Basu Parivar

1952 ?’ b&w Bengali d Nirmal Dey pc MP Prod. lp Uttam Kumar, Pahadi Sanyal, Nepal Nag, Bani Ganguly, Bhanu Bannerjee, Sabitri Chatterjee, Supriya Choudhury, Jahar Roy

Dey’s first film with Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar adapts the Bengali cinema’s 1940s realist tendency (e.g. Chinnamul, 1950) to the commercial entertainer’s requirements. It tells of a family’s economic difficulties during WW2. The father (Sanyal) is an excitable figure mourning the passing of pre-war plenitude; there is a kindly mother (Ganguly) and two sons, Sukhen (Kumar) exercising a restraining influence on his impulsive younger brother Satyen (Nag). The crisis comes when Satyen is arrested for theft. Believing Sukhen did it, Satyen takes the blame. The family suffers severe disruption until the real thief is caught in an implausible ending. Incredibly, given their later screen relationship, Supriya Choudhury plays Uttam Kumar’s sister. The film was remade in Hindi as Hum Hindustani (1960).

Film