Beder Meye Jotsna

1991 ? col Bengali p Jai Khemka st/sc/lyr Tojamul Haque Bokul c Rafiqul Bari Choudhury m Abu Taher lp Chiranjeet, Anju Ghosh, Saifuddin, Dildar, Nasir, Abbas, Anamika, Asha Mukherjee, Kaushik, Shubhendu, Sombhu

Drawing on a popular Bangladeshi theatrical version of the Rupban Kavya fable, the gaudy production mixes elements from the devotional, the social and the historical genres while invoking both the Laila-Majnu and the medieval Bengali Behula-Lakhindar love stories. A girl snake charmer cures a Prince and they fall in love, triggering court intrigues to forestall a marriage and numerous adventures delaying the happy ending. The Prince is represented as a weakling and the film’s most spectacular sequence shows the heroine braving impossible odds to support him. A rare Indo-Bangladeshi co-production and a megahit, especially with women in rural areas, in spite of its largely unfamiliar cast, low budget and consistently over-the-top performances.

Film