Synopsis
Archana (Suchitra Sen) falls in love with
Sukhendu (Soumitra Chatterjee), a serious
University Lecturer, much to the chargin
her snobbish and interfering mother (Chhaya
Devi) for whom Sukhendu is just not good
enough for her daughter or their family.
Archana however, is adamant and with the
approval of her father (Pahadi Sanyal) gets
married to Sukhendu. The mother continues
to interfere in the marriage constantly
reminding her son-in-law of his poverty.
Suffering from divided loyalties, Archana's
problems are aggravated when Sukhendu insists
she sever all ties with her mother. Archana
separates from Sukhendu and stays independently
completing her studies. When she finally
accepts her wifely duties and returns home
it is too late as Sukhendu has resigned
and gone abroad.
The film
Following Harano
Sur (1957) and Saptapadi
(1961), Suchitra
Sen and Director Ajoy Kar re-unite for
perhaps their most memorable collaboration,
Saat Pake Bandha, also regarded
as one of the all-time great films of Bengali
cinema. The film is a milestone in Suchitra
Sen's incredible career and would win her
the Best Actress Award at the pretigious
Moscow Film Festival, the second International
award for an Indian actress, following Nargis'
win at Karlovy Vary for Mother
India (1957).
 The
film begins in the present where Archana
takes up a job as a teacher in a small village.
This sequence leading up to the flashback
as Archana recalls her life with Sukhendu
is weaker when compared to the rest of the
film. In the flashback, we see how Archana
met Sukhendu and how in subsequent meetings,
she is most impressed with him and they
fall in love much to Archana's snobbish
and domineering mother's disapproval. However,
her father is fond of Sukhendu and with
his support Archana and Sukhendu get married
and it is here onwards that the film nicely
comes into its own as a fine exploration
of marital life, its ups and downs and finally,
the disintegration of the marriage. True,
the film has dated but there is a sense
of restraint and sensitivity in the way
the film has been treated. The film avoids
loud melodrama. Even the fights between
Sukhendu and Archana do not go over the
top but remain seething under the surface.
The film focuses on the trauma Archana goes
through as she is unable to hold on to her
marriage and the film has several of Archana's
silent close-ups so we are able to see what
she is going through and feel for her.
While the film is a realistic and eye-opening
depiction of a marriage gone wrong and is
sympathetic to the woman who is caught in
between her mother and husband, it is still
within the genre of the 'women's picture'
and the way society percieved the role of
a woman then, so it is still the woman who
has to suffer and pay for the marriage failing.
So in that sense looking at the film today,
one does find it regressive. Sukhendu is
an educated lecturer but otherwise a typical
man and doesn't adjust at all for Archana
and, in fact, neither does her mother. Archana
is the one who is supposed to do what they
both want her to do. Sukhendu's anger against
his mother-in-law is understandable the
way she treats him but he expects Archana
to cut off ties with her family rather than
understand her plight or adjust for her.
In fact, he drives himself further away
from Archana taking out his anger against
his mother-in-law on her as he takes on
extra tutions to so that he comes home late
at night and sleeps in another room. The
mother too, on her side, thinks nothing
of hurting her son-in-law as she repeatedly
makes an issue of his being just an ordinary,
poor college lecturer - a failure in life.
Even at the end when Archana decides to
return to Sukhendu and goes to his house,
she is told by the people staying there
that she is the one to blame for Sukhendu's
departure.
The film also contradicts itself in that
it makes Archana complete her studies as
a step towards being independent and she
even turns down a re-marriage proposal but
ultimately decides to go back to wifely
duties with Sukhendu and it is only when
she realizes that he has left the country
and the marriage is truly over does she
take up the teacher's job and accept settling
down to a lifetime of solitude and living
for herself.
Another problem with the film is the flashback
sequence and this is not just true of Saat
Pake Bandha but practically all Indian
films that use this device. Flashbacks are
normally from a particular character's point
of view (POV), in this case Archana. But
once we go into the flashback rather than
continue with the film being from that character's
POV, our filmmakers neutralize the POV and
open up the whole story. Here too this happens
and there are scenes for example between
Sukhendu and Pishima that Archana would
not have been privy to; like when Pishima
chides him for not accompanying her to her
brother's birthday party or when Pishima
tells him that she is leaving for Kashi.
Incidentally, a rare film that got this
pretty much right was Bimal
Roy's Bandini
(1963), made the same year. The film
is from Kalyani's POV and the flashback
too is unraveled in a manner such that by
and large she is either physically present
in the action or she can still overhear
the goings on. Thus the viewer gets to understand
Kalyani, her story and her actions much
more clearly and are tied up to her character
right from the beginning, thereby respecting
her for her actions.
When Saat Pake Bandha was being
made, Suchitra Sen was going through a phase
when she had cut down her assignments with
Uttam
Kumar as she was hunting for a distinct
histrionic identity of her own and wanting
to go beyond just her romantic pairing with
him, legendary though it was. Thus many
of her films in this period were woman-centric
films opposite other leading men like Bikash
Roy, Basanta Choudhury and Soumitra
Chatterjee where Suchitra was the one
who had to carry the film on her shoulders.
This she did most ably. Saat Pake Bandha
sees her give one of her best performances
ever, a finely nuanced act, perfectly capturing
the metamorphis of Archana be it physical,
social, psychological or emotional as she
evolves from a young college girl to a married
woman unable to save her marriage (It must
be said here however that Suchitra does
looks a trifle too old and mature in the
college girl portions). Suchitra ably portrays
her helplessness as she gets caught in the
crossfire between her mother and her husband
with neither really caring about the effect
all this is having on her. Her close-ups
with her face going through a myriad of
expressions are astonishing to say the least.
Though the film is an out and out Suchitra
Sen vehicle, Soumitra Chatterjee more than
holds his own, playing the perfect foil
to her and having his moments as well. Still,
there are times when you feel he is a trifle
overawed and maybe even a little uncomfortable
(the awful moustache) at playing opposite
a mega star like Suchitra for the first
time. Chhaya
Devi gives an extremely strong and believable
performance as the interfering mother who
is unable to hide her disdain for her son-in-law
and who causes the destruction of her daughter's
marriage while Pahadi
Sanyal effortlessly plays another of
his kind-hearted and ever-supportive-but-helpless
father roles to perfection. In fact, one
must mention here that the bond between
the father and daughter is a very well worked
out track in the film.
The film's music is scored by Hemanta
Mukherjee and it is surprising that
the film is actually devoid of any songs.
But then this means that the flow of the
narrative is mostly uninterrupted as the
film too sticks to good, basic storytelling.
Unlike Harano Sur and Saptabadi,
director Ajoy Kar has not photographed the
film this time, leaving it to Bishnu Chakraborty.
The camerawork is more than adequate but
lacks the rich tonal details and beautiful
play of light and shade, that Kar achieved
himself with the earlier two films and various
other films that he has shot. On the sound
track, special mention must be made of the
use of the telephone as it rings at the
worst of times in the Sukhendu-Archana marriage
with each knowing the call is probably coming
from her family. Their silences even as
the phone continues to ring before one of
them eventually picks it up speaks volumes.
Saat Pake Bandha was re-made in
Hindi as Kora Kaagaz (1974) and
good as Vijay
Anand, Achala Sachdev and Jaya Bhaduri
are in the roles played by Soumitra Chatterjee,
Chhaya Devi and Suchitra Sen respectively,
the original is definitely cinematically
superior. Besides Suchitra's Award at Moscow,
the film ranked 4th on the list of the Best
Indian Films of 1963 as declared by the
Bengal Film Jouranalists' Association (BFJA).
Strangely, following the success of the
film, it took a good 13 years for Suchitra
Sen to re-unite with Kar for another film
- Datta (1976) which co-incidentally
also co-starred Soumitra Chatterjee. In
fact, Datta was the last but one
film that Suchitra Sen did before going
into a Garboesque like retirement. Saat
Pake Bandha today is a potent reminder
to what was...
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