Cast: Sharmila Tagore (double role), Uttam Kumar, Supriya Debi, Soma, Mithun Chakraborty, Asitbaran, Samit Bhanja, Santu Mukherjee, Lily Cha...
Cast: Sharmila Tagore (double role), Uttam Kumar, Supriya Debi, Soma, Mithun Chakraborty, Asitbaran, Samit Bhanja, Santu Mukherjee, Lily Chakraborty
Music: Rahul Dev Burman
Directed by: Pijush Basu & Uttam Kumar
Some films acquire a tragic history long before they reach the screen. Kalankini Kankabati is one of them. Based on a story by Dr Niharranjan Gupta and directed by Pijush Basu, the film brought together a formidable cast—Uttam Kumar, Supriya Devi, Sharmila Tagore, Mithun Chakraborty, Samit Bhanja, Santu Mukherjee, Asit Baran, Lily Chakraborty and others—with R. D. Burman composing the music. Yet its journey to the screen was marked by extraordinary misfortune.
Pijush Basu died while the film was being made, following which Uttam Kumar took upon himself the responsibility of completing it. Fate, however, intervened again. Uttam died before the film could be completed, with only a few scenes remaining to be shot. After a prolonged struggle, Kalankini Kankabati finally saw release in August 1981, in the immediate aftermath of Bengal’s overwhelming grief following Uttam Kumar’s death.
One might have expected that emotional climate to give the film an extraordinary reception. Instead, it bombed.
The reason becomes fairly apparent on watching it today. Kalankini Kankabati feels like a film belonging to an earlier era. Its story revolves around the familiar figure of the tyrannical zamindar, feudal oppression and forbidden love. Uttam Kumar plays Raj Shekhar, a decadent zamindar married to Sureshwari Devi (Supriya Devi), who becomes obsessed with Aparna (Sharmila Tagore), a poor nautch girl in love with Raghubeer (Santu Mukherjee). When Raj Shekhar discovers their relationship, he tries to imprison Raghubeer. The lovers escape, but Raghubeer is subsequently killed by Raj Shekhar.
Aparna’s child, Kankabati, is taken from her and hidden in Raj Shekhar’s palace. Years later, history repeats itself when Raj Shekhar’s son Shashank (Mithun Chakraborty) falls in love with Kankabati, also played by Sharmila in a double role. The past inevitably catches up with the present, leading to a melodramatic climax of guilt, redemption and emotional reconciliation.
There was nothing inherently wrong with a period melodrama, but the difficulty was one of timing. By the early 1980s, Bengali cinema had travelled a long way from the conventional zamindar melodrama. The turbulent political and social realities of the 1960s and 1970s had produced a cinema increasingly concerned with urban alienation, unemployment, changing relationships and contemporary social tensions. Against that backdrop, the wicked zamindar and the oppressed lovers seemed decidedly archaic.
The irony is that the cast suggested a far more contemporary film. Mithun Chakraborty represented the new generation, while Uttam Kumar himself was in the later and more exploratory phase of his career. Raj Shekhar could have been a fascinating opportunity to see Uttam play a deeply flawed, morally corrupt man with greater psychological complexity. Instead, the character remains largely an archetype—the predatory zamindar who exists principally to drive the plot’s tragedy. Uttam brings his unmistakable authority to the role, but the material rarely allows him to go beyond the surface.
Sharmila Tagore’s double role offers considerably more scope. Aparna and Kankabati allow her to embody two generations connected by the same unresolved tragedy, though even this potentially powerful idea is handled in fairly conventional melodramatic terms. Mithun brings youthful energy to a narrative that otherwise feels rooted in another decade.
If anything, R. D. Burman’s music feels more alive than the film itself. Songs such as “Bendhechhi Beena,” “Na Na Kache Esho Na” and especially “Aadho Aalo Chhayate” have outlived the film and remain its most enduring legacy. Burman’s score has a freshness and musicality that contrasts sharply with the dated dramatic framework.
Watching Kalankini Kankabati during Uttam Kumar’s birth centenary celebrations inevitably adds poignancy to the experience. It is impossible not to think about the film’s extraordinary history—the death of its director, Uttam stepping in to complete it, and then his own untimely death before the work was finished. But sentiment cannot disguise its shortcomings.
The film is therefore also a reminder that even an illustrious career can contain questionable choices. Uttam Kumar’s filmography is remarkable precisely because he repeatedly reinvented himself and responded to changing times. Kalankini Kankabati represents one of those occasions when the choice of material seems strangely out of step with the era and, indeed, with the evolution of the actor himself.
Its importance today is consequently less as a lost classic than as a fascinating historical document: a film carrying an extraordinary legacy of loss, blessed with an impressive ensemble and memorable music, but ultimately unable to overcome a story that already seemed dated when it was made.
Kalankini Kankabati is, in the end, a film caught between two eras—and perhaps its greatest tragedy is that while Uttam Kumar had moved forward, the film had not.
By Pratik Majumdar (author: Love Coffee Murder and 1975 The Year That Transformed Bollywood)
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