First Films
Madhabi first made a major impact with Mrinal Sen's Baishey Shravan (Wedding Day) in 1960. The film is set in a Bengal village just before and during the horrific famine of 1943 in Bengal that saw over 5 million die. Madhabi plays a 16 year old girl who marries a middle-aged man. Initially she brightens up his life but then World War II and the Bengal Famine hits them. The couple's marriage disintegrates. In the end the wife hangs herself.
Her next major film was Ritwik Ghatak's Subarnarekha (The Golden Thread ) made in 1962 but released in 1965 - the last in a trilogy examining the socio-economic implications of partition, the other two being Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star) (1960) and Komal Gandhar (E-Flat) (1961). It is also perhaps Ritwik Ghatak's most complex film. In the film Ghatak depicts the great economic and socio-political crisis eating up the very entrails of the existence of Bengal from 1948 to 1962 ; how the crisis has first and foremost left one bereft of one's conscience, one's moral sense. Madhabi gives a wonderful performance as Sita, the younger sister of Ishwar (Abhi Bhattacharya) who kills herself when as a prostitute waiting for her first customer, she finds out the customer is none other than her estranged brother.
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