Swami

1977 129’ col Hindi d/sc Basu Chatterjee p Jaya Chakraborty pc Jaya Sarathy Combine st Saratchandra Chatterjee’s novel (1918) dial Manu Bhandari lyr Amit Khanna c K.K. Mahajan m Rajesh Roshan lp Girish Karnad, Shabana Azmi, Vikram, Dhiraj Kumar, Shashikala, Utpal Dutt

Chatterjee extends his usual middle-class romances into a more jaundiced view of marriage based on a novel by the Bengali fountainhead of reformist writing, Saratchandra. Saudamini (Azmi) is a pampered girl until she is forced to marry the widower Ghanshyam (Karnad) and move into his large household. Saudamini cannot cope with her husband’s overbearing and greedy stepmother and pines after the man she really loved and had to abandon, Narendra (Vikram). Although she resents the husband imposed on her by custom, she gradually discovers that Ghanshyam is a tolerant, wise and progressive man. In the end, she prefers to stay with Ghanshyam rather than to leave with her former suitor, and so the wisdom of ‘traditional’ conventions is affirmed.

Film