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
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.
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.
The story revolves around the 15th century poet-saint Chandidas who acts out against the deep-rooted bigotry against caste, untouchability and the hypocrisy of society, as he falls in love with a washer woman.
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.
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.
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.
A 1953 Bengali Drama Film directed by Subodh Mitra.
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.
Maya (Jamuna) is the poor cousin of rich socialite Shanta (Azoorie). Shanta is supposed to marry the equally rich Pratap (P. Sanyal), but he falls in love with Maya and fathers her child before going abroad. Shanta causes a seperation by intercepting Pratap's letters to Maya. When he returns, a successful lawyer, he us unable to trace her, while her efforts to meet him are foiled.
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 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.
Two young friends bond when they visit the village fair. They fall in love. What seems like a simple story soon turns into a conflict zone between families and when pride is hurt love is sure to suffer. Wapas is a tale of wronged love. Will the young lovers be able to bury their differences and find love again?
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.
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.
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.
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.
A famous Saigal musical narrating a strange love story set against 1930s industrialization and worker-management relations. The 16-year-old Prabhavati inherits a mill and turns it into an extremely profitable enterprise. Prakash is a worker who designs a more efficient machine for the factory for which he first gets sacked and then is re-employed. He falls in love with Prabhavati's sister Sheila, who later makes way for Prabhavati who is also in love with Prakash. Her withdrawal distresses Prakash, causing him to bully the workers who then go on strike.
This classic adultery story tells of an artist, Prasanta (Barua) presented in the stereotypically romantic image: dedicated to his vocation, paying no heed to his scandalous reputation (he paints nude models) and with a cavalier attitude to his conservative father-in-law's (Choudhury) demands for a good social behavior.
For the first time in Indian cinema, flashback was used for storytelling.
