Devdas

Devdas (1935)

দেবদাস

THE BENGALI LANGUAGE FILM ADAPTATION OF SARATCHANDRA CHATTERJEE'S NOVEL BY P. C. BARUA.

Devdas, the son of a zamindar, and Parvati, his neighbour's daughter, are childhood sweethearts. However, class and caste differences prevent their marriage. Devdas is sent off to Calcutta, while Paro is married off to an aged rich widower. In Calcutta, as remorse drives him to alcohol, Devdas meets Chandramukhi, a prostitute. All Indian prints of this Bengali version were destroyed in a fire that ravaged New Theatre’s studios. Today, only one copy of the film survives which belongs to the Bangladesh Film Archives. Of that copy almost forty percent is destroyed.

Date of release
1935-03-30
TMDB
8.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
2h 21m
Genres
Drama, Romance
Director
P.C. Barua

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Devdas

Devdas is a 1935 Bengali film directed by Pramathesh Barua and based on the 1917 Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay novel, Devdas. It stars Barua as Devdas, Jamuna Barua as Parvati (Paro) and Chandrabati Devi as Chandramukhi. This was Barua's first of three language versions of the story, the second being in Hindi and the third in Assamese. The Bengali film was dubbed into Tamil and was released in 1936. K. L. Saigal sang two songs in Tamil for this film.

Production

Devdas, based on a popular Bengali novel by Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, revolutionized the entire look of Indian social pictures. Rather than just translate one medium to another, PC Barua uses the novel as just raw material, creating his own structure and transforming what was purely verbal into an essentially visual form. Avoiding stereotypes and melodrama, Barua raises the film to a level of noble tragedy.

The film is a complete departure from the then prevalent theatricality in acting, treatment and dialogue. Barua initiates a style of acting that is natural and unaffected. His method is to underplay, to convey emotion through the slightest tremor of the voice and use significant pauses in between the dialogue to maximum effect. This naturalness of tone spills over to the dialogue as well.

KL Saigal played Devdas in the Hindi version (Barua himself played the role in the Bengali version) and the film took him to cult star status. His songs in the film Balam Aaye Baso Mere Man Mein and Dukh ke Din Ab Beete Nahin became smash hits and set the tone for a glorious filmic career till his death in 1947.

Devdas has been remade a number of times, New Theatres remade it in Tamil in 1937, it was made twice in Telugu in 1953 and 1974 but the most famous subsequent version was the one by Bimal Roy who had photographed this version. The film, made in 1955, starred Dilip Kumar, Suchitra Sen and Vyjayanthimala as Devdas, Parvati and Chandramukhi respectively. The undercurrent of Devdas runs strong in the central character in both of Guru Dutt.

Devdas (1935), produced by New Theatres is an all-time hit. It made Pramathesh Chandra Barua (1903–1951) a star overnight and revolutionalised the concept of cinema as entertainment into cinema of social concern and literature expressed through celluloid.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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