The best Soumitra Chatterjee’s movies

Apu is a jobless ex-student dreaming vaguely of a future as a writer. An old college friend talks him into a visit up-country to a village wedding...

In 1870s India, Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee) is an isolated, artistically inclined woman who sees little of her busy journalist husband, Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee). Realizing that his wife is alienated and unhappy, he convinces his cousin, Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), to spend time with Charulata and nourish her creative impulses. Amal is a fledgling poet himself, and he and Charulata bond over their shared love of art. But over time a sexual attraction develops, with heartbreaking results.

The life of a woman happily married to the son of an upper-class family in 19th century Bengal is turned upside down when her father-in-law has a vision that she is the Goddess Kali returned to earth. He convinces her to fulfill her role as a living deity and transform her house into a temple.

Gangacharan is the new Brahmin of a village, where he assumes various duties: teaching, organizing religious events, and trying to prevent epidemics. But in that year 1943, war is raging (as reminded by the planes occasionally heard flying over the countryside), and a major famine is under way. As food shortages reach catastrophic proportions, Gangacharan attempts to preserve his privileged situation, while his generous wife, Ananga, conversely tries to help and support the community.

A story of relationships that explores the intricacies of the married life, of life-long companionship, of promises and expectations and love.

Ahalya, set as a modern-day thriller, is an ode to a legend from Ramayana. The 14-minute-long film replays the deadly game of Gods, spinning a web of intrigue, seduction, desire and mystery between Gods and Apsaras. Ahalya is a deadly game you can’t escape.

Amitabha Roy is a Calcutta-based scriptwriter, driving around in the country to collect material for a film. His vehicle breaks down in a small town. A tea planter, Bimal Gupta, offers hospitality for the night. Amitabha is forced to accept the offer as he has no alternative.

Allan (Hugh Grant) is an engineer working in 1930s Calcutta. He is invited to stay with the family of his boss, Narendra Sen (Soumitra Chatterjee) which includes his wife, Indira (Shabana Azmi) and daughter Gayatri (Supriya Pathak). Gayatri and Allan become romantically involved leading to tragedy.

'Teen Kanya' is an anthology film based upon short stories by Rabindranath Tagore, as a tribute on the author's centenary. The title means "Three Daughters", and the film's original Indian release contained three stories, with three central female characters linking the stories together. 'The Postmaster' concerns an orphan girl who grows attached to the postmaster she is caring for after he teaches her to read and write. 'Monihara' is a supernatural tale about a woman obsessed with the jewels her husband buys for her. 'Samapti' follows a young man who falls for an unconventional girl from his new village instead of his arranged bride, the daughter of a respectable family. The international release did not include 'Monihara', and was released as 'Dui Kanya', or "Two Daughters".

When Goopy and Bagha learn about Hirak Raja's tyranny, they try to set him right with the help of Udayan, a school teacher, and their magical powers.

Legendary figures of Indian cinema Aparna Sen and Soumitra Chatterjee head up the ensemble cast of this bittersweet tale of family ties and disillusionment. An elderly couple is celebrating their 50th anniversary, and family members gather at their once magnificent, now largely decrepit mansion, where they married a half-century before. As relatives young and old arrive and reminisce about their lives, stories are exchanged about the great family's past. But it does not take long to see that reality is more complicated than family myth. Long-buried family secrets inevitably arise as do secrets that may have been better kept locked away. To face the "fading pride of a nebulous past," family closeness is needed now more than ever. Suman Ghosh directs with a fine eye for the pretensions and wrongdoings of the upper middle class as well as its underlying strength and pain.

When the movie opens, a woman is recalling the events that molded her perspective on the world. Years ago, her husband, a wealthy Western-educated landowner, challenged tradition by providing her with schooling, and inviting her out of the seclusion in which married women were kept, to the consternation of more conservative relatives. Meeting her husband's visiting friend from college, a leader of an economic rebellion against the British, she takes up his political cause, despite her husbands warnings. As the story progresses, the relationship between the woman and the visitor becomes more than platonic, and the political battles, pitting rich against poor and Hindu against Moslem, turn out not to be quite as simple as she had first thought.

Set in the holy city of Benares, this is the second film about the detective Feluda, in which he goes for a holiday along with his cousin, Topshe and his friend, Lalmohan Ganguly. But the theft of a priceless deity of Lord Ganesh (the Elephant God) from a local household forces him to investigate.

Ashoke Gupta is an idealistic doctor working in a town near Calcutta. He discovers that the water at a popular temple is the source of an outbreak of typhoid and hepatitis. In order to save lives, he risks his career to try and call attention to this polluted water source, while a local group of building contractors attempt to discredit him in various ways.

When a wealthy patriarch falls ill on his 70th birthday, three of his sons rush in from Calcutta, leading to a reunion filled with painful ironies and lingering disillusionment. As the family—including an addled fourth son (Soumitra Chatterjee) who lives with the old man—watches and waits, the static occasion brings out simmering tensions in their family dynamics, from the father’s moral rectitude to the business ambition of two sons and the withdrawal of their siblings.

Four friends from Calcutta who have very different personalities make a holiday excursion into the country, to a tiny village in the state of Bihar where they set themselves up in a bungalow. A series of minor events, all connected to their respective reactions to their new environment, reveals their characters more deeply.

A film inspired by the life of Subir Banirjee who played the boy Apu in "Pather Panchali", the first of the Apu Trilogy. and did not make another film. His life has some uncanny resemblances to Apu's adulthood.

An older woman's unique friendship with a young boy inspires her to examine the strained relationship she shares with her married son.