The decadent landlord

[manikjethu]

It is surprising that no one in the forum ever wrote anything about [i]JALSAGHAR[/i], one of the Master's most brilliant films.
The landlord is a lonely man, his wife and only son having perished in a boat capsize. He lives in his past, and is shattered seeing his feudal world crumbling all around him.
The landlord is also a man who has fallen on hard times, squandering most of his wealth on nautch girls who regularly gave performances in his music room. He had never worked, let alone work hard for anything. He has no income, the sources of revenue having dried up with the onset of the new economy.
A man in the same village, once a subject of the landlord, has made money out of some business he ran in the nearby town. The landlord cannot tolerate this upstart, and refusing to be outdone by the newly rich, arranges his last dance recital by spending whatever little he had in his coffers. This leads to ruin and, eventually, the landlord dies.
Chhabi Bishwas, arguably one of Bengal’s most gifted actors, looks every inch the decadent landlord he was required to play. It is said that the character of the landlord was modeled on one of the scions of the family to whom the mansion, in which the film was shot, belonged. Very interesting, isn’t it?

[HawaHawa]

This film will be shown at the 53rd San Francisco film festival on Saturday, May 1, at 2:30 p.m. at the Castro Theater. I look forward to seeing it.

www.thirdi.org/~sf/screenings.html