Abhijan / The Expedition (1962) [Masters of Cinema #27] [Re-UP]

Posted By: Someonelse
Date: April 13, 2015

Abhijan (1962)
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 4:3 | Cover | 02:25:45 | 7,31 Gb
Audio: Bengali AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English
Genre: Drama | Masters of Cinema #27

Director: Satyajit Ray
Stars: Waheeda Rehman, Soumitra Chatterjee, Ruma Guha Thakurta

Abhijan was Satyajit Ray’s most popular film in Bengal: a “conscious” effort to communicate with a wider audience. The project was originally conceived by his friends and Ray stepped in when they panicked at the prospect of directing. Ray’s mastery turned a starkly conventional plot into a subtly nuanced story which topped the Bengali box office for months.

Set on the Bihar-Bengal border, where Marwari businessmen — a powerful Hindi-dialect community of entrepreneurs much disliked throughout India — and Rajputs of warrior caste (from Rajasthan) have both settled. The central character of Narsingh (Soumitra Chatterjee), is a disillusioned, frequently drunken Rajput reduced in status to an ill-educated taxi driver. Proud and hot-tempered, with a passion for his 1930s Chrysler, Narsingh is offered work transporting tins of ghee for Sukhanram, a shady merchant, and finds himself drawn against his better judgement into trafficking opium. Having failed in everything honest, he has to decide whether or not he will engage in criminal activity to make money.

Starring Waheeda Rehman - one of the greatest stars of ‘Bollywood’ cinema — as Gulabi, a prostitute; Rabi Ghosh as Rama, Narsingh’s right-hand man; and Ruma Guha Thakurata as Neeli, Abhijan was honoured with the National Award of India in 1962. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Abhijan for the first time on DVD in the West, restored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Academy Film Archive.

IMDB | Eureka - Masters of Cinema | DVDBeaver | Wikipedia

Disillusioned that his wife has ran away on him and embittered that, despite the noble warrior blood of his ancestors running through his veins he can only get employment as a taxi driver, Narsingh's increasingly drunk and reckless behaviour even gets him sacked from that lowly job. Travelling to Shyamnagar in his beloved 1930s Chrysler however, Singhji (Soumitra Chatterjee – Apu in Ray’s The World of Apu) meets a wealthy businessman Sukhanram (Charuprakash Ghosh) on the road, his cart overturned. Sukhanram offers Singhji money and influence, knowing that not only can the town can make good use of a taxi service, but it will come in useful for his own various legal and illegal business transactions.


The decision to take up work with Sukhanram is a difficult one for Singhji, who has very strong ideas on mixing with people with lower castes, on transporting women in his taxi, of consorting with those who have converted to Christianity. He appears to have no strong religious beliefs of his own, but is rather more guided by his notions about his own position – wishing to rise above his humble employment into the warrior role that is his family’s past. His principles then are easily swayed, particularly when, having been fired from his job and having no friends in the new village, he needs to regain some money and status.


Singhji consequently accepts the hospitality of the businessman while he also make friends with Josef (Gyanesh Mukherjee), a former neighbour from his home village, a lower caste family who have since converted to Christianity. In this way, and through a number of similar parallels in Abhijan (‘The Expedition’), Satyajit Ray, as a measure of his great artistry as a director, takes a storyline that is little more than a simple morality tale and makes it into something much more complex. The most obvious example is the use of the “Uncle and Nephew” stones that stand outside the village, which people believe represent the weight of sin on man, and where a number of key scenes in the film take place. There is also some more conventional and obvious use of objects in the gleaming cigarette lighter in the shape of a gun that Singhji accepts from Sukhanram, and of course in the tin of ghee which holds a weighty significance. But much more is also expressed in the characters.


First of all, Ray draws a complex, yet illuminating contrast between the two women he comes into contact with in each of these places. Josef’s sister Neeli (Ruma Guha Thakurta) teaches him English and also the Christian belief that it is behaviour, not caste and blood, that determines whether a person is inferior or not. At Sukhanram’s house he encounters Gulabi (the famous Bollywood actress Waheeda Rehman – extraordinarily good here and stunningly beautiful), one of the women bought into prostitution by the businessman, whose activities even stretch to women trafficking. She is the fallen woman, who places temptation in his way to treat her as other men do, or to behave with greater respect and dignity. As well as having a social point to make about the respective circumstances of each of the women, they also represent the internal emotional conflict that is warring within Singhji’s mind.


That struggle is also reflected in the range between the businessman Sukhanram and Singhji’s servant and sidekick Rama (Robi Ghosh). Sukhanram represents Singhji’s ambitions, to regain the wealth, position and influence that he believes his ancestry merits. In order to achieve this however, he must give up everything he really is, represented in Rama, and even more so in the Chrysler. When he decides to accept the businessman’s offer of partnership and transport opium for him in a tin of ghee, Rama reminds him of his humble position as a taxi driver and what he has to give up. And it is the Chrysler that is the symbol of everything he has - his freewill, his integrity, his link to his past, his conscience – everything that he must give this up if he is to rise in status. Crucially, this conscience that is the Chrysler, starts to trouble him just as he is on the point of making a decision from which there is no turning back.


Abhijan seems like a straightforward story with romance, action, car chases and fight sequences - a morality tale of a man who has to make the choice between right and wrong and remain true to his nature rather than who he thinks he ought to be – but there is a lot more to the film than this. That Ray uses every object and character at his disposal to represent various complex aspects of the decisions to be made here is evident, but I suspect that there are even more subtleties and nuances in the social, religious and use of locations that stretch beyond my limited understanding of the film. As ever with Masters of Cinema’s releases, it is a joy to discover yet another classic film that has scarcely had the widespread recognition it deserves, and to see it treated so well in this restored print.
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Special Features:
- Video interview with Professor Dilip Basu, director of the Ray FASC (20 mins)
- Ray FASC Documentary (15:11)

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