The Bengali Night | |
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Directed by | Nicolas Klotz |
Written by |
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Based on |
Bengal Nights by Mircea Eliade |
Starring | |
Music by | Michel Portal, Brij Narayan |
Release date |
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Running time | 115 minutes |
Countries |
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Language | French |
The Bengali Night ( French: la Nuit Bengali) is a 1988 semi-autobiographical film based upon the Mircea Eliade 1933 Romanian novel, Bengal Nights, directed by Nicolas Klotz and starring Hugh Grant, Soumitra Chatterjee, Supriya Pathak and Shabana Azmi.
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.
Production of the film occurred about a decade after Maitreyi Devi (the inspiration for the character Gayatri) published her version of the story Na Hanyate, (originally published in Bengali). She also extracted a promise from Eliade that his version would never be published in English as long as she is alive. According to Ginu Kamani in "A Terrible Hurt:The Untold Story behind the Publishing of Maitreyi Devi," Maitreyi witnessed the making of the film "The Bengali Night," which was shot in Calcutta from 1987-88 (Eliade had died that year). Her protests culminated "in court cases against the film for insulting Hinduism and for being pornographic." [1] The film was only shown once in India at a film festival in 1989 to mixed reviews and was never released in theaters in the U.S. [1] Kamani also notes:
The film was mostly shot at the huge Zamindar Mansion - "Gaine Bari" of the village of Dhanyakuria and some parts at Indrapuri Studios, Kolkata.