Jotugriha (1964)

Marital melodrama often regarded as Sinha’s best film. The upwardly mobile Satadal (Kumar), an officer in a government archaeology department, is estranged from his wife Madhuri (A. Devi) because she cannot bear children. They divorce, leaving him alone to complete their joint dream of building a house while she resumes her earlier career as a school teacher. The voice of middle-class normalcy in this cultural vacuum of the rootless elite is provided by Satadal’s junior, Supriyo(A. Chatterjee). The earlier part of the film, shot on location in Calcutta in the monsoon, sets the pace for a slow, even tempo which Sinha manages to retain throughout, especially in the remarkable sequence when Satadal chances to meet his ex-wife in a railway waiting room and they spend a few hours talking before they part once more. One of the early films in the popular 60s genre chronicling the breakdown of family relations within an urban upper class (cf. Mrinal Sen’s Akash Kusum, 1965) and the ancestor of Basu Bhattacharya’s 70s melodramas.