukherjee |
| Umapada | Syamal Ghosal |
| Mandakini | Gitali Roy |
| Braja | Bholanath Koyal |
| Nisikanta | Suku Mukherjee |
| Sasanka | Dilip Bose |
| Motilal | Subatra Sen Sharma |
| Nilatpal Dey | Joydeb |
| Jagannath | Bankim Ghosh |
The location is Calcutta, around 1880. Bhupati, who edits and publishes in his home a political newspaper called The Sentinel, is persuaded that his wife Charulata has special gifts as a writer. When his young cousin (the relationship is considered to be equivalent to Charu's brother-in-law) Amal, comes to live with them, Bhupati asks him to encourage her cultural interests, but in such a way that she remains unaware of her husband's intervention in setting up their encounter. An increasingly intimate relationship develops between Charulata and Amal: one based on complicity, friendship, writing, and eventually love. Meanwhile, the bookkeeper of The Sentinel, another family member, embezzles the funds supporting the paper and destroys Bhupati's hopes for his enterprise. All he has left is the trust he has placed in Charulata and Amal, which has been compromised by their feelings for each other.
In this film, as well as in Devi (The Goddess, 1960) and Ghare Baire (The Home and the World, 1984), Ray explores the cultural emergence of the idea of the "modern woman" in the upper class of colonial India, showing with striking sensitivity the pressures this new ideal placed on individual women whose self-identities were also molded by traditional expectations.
The original negative of this film was lost in a fire.
