Badi Bahen aka President is a 1937 Hindi social romantic drama film (the Bengali version was called Didi and starred several different actors). The story according to the credit roll of the film is "A tale of love and greater love" developed on an idea by M. M. Begg. It was a love triangle with a social content that highlighted the conditions of the mill workers. It was also the first film to show a liberated educated woman managing her own factory
Roop Kumari (Leela Desai) a famous court dancer is forbidden entry into a temple monastery run by a strict disciplinarian Priest. The cast listed here is for the Hindi version, there is also a Bengali version with a different cast, but same director and release year.
A remake of the Bengali film Bhagya Chakra, it was the first Hindi film to use playback singing. It was director Nitin Bose who came up with the idea of playback singing.
Suren, prevented by his family from pursuing a university career, leaves home and becomes a tutor to Pramila. He falls in love with her widowed elder sister Madhavi who, although returning his love, has him sacked to save the situation.
Adapted from a story by Kazi Nazrul Islam this film concerns love and revenge among a tribe of snake charmers led by Jahar (Nawab) who is searching for his 100th poisonous snake so as to show how he can magically cure its deadly bite.
Classic celebration of Mithila's King Shiva Singha's (Bannerjee/Kapoor) love for his wife while chronicling the influence of the pacifist court poet Bidyapati (Sanyal). Invited to the royal court by the king, Bidyapati arrives with his faithful follower Anuradha (Kanan Devi). Queen Laxmi (Chhaya Devi) falls in love with the poet, much to the distress of the king. The king falls ill and starts neglecting his royal duties until Anuradha persuades him that true love does not need reciprocation. The queen, equally distressed by her divided loyalties, contemplates suicide, encouraged by the prime minister who is worried by the nefarious impact of Bidyapati's poetry on the king.
Devdas, the son of a zamindar, and Parvati, his neighbour's daughter, are childhood sweethearts. However, class and caste differences prevent their marriage. Devdas is sent off to Calcutta, while Paro is married off to an aged rich widower. In Calcutta, as remorse drives him to alcohol, Devdas meets Chandramukhi, a tawaif.
In a family where relations have deteriorated to the worst level, even affecting professional lives, an outsider tries to rebuild the lost love and compassion.
It was 1943. Burma was under Japanese control. In Pegu, a small place near Burma lived two Indian families. They were neighbors Kumar and Lata loved each other. Their parents were also willing to see them engaged. Suddenly one day, it came out in the news paper the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had called on the people to give him blood so that he could give them freedom. Kumar was reluctant but later on he decided to join the INA.
A 1953 Bengali Drama Film directed by Subodh Mitra.
A drama set amid an earthquake in Bihar. Miss Renee (Khote) looks after the victims while her lover, the businessman Sardar (Mohanned), wants to make money from the disaster.
When a local mining company dares to provide its workers a fair wage for a fair day's work, and lets its workers unionize, the kingdom's villainous potentate is less than pleased. After considerable pressure, the company agrees to blame unrest in the region on a blameless worker collective.
Set against the backdrop of WW II in Calcutta, "Meri Bahen" is the story of a schoolteacher and his young sister. The film followed his rise to fame as a singer and the changes in his relationships following a bomb-raid.
A famous radio singer Mohan (Saigal) is in love with Geeta (Leela Desai). When he goes to his friend a doctor, TB Specialist, Bijoy (Bhanu) for a check-up, he is found to be in an advance stage of TB. Meanwhile Leela's dominant mother and aunt (Nibhanani and Manorama) had been against the poor Mohan and had set their eyes on same Dr. Bijoy, the son of a family friend. When Mohan comes to know of it, and also his sickness, he decides to walk away from them. He is intercepted by a doctor who ran a sanatorium for TB patients, with some new method of treatment. Geeta couldn't forget Mohan and waited, but in the end she had to relent. Then it was known that Mohan was alive and cured. What would now Bijoy and Geeta do? There wedding was the next day, and they have to go ahead with it, the honour of both the families were at stake. Mohan too aware of his being exposed, disappears from the sanatorium and is untraceable.
A wife rejected by her in-laws following her abduction is given shelter by the husband's friend. The storyline follows the wife's ambivalent feelings for her savior when she's accepted back into the family.
A father worries for his younger son and asks his elder son to promise that he will do everthing in his power to ensure Arun does not go astray, educates himself and becomes an independent man. However, fate has other plans. When Arun commits an unthinkable crime, his brother fulfills the promise made to their father and shields his younger sibling from all harm.
This is the story of the wanderlust in a teenage boy, Tarapada, who often ran away from his home for days to join groups of wandering players, musicians and acrobats. Based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore.
Devdas, the son of a zamindar, and Parvati, his neighbour's daughter, are childhood sweethearts. However, class and caste differences prevent their marriage. Devdas is sent off to Calcutta, while Paro is married off to an aged rich widower. In Calcutta, as remorse drives him to alcohol, Devdas meets Chandramukhi, a prostitute. All Indian prints of this Bengali version were destroyed in a fire that ravaged New Theatre’s studios. Today, only one copy of the film survives which belongs to the Bangladesh Film Archives. Of that copy almost forty percent is destroyed.
The legend of Prince Puran, born under King Silwan of Sialkot's curse which binds his parents never to set eyes on him until he is 16. Accused of leading a debauched life by an evil general and by the king's second wife, Puran is sentenced to death. Rescued by the mystic Gorakhnath, he becomes an ascetic. When the king is overthrown, Purna rises from his meditations to depose the general who has seized power, before returning to his life of renunciation.
The poor but educated Mahim and his childhood friend, the rich but conservative Suresh, both fall in love with the same woman, the liberated Achala. Mahim marries her and they move to a village but she cannot forget Suresh. Her smoldering unhappiness takes the form of resentment towards the orphaned Mrinal, raised by Mahim's father, and receives a dramatic visual embodiment when their house burns down. Mahim falls ill, is rescued by Suresh, and nursed back to health by Achala. On a train (a metaphor for the irreversibly linear course of life) to a health resort where Mahim is supposed to convalesce, Suresh on a rainswept night gives in to temptation and elopes with Achala. At the end of the film, there is a dubious reconciliation as Achala is shown following Mahim's 'good' traditionalism with Sharatchandra's barely concealed hostility towards Achala's liberated Brahmo Samaj upbringing.
