On Film – Shakespeare in Bengal

Many of Kolkata’s premier directors have adapted Shakespeare’s plays into musicals and dramas enjoyed by local and international audiences alike.

Movie Posters

Figure 1 front

DVD jacket of Srijit Mukherjee’s film Zulfiqar (2016), an adaptation combining Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra set in gangland Kolkata.

Figure 2

DVD jacket of Ajoy Kar’s film Saptapadi (1961), based on a novel by Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay. The jacket illustrates an iconic scene where the leading characters, Rina Brown and Krishnendu (acted by the legendary Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar), enact the last scene of Othello. 

Figure 3

Poster for Aparna Sen’s film Arshinagar (2015), an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. The feud between the Capulets and Montagues is rendered as a conflict between two families of different religions, the Hindu Mitras and the Muslim Khans.

Figure 4

Poster for Rituparno Ghosh’s national award-winning English film The Last Lear (2007), with the legendary Amitabh Bachchan as Lear. 

Figure 5

Poster for Anjan Dutt’s film Hemanta (2016), an adaptation of Hamlet with Parambrata Chatterjee in the title role.

Movie Stills

Figure 3a

Ranajit (Dev) and Julekha (Rittika Sen) in a still from Aparna Sen’s Arshinagar (2015), an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.

Figure 6

Othello (Utpal Dutt) and Desdemona (Aparna Sen) in an English film version of Othello from the early 1970s. The still from this little-documented film has been identified by Aparna Sen.

Figure 24

Rabi Ghosh and Basabi Nandi in a still from the Bengali film Shrimati Bhayankari (‘Mistress Fearsome’, 1980), based on The Taming of the Shrew.