Chaani

1977 134’[M]/136’[H] col Marathi/Hindi? d/sc/p V. Shantaram pc V. Shantaram Prod. st C.T. Khanolkar dial Vrajendra Gaud lyr Bharat Vyas c Shivaji Sawant m Hridaynath Mangeshkar lp Ranjana, Sushant Ray, Yeshwant Dutt, Premkumar, Gauri Kamat, Durga Senjit, Arvind Deshpande

Shantaram intended the film to be part of New Indian Cinema’s vanguard, adapting a difficult work from the innovative contemporary Marathi writer C.T. Khanolkar. The story, written in 1970 and set on the Konkan coast, features a woman born of an ‘incident’ between an Englishman and a local fisherwoman, now only discussed as a hushed rumour except by a boatman who loudly curses the girl whenever he ferries his boat across the river. Shantaram’s garish colour photography and emphatic dialogue make the story into a bizarre calendar-art curiosity with a plump, blue-eyed, blonde fisherwoman (Ranjana), a caricature of the original literary character.

Film