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Anandmath

1952 176’ b&w Hindi d/sc Hemen Gupta pc Filmistan st Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s novel (1884) dial Krishna Prabhakara lyr Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri c Dronacharya m Hemanta Mukherjee lp Prithviraj Kapoor, Geeta Bali, Ranjana, Pradeep, Ajit, Bharat Bhushan

Militant Bengali film-maker Gupta made his Hindi debut at Filmistan with this stridently nationalist biographical of the 18th C. sage Satyanand who led the sanyasi uprising against the British and the subject of Bankimchandra’s best-known novel. Alongside Satyanand’s heroism, the film, choreographed by Sachin Shankar, develops a murkier tale around the sexual troubles of Satyanand’s two lieutenants, Jeevanand and Bhavanand. Jeevanand renounces his wife Shanti when he joins the Math (clan), but finds himself so frustrated that he has to recover her, while Bhavanand covets Kalyani, the refugee queen of Padachinha. Both men die in the uprising, their deaths being presented as a kind of retribution for their sexual weakness.

Film