Letter from the Wife (1972)

Interesting facts

Strir Patra is a 1972 Bengali film, directed by Purnendu Patri, based on a short story by Rabindranath Tagore. Madhabi Mukherjee plays the lead role. Tagore's story, first published in 1914, has been considered to be a path-breaking feminist text. The film won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali, as well as a number of BFJA Awards.

Production

The choice of Madhabi Mukherjee to play the lead role was perhaps automatic, given her stellar performance as a Tagore heroine in Satyajit Ray's Charulata. Apart from her and Santosh Dutta, who were well-known in Bengali cinema, the cast of the film included several prominent stage actors such as Rudraprasad Sengupta, who was with the theatre group Nandikar and would later become its leader, and Asim Chakraborty, who had set up Chaturmukh theatre…

Purnendu Patri not only wrote the screenplay for the film, but also handled the art direction. The film was shot on location in Dhurjati Dham, an iconic old building in North Calcutta (now declared a heritage building), which had earlier been used by Satyajit Ray for Jalsaghar.

The choice of Ramkumar Chattopadhyay as Music Director was an unusual but appropriate one. Chatterjee had not composed music for films prior to Strir Patra, but was well known as a classical singer with a unique repertoire of puratani (old Bengali) songs.

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