Quintessential Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen film and a classic of the era from Bengali films.
Adaptation of Random Harvest by James Hilton. Perhaps with a tad borrowed, in the woman being a psychiatrist at a mental hospital, from Hitchcock's Spellbound. The original, set in wartime England from end of WWI to WWII, has her in other jobs possible for someone from a middle to lower middle class background, going from a bartender to wife to typist, secretary and onwards, on her own capabilities.
Whether thereby, or deliberately - since the other factirs of the original story have been cut out necessarily - it's the heroine's persona and dilemma, agony and problem that is highlighted here, unlike in the original where she remains elusive for much of the story. There, she is a lower middle class simple young girl who happened to find a lost young man escaping the facility he was sequestered at, and having given him refuge, married him, only to lose him - and subsequently when she did find him, the class difference is huge, so she could only wait in the background, hoping he will remember, or give up. Her doctor had told her that any pressure to remind him might damage him for ever, irrevocably. So she waited, and there is the background of the two wars.
Here, his former life is rather in the background unlike the original, even when he has returned, and so is her elevated status of a not only medical doctor but a psychiatrist, and from the moment he enters her life, she gives him increasing priority, until having found him she's content to hide her identity and give up her profession for the time being, perhaps for ever, which seems to be the attempt to integrate the story into Indian ethos!
Necessarily the counterpart is turning of the official fiancee of his into a virago, upset with the silent mysterious new woman who doesn't fit any stereotype recognisable, and confronting her over and over - unlike the original where there is no such confrontation or even recognition, only the opposite - there, the much younger new entry in his life is nevertheless mature enough to realise he might have asked her to marry him and won't ever dishonour his word, but in reality isn't seeing her, only absent and seeking something lost that isn't her. This was perhaps too elusive and pastel for thisbadaptation, where the lines are far fewer and colours all bold.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYg-0YdoLw
Adaptation of Random Harvest by James Hilton. Perhaps with a tad borrowed, in the woman being a psychiatrist at a mental hospital, from Hitchcock's Spellbound. The original, set in wartime England from end of WWI to WWII, has her in other jobs possible for someone from a middle to lower middle class background, going from a bartender to wife to typist, secretary and onwards, on her own capabilities.
Whether thereby, or deliberately - since the other factirs of the original story have been cut out necessarily - it's the heroine's persona and dilemma, agony and problem that is highlighted here, unlike in the original where she remains elusive for much of the story. There, she is a lower middle class simple young girl who happened to find a lost young man escaping the facility he was sequestered at, and having given him refuge, married him, only to lose him - and subsequently when she did find him, the class difference is huge, so she could only wait in the background, hoping he will remember, or give up. Her doctor had told her that any pressure to remind him might damage him for ever, irrevocably. So she waited, and there is the background of the two wars.
Here, his former life is rather in the background unlike the original, even when he has returned, and so is her elevated status of a not only medical doctor but a psychiatrist, and from the moment he enters her life, she gives him increasing priority, until having found him she's content to hide her identity and give up her profession for the time being, perhaps for ever, which seems to be the attempt to integrate the story into Indian ethos!
Necessarily the counterpart is turning of the official fiancee of his into a virago, upset with the silent mysterious new woman who doesn't fit any stereotype recognisable, and confronting her over and over - unlike the original where there is no such confrontation or even recognition, only the opposite - there, the much younger new entry in his life is nevertheless mature enough to realise he might have asked her to marry him and won't ever dishonour his word, but in reality isn't seeing her, only absent and seeking something lost that isn't her. This was perhaps too elusive and pastel for thisbadaptation, where the lines are far fewer and colours all bold.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYg-0YdoLw
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