The Cloud-Capped Star

While Satyajit Ray triumphed globally with The Apu Trilogy, another filmmaker, one with a completely different temperament, was working in Calcutta; Ritwik Ghatak – an iconic, uncompromising personality of Indian cinema – looked for a language that would express the tragedy that was the Partition of Bengal in 1947, and the subsequent migration of millions of people. The Cloud-Capped Star is his masterpiece: a melodrama about an uprooted family, camping outside Calcutta, supported financially by the young Nita (Supriya Choudhury) who sacrifices her dreams for her relatives. Looking from a woman’s perspective, Ghatak introduces experimental elements to this heartbreaking story, therefore creating a poetic film about quiet perseverance and sacrifice. An awestruck Ray wrote about the originality of Ghatak, who, unlike him, rejected American models: ‘Ritwik was mysteriously impervious to this influence – Hollywood left no marks on his films. How this happened is still a mystery to me’.

Sebastian Smoliński

Ritwik Ghatak (1925–1976) was an Indian director, screenwriter and playwright. He made his first feature film The Citizen in 1952 but the film was only released posthumously in 1977. His most renowned work is the ‘partition trilogy’ made in 1960–62, starting with his best-known film The Cloud-Capped Star. Although he was highly influential in his home country as a filmmaker, teacher and film theoretician, his work has been overshadowed abroad by that of other Indian filmmakers, particularly Satyajit Ray, and only recently given the attention that it deserves.

Restored by The Criterion Collection in partnership with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and the Cineteca di Bologna, from elements preserved by the National Film Archive of India.