The book under review establishes how serious academic work can be produced even on subjects that were once considered unworthy of scholarly deliberations. Thanks to ‘Film Studies’ emerging as a discipline in recent decades, ‘popular melodrama’ in commercial cinema has also become a subject of substantial research. While contextualizing the Uttam-Suchitra and later Suchitra-Uttam phenomenon, Smita Banerjee takes the readers gently through the evolution of Bengali cinema in post-Partition Bengal, analysing the impact of this duo on the average Bengali psyche and seeking to explain the social and other factors that contributed to shaping their indelible images.

Of Abiding Interest: Suchitra-Uttam Phase in Bengali Cinema
Amitabha Bhattacharya
MODERNITIES AND THE POPULAR MELODRAMA: THE SUCHITRA-UTTAM YUG IN BENGALI CINEMA by By Smita Banerjee Orient BlackSwan,, 2023, 290 pp., INR 1,045.00
July 2024, volume 48, No 7