A glance at cinema ticket booking platforms this week reveals a pleasant surprise: a re-run of one of Satyajit Ray’s greatest movies. Mahanagar (1963) has been re-released with English subtitles at PVR-Inox cinemas in Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru.
The version of the black-and-white Bengali film being shown is a 2K digital restoration carried out by Pixion Studios and Cameo Media Labs.
For producer Varsha Bansal, Mahanagar’s re-emergence is particularly special since it is her favourite among the six Ray films produced by her grandfather, RD Bansal. “Mahanagar is such a beautiful film, and it is relevant even today,” Varsha Bansal told Scroll. “The trend of re-releases as fillers for the big gaps between the big hits gives older films a new lease of life.”
Mahanagar marked the first of three collaborations between Ray and the brilliant actress Madhabi Mukherjee. The movie also introduced Jaya Bachchan, playing the heroine’s teenaged sister-in-law.
Ray adapted Mahanagar from Awbotawronika (A Flight of Stairs), Narendranath Mitra’s short story from 1949. Mahanagar itself is set in the mid-1950s in Kolkata.
The story follows the repercussions of a housewife’s decision to pursue a career on her family, particularly her husband. Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee) starts working as a door-to-door saleswoman for a sewing machine company after her spouse Subrata (Anil Chatterjee) struggles to meet household expenses.
After Arati crosses the threshold of domesticity and starts moving around Kolkata, she blossoms. She forms a friendship with her Anglo-Indian colleague Edith (Vicky Redwood). But her professional and personal strides begin to weigh on Subrata and his conservative parents.
Commenting on Mahanagar’s subtle skewering of middle-class hypocrisy, Andrew Robinson wrote in his biography Satyajit Ray – The Inner Eye: “At the heart of the film is the plight of a young woman of pronounced talents being wasted in the name of a false standard of behaviour.”
Mahanagar was the first of Ray’s films to be produced by RD Bansal. Five more movies were bankrolled by Bansal between the 1960s and the 1970s: Charulata, Kapurush, Mahapurush, Nayak and Joi Baba Felunath.
Ram Das Bansal had moved from Agra to Kolkata in the mid-1950s as a supplier of marble. “He got drawn into films because he used to supply marble to a cinema hall,” Varsha Bansal recalled. “My grandfather told me that unlike the marble industry, cinemas didn’t run on credit – you paid for a movie and entered the cinema. He felt that this was a good way of making money.”
RD Bansal built six single-screen cinemas in Kolkata, such as Vaishali and Grace. In 1959, he produced his first Bengali film, Sudhir Mukherjee’s Shashi Babur Sansar. The multi-generational family drama, led by Chhabi Biswas, was a hit.
“People began reaching out to my grandfather, and one thing followed another,” Varsha Bansal said. One of these people was Ray, who had already stacked up a formidable reputation with the Apu trilogy, Jalsaghar and Kanchenjhunga.
“My grandfather was attracted to Ray’s cinema, it was different and real,” Varsha Bansal said. Ray’s reputation for disciplined filmmaking was another draw.
“Ray was very methodical while making a film – he had the full script and everything in his head, even the posters,” Bansal said. “My grandfather could visualise the movie before it was even shot. It is easier for a producer to put in money when you can picture where the story is going. Ray was very methodical about budgets too, he didn’t go a single rupee over.”
Although Ray was a critical darling, his movies were rarely money-spinners. They fared better in international markets, where Ray’s reputation sometimes surpassed his reception back home. “I would give my grandfather credit for backing films that had no guaranteed commercial success in Bengal,” Varsha Bansal said.
The one Ray movie that did very well for RD Bansal was Nayak (1966). Ray’s first collaboration with the acting icon Uttam Kumar is an intimate study of stardom that unfolds over the course of a day.
The narrative includes flashbacks and two dream sequences. In one of the dreams, Uttam Kumar’s character Arindam Mukherjee is drowning in piles of money, representing his anxiety over the vacuity of fame. Unfortunately, a Kolkata police unit assumed that the money in the scene was real. They arrived at Bansal’s office to arrest him.
“They thought that he had been printing money, when, of course, the notes were props,” Varsha Bansal said. Although her grandfather was released after a night in prison, the experience scarred him.
RD Bansal was already committed to Ray’s musical comedy Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (eventually released in 1969). “He told Ray that the arrest had jolted him, and that he could not continue as a producer,” Varsha Bansal said. “My grandfather told me many times that if this incident had not taken place, he would have made films with Ray forever.”
However, RD Bansal’s son, Kamal, did make one more film with Ray: Joi Baba Felunath (1979). The crime thriller is an adaptation of one of Ray’s stories featuring his iconic detective Feluda. Varsha Bansal’s mother features in the background of one of the sequences.
RD Bansal died in 2010, at the age of 86. Apart from the Ray movies, Bansal produced at least 29 other Bengali films. These include Sudhir Mukherjee’s Shesh Parjanta (1960), Ajoy Kar’s blockbuster Saat Pake Bandha (1963) and Salil Dutta’s Ogo Bodhu Shundori (1981). Uttam Kumar was shooting for Ogo Bodhu Shundori in 1980 when he died from a heart attack.
RD Bansal Productions also distributed Hindi films in the eastern and north-eastern territories. “There were hits and there were losses – the main thing for my grandfather was a different subject,” Varsha Bansal said.
The family banner now owns only one multiplex, RDB Cinemas, in Kolkata’s Salt Lake City. The Bansals’ association with Ray continues in another vein.
Varsha Bansal was the line producer on Nishijapon (2005), directed by Ray’s son, Sandeep Ray. She also produced The Shonku Diaries – A Unicorn Adventure (2017). The animated film features another of Ray’s fictional characters, the genius inventor Professor Shonku.
The Bansals began restoring their Ray titles over a decade ago. “Who else but us to preserve our heritage,” Varsha Bansal said.
The spruced-up films have been re-released in other countries. The Mahanagar re-run is the first time that the restored version is being shown in Indian cinemas.
Saat Pake Bandha (1963), starring Suchitra Sen and Soumitra Chatterjee and remade in Hindi as Kora Kagaz (1974), is undergoing a restoration too. “The restoration opened a new window for the films – they have gone to festivals and been shown at retrospectives,” Varsha Bansal said. The re-release of Mahanagar shows another way where the RD Bansal Productions’ Ray catalogue can go: back to the cinemas, where it all began.
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