Arre Kya Baat Hai! (old)

Watched Nayak with Uttam Kumar and Sharmila Tagore. Ray made it in 1966, just a year before Uttam Kumar himself produced Chotti si Mulakat. Nayak is a stereotype of how we feel rich and famous must be living their lives - it is all a façade. Nice smiles, cars, autograph hunters in the day. Nightmares, loneliness, people trying to exploit all the time, to fall into alcoholic sleep. In that genre, both Uttam Kumar as Arindam Mukherjee and Sharmila as the feminist journalist with heavy glasses and sans dimples are both stereotypes. Yet it is Uttam Kumar's charm that raises the film's interest. His nightmare with banknotes and skeleton hands holding ringing telephones may not be very imaginative but he makes every thing look effortless. The cliché seem plausible. Reading his biography it is easy to see why people feel that the film was autobiographical.

Remember watching Chotti si Mulakat in Alipur Dwar. Vyjayantimala and Ya Ya Hippi Hippi in technicolor. Upperstall says that "He produced Chhotisi Mulaqaat in 1967 starring himself and Vyjayantimala. The film was adaptated from Agniparikhsha and had music by Shankar-Jaikishen . The film however was a dismal failure at the box-office leaving him with a pile of debt and probably leading to his first heart attack. Though he recovered and returned to full time acting, thus clearing his debts, he was never to produce a film again."
The Bangladeshi DVD shop owner has so many Bengali films. The DvD with Nayak has 11 of his films, including different films with Suchitra sen.

Makes me remember the Durga Puja in the park in R-block, where they would show all those emotional films - Deep Jale Jaye, Saptpadi,...