Sagarika

Saagarikaa

Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen 


This is yet another film which was remade in Hindi, with the name Prem Patra, and that remake by the superb filmmaker Bimal Roy had some changes from this original, perhaps to simplify the theme.

To begin with here the setting is a medical college, which in the remake was just a college, and the aspiring bright young man there was a budding scientist instead of the whole lot here that are doctors in making.

Here the question of the young man being attracted is a little more complex, rather than the simple one in remake about a love letter from the young man being considered a grave insult to the dignity of the young woman.

Here, instead, it's a jilted young woman who finds what she thought was hers by right, heart of someone she thought should belong to her, being instead given to another, and even though it's still just a nascent poetic feeling on part of the young man, she actively spreads the story that is likely to hurt both the innocent people.

Wonder how much this young artist 5:09 (Namita Singha), who is a major part of the story until the young doctor leaves to go abroad, and is seen when he is dreaming singing Aamaar Swapne Dekha Raajakanyaa, had her success due to a vivid similarity with Vivien Leigh!

At 34:00 - 40:00 however, the story is different from the remake. Here the young man is engaged to someone from a neighbourhood village who happens to be a first cousin of his colleague the "Princess seen in dreams", the engagement entered into as an arrangement whereby he is sent abroad by the prospective father in law, and the fiancee sent to town to live with her first cousin so she can learn to be an appropriate consort for the educated bridegroom - except another doctor falls in love with her even as her letters to the bridegroom are in fact written on her behalf by the cousin!

The remake is far simpler, if memory serves right.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ5z685irlg

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wU8CdsOyDvg