35mm Restored Print!
Introduction/Dilip Basu
Dilip Basu is research professor of humanities and founding director of the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Collection at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The great Bollywood superstar Waheeda Rehman stars in one of Ray’s most atypical films, a commercially successful noir melodrama filled with taxi drivers, drug smugglers, and prostitutes that became the director’s most popular film in his native Bengal. Soumitra Chatterjee, a long way from his performances in The World of Apu, plays a proud, down-on-his-luck Rajput taxi driver who starts working for a corrupt merchant known for opium trafficking, while Rehman costars as a prostitute who soon finds herself in peril. Surprisingly nuanced for a commercial melodrama, surprisingly (and entertainingly) pulpy for a Ray film, The Expedition won the National Award in India in 1962.
• Written by Ray, based on a novel by Tarashankar Banerji. Photographed by Soumendu Roy. With Soumitra Chatterjee, Waheeda Rehman, Ruma Guha Thakurta, Gyanesh Mukherjee. (150 mins, In Bengali with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, Restored by the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project at the Academy Film Archive, From Academy Film Archive, permission Dilip Basu)
35mm Restored Print!
Introduction/Dilip Basu
Dilip Basu is research professor of humanities and founding director of the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Collection at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The great Bollywood superstar Waheeda Rehman stars in one of Ray’s most atypical films, a commercially successful noir melodrama filled with taxi drivers, drug smugglers, and prostitutes that became the director’s most popular film in his native Bengal. Soumitra Chatterjee, a long way from his performances in The World of Apu, plays a proud, down-on-his-luck Rajput taxi driver who starts working for a corrupt merchant known for opium trafficking, while Rehman costars as a prostitute who soon finds herself in peril. Surprisingly nuanced for a commercial melodrama, surprisingly (and entertainingly) pulpy for a Ray film, The Expedition won the National Award in India in 1962.
• Written by Ray, based on a novel by Tarashankar Banerji. Photographed by Soumendu Roy. With Soumitra Chatterjee, Waheeda Rehman, Ruma Guha Thakurta, Gyanesh Mukherjee. (150 mins, In Bengali with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, Restored by the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project at the Academy Film Archive, From Academy Film Archive, permission Dilip Basu)
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