indian cinema heritage foundation

Udayer Pathey (1944)

  • GenreSocial
  • FormatB-W
  • LanguageBengali
  • Run Time122 min
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Bimal Roy’s directorial debut made under New Theatre Studios the film follows the story of a struggling novelist Anup who is driven to fight for the betterment of the working class. Anup gets a job at a millionaire industrialist Rajendranath’s office as a publicity artist and is soon made to write political speeches for him. When Anup realises that his sister Sumitra had once been falsely accused of theft at Rajendranath’s house he immediately leaves the job. However, at the request of Rajen’s son and manager of the company Sourindranath and his sister Gopa, Anup promises to complete the speech he was writing at the time, and Sourin promises him to pay the money required to get Anup’s novel printed. In the meantime, Gopa gets hold of the novel’s manuscript and is really impressed after reading it and starts to see Anup’s viewpoint in the class struggle. But when the novel is finally printed it is found out that Sourin has changed Anup’s name to his own as the author thus getting all the accolades himself. Although Anup is hurt and enraged he realises that there is no way he could prove the crime and instead engages himself with the problems of the workers’ union of the factories under Rajen’s company. As the workers find a good leader in Anup Gopa too starts visiting the union offices and the workers’ colony in order to understand of their struggles even more. To solve the union problem Sourin orders goons to hurt Anup at a meeting, and Gopa goes to protect him but instead they are photographed together and turned into scandalous news. Rajendranath himself comes to the city to protect Gopa’s image and also from stopping her relationship with Anup once and forever. Although Rajen personally visits Anup and asks him to distance himself from Gopa and Anup agrees to it as well, it is Gopa who leaves her house to walk with Anup towards a new path of dawn (the film’s title when translated). The film is replete with strong ideas of socialism and class struggle, something common in Bimal Roy’s works. This was closely related to the fact that the film was written by famous IPTA writer Jyotirmoy Roy. The ending shot of Anup and Gopa walking towards the rising dawn has become famous in film lore. 

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