Chiriakhana

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title চিড়িয়াখানা
(Chiriakhana)
Country of production India
original language Bengali
Publishing year 1967
length 121 minutes
Rod
Director Satyajit Ray
script Satyajit Ray
production Harendranath Bhattacharya for Star Productions
music Satyajit Ray
camera Soumendu Roy
cut Dulal Dutta
occupation

Chiriakhana ( Bengali : চিড়িয়াখানা , Ciṛiẏākhānā ; translated: The Zoo ) is an Indian feature film by Satyajit Ray from 1967. It was based on the novel of the same name by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay .

action

Detective Byomkesh Bakshi and his assistant Ajit Chakraborty receive a visit from a client - Nishanath Sen, a former judge. He runs a farm settlement he founded outside of Kolkata , where he has housed socially outcasts. With this he wants to clear his conscience, as he has previously imposed several death sentences.

Sen wants Bakshi to find out details for him about a movie with a particular love song he heard on his farm. Bakshi learns from Ramen Mullick - a "living encyclopedia" - about the film and a murder related to it. He learns that the lead actress and singer of the song only appeared in that one film eight years ago and then disappeared.

Byomkesh and Ajit visit the farm in disguise and are shown around by Sen. Ajit, miming a Japanese in accent and behavior, takes photos of all residents. Sen Bakshi phones in the evening and is murdered while talking on the phone. The next morning, the police called for help to clarify the Byomkesh Bakshi case. Bakshi begins his investigation by questioning all residents. After a screening of the film at Ramen Mullick's, he discovered that none of the women bore any resemblance to the actress he was looking for. The investigation also reveals that Sens's wife Damayanti is actually still married to a Sikh named Lal Singh, whom Sen had sentenced to death, but whose sentence was overturned.

Late in the evening there is a second murder of the deaf and mute Panugopal, who witnessed the first crime and was just writing a testimony. The police consider Lal Singh suspicious because he had a motive for both murders, but Bakshi does not believe in him as the perpetrator. The next day he again interrogates all residents and secretly records their statements. During the evaluation he comes across the statement of one of the women (Banalakshmi) that she is from a village in Hugli . However, she used a word from an East Bengal dialect, which puts Bakshi on the right track. He observes her lover, the supposedly sitar-playing Dr. That and discovers that they own a brothel in town.

Byomkesh Bakshi has all the residents of the farm settlement come together and exposes Das as the killer. He plays the song from the movie and Banalakshmi then accuses Das of bringing her into prostitution and of committing the post-movie murder. This admits that he regularly does abortions and she was his first. He changed her face with plastic surgery after the film.

The police will take that away. Bakshi tells his assistants that he only managed to solve the case because he didn't trust anyone ... except his pet snake.

background

Chiriakhana is Ray's first detective film. As with Abhijan before , Ray took on a project of his assistant directors as the main director and thus had no influence on the selection of the story and the actors. The set design for the film was created by Bansi Chandragupta .

In an interview Satyajit Ray described Chiriakhana as an unsatisfactory film for him: “Chiriakhana is a Whodunit story and Whodunits just don't make good films. I prefer the thriller form in which you know the perpetrator more or less from the start. Whodunits always have this ritual of a dissolution scene in which the detective tells long and wide how everything happened and how he came to the conclusions that ultimately led him to the perpetrator. It's a form that I'm not really interested in ”. As a result, this film is one of those little known outside of Bengal .

In addition to the Sherlock Holmes style detective story on which this film is based, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay wrote a whole series of stories about the detective "Byomkesh Bakshi".

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andrew Robinson: Satyajit Ray - The Inner Eye , p. 233
  2. ^ Andrew Robinson: Satyajit Ray - The Inner Eye , p. 233
  3. ↑ http://satyajitray.org/films/chiriakhana.htm

Web links