Gloomy Sunday (1999)
"Gloomy Sunday - Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod"(original title)

112 min  -  Romance | Drama 

Director: 

Rolf Schübel

Budapest in the thirties. The restaurant owner Laszlo hires the pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody triggers off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans goes and falls in love with Ilona as well.

The adult-orientated film explores such heavy issues as love, jealousy, hatred and betrayal in a graphic way that leaves the viewer reeling for hours afterwards. The German film, with English subtitles, begins in modern times at a Budapest restaurant where an elderly couple are enjoying a meal to celebrate the man's 80th birthday. He asks for the musicians to play `that famous song' as he focuses on a photograph of a beautiful young woman at the piano. As the violin plays the notes of Gloomy Sunday he keels over and dies. What follows is not so much a `whodunit' but who died and why. The audience is taken to pre-war Budapest restaurant owned by László Szabó, a Jew, and his waitress and sometimes girlfriend Ilona Varniá. As the story unfolds the audience is introduced to the pianist András Aradi, who falls for Ilona, and composes the haunting Gloomy Sunday in her honour. A German industrialist, Hans Eberhard Wieker, becomes a regular at the restaurant and he, too, falls for Ilona's charms. As the film progresses, and the men are vying for Ilona's affections, the song is recorded and sweeps the world. So heart-breaking is the song that more than one hundred people commit suicide while listening to it on their gramaphone. Some of these suicides are shown on screen. As World War II breaks out Wieker becomes a colonel in the German army and has a power over the other two men that, ultimately, leads to disaster for all involved. From a production point of view Gloomy Sunday cannot be faulted with authentic locales, clothes and music. Gloomy Sunday is a complex story that deals with the depravity of man, and its disastrous effects, as the three male leads share one women. Definitely an adult movie.

Meghe Dhaka Tara (2013)

124 min  -  Biography | Drama | Family 

Director: 

 Kamaleswar Mukherjee

To Ritwik Ghatak film was not merely a form of entertainment, but a weapon, a medium to portray struggle of common men. He was successful neither in his career nor he could he become a good family man or husband. Still he was an artist who never compromised for personal gain, fame or profit. The story of the film starts in 1969 and deals with Ritwik Ghatak's time spent in a mental asylum. It shows Nilkantha being admitted to mental asylum under the supervision of Doctor S. P. Mukherjee. S. P. Mukherjee learns that the Prime Minister of India knows Nilkantha and is fond of his works and may request the hospital authority to take special care of him. In the hospital a police officer sees Nilkantha and tells Doctor Mukherjee that he is a wasted drunkard. Another patient of hospital mocks Nilkantha as "disgraced intellectual". Even he was undergoing treatment in the hospitals, he writes a play and stages it with other asylum patients. Nilkantha witnessed partition of Bengal and its devastating effect and in his youth became attracted towards communism. Throughout the film Nilkantha's mental agony, struggles, inner contradictions, disappointments as well as financial troubles faced by him are shown. He clearly tells, it is not possible for him to make entertaining or commercial films. During a discussion Nilkantha tells Doctor Mukherjee that he is a "people's artist" and that is his job.   When Durga tells Nilkantha that they don't have a single rupee to run the family, Nilkantha readily replies, it is not money but it is one's work which will remain forever.