Manimuzhakkum

aka Tolling of the Bell 1976 112’ b&w Malayalam d/sc P.A. Backer pc Anaswara Chitra st Sara Thomas m P. Devarajan lp Hari, Cyril, Veeran, Prabhakaran, Urmila, Charulata, Vani

Backer’s 2nd film is a melodrama about an infantile youth, Jose Paul, whose love life is blighted by his early years in a Christian orphanage. Born a Hindu, he is imbued with Christian beliefs by a kindly priest, Father Francis. Later he is adopted by a rich Hindu uncle, who renames him and urges him to change his religion. Jose Paul’s problems with his own sense of identity are dramatised in terms of his relations with women: rejected by a rich woman for his complicated past, he is refused next by a Hindu woman for having been a Christian and again by the daughter of his Christian employer in Madras for having been a Hindu.

Film