Star-Crossed Actors

Smita Banerjee's Modernities and the Popular Melodrama: The Suchitra-Uttam Yug examines the most successful pairing in Bengali cinema

- Juhi Saklani

MODERNITIES AND THE POPULAR MELODRAMA: The Suchitra-Uttam Yug in Bengali Cinema by Smita Banerjee ORIENT BLACKSWAN *1,045; 312 pages

The story goes that a Bengali director wanted to remake the Hindi hit Dosti (1962), a tale of two young boys, one blind and one lame. “Who will you cast,” asked a friend, “Uttam and Suchitra?” The joke serves as a great indicator, especially for the non-Bengali cinema lover, of the power of this screen couple who became “metonyms for love and modern romance”. Beginning with 22 films in the 1950s, most of them hits or superhits, their pairing lasted till the late 1970s and is called the Suchitra-Uttam yug (era) in this book.