Nagarik videorecording Film Guild ; story and script, Ritwik Kumar Ghatak ; direction, Ritwik Kumar Ghatak.

Videodisc release of the 1953 motion picture.

Nagarik was the first feature-length film directed by legendary Indian director Ritwik Ghatak Completed in 1952, it preceded Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali as perhaps the first example of an art film in Bengali cinema, but is deprived of that honor, since it was released twenty-four years later, after Ghatak's death. A family from North Calcutta faces drastic reduction in their circumstances following World War II and Partition. Ramu, a fresh graduate is searching for a job like many others in post-Partition Kolkata. The mother is yearnful of older times when the family used to live in a better house, but she bears her suffering quietly, for the most part. The father is myopic and full of cynicism for he does not share the idealistic aspirations of his two children that better times will come. The light of Ramu's life is his lover Uma, who lives in an equally precarious situation with her sister Shephali and her mother. Jatin is an even poorer minor character living near Uma's dwelling who Ramu avoids because he cannot help the former out financially. To make ends meet, Ramu's mother takes in Sagar, a poor chemist, as a paying guest. Ramu does not get a job and cannot pay rent even with the meagre money that he gets from Sagar and is insulted by the landlord. Ultimately the family is evicted.

Satindra Bhattacharya, Prova Devi, Sova Sen, Kali Bannerjee, Ketaki Dutta, Geeta Shome, Ajit Banerjee, Keshto Mukerjee, Parijat Bose.

DVD

In Bengali with English subtitles