Bari Theke Paliye

1958 film

24 July 1959 (1959-07-24)

Running time

117 min.LanguageBengali

Bari Theke Paliye (English-language title: Runaway or The Runaway) is a 1959 coming-of-age Bengali film by director Ritwik Ghatak.^[2]^[3]

This film was directed by alternative Indian filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak in Kolkata (then Calcutta) based on the same name novel by Shibram Chakraborty.^[4] The plot is about a misbehaving boy who runs away from his village and goes to Calcutta.^[5]^[6]

Plot

Kanchan, all of eight years old is always up to pranks and mischief in his village home. He finds his father a cruel demon who keeps his mother oppressed and imprisoned. In his dreams, the big city is El Dorado, i.e. Kolkata till he reaches there. But the glimpses of reality are harsher and the victims he meets give him a different view of the city. He gets to know the dialectics of life in the city of joy, love and hate, honesty and dishonesty. He meets the small and loving girl Mini and her family, folk singers, street hawkers, footpath magicians, beggars, thieves. He himself has to struggle for survival and experiences life as it is, only to go back to his village home. This time as a mature person he realises that his father is no demon after all, but yet another victim struggling with poverty and still a loving father.^[7]

Cast

Parambhattarak Lahiri as Kanchan
Gyanesh Mukherjee as Kanchan's father
Kali Banerjee as Haridas
Krishnajaya Gupta as Mini
Nripati Chattopadhyay
Jahor Roy
Bijon Bhattacharya
Keshto Mukherjee as Magician
Padma Devi as Kanchan's mother
Niti Pandit as Mini's mother^[8]
Mani Shrimai
Satindra Bhattacharya
Shailen Ghosh

Soundtrack

Ore–ore Nore–nore, Shonkure... Bulbul Bhaja...
O, Ami Onek, Ghuriya... Koilkatta
Mago Amay Deko Na Ko Aar

References

^ "Bari Theke Paliye". Retrieved 19 April 2024.
^ Banerjee, Haimanti (1985). Ritwik Kumar Ghatak : a monograph. Pune: National Film Archive of India. p. 8. ISBN 8120100018.
^ Schoonover, edited by Rosalind Galt, Karl (2010). Global art cinema : new theories and histories. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 491–492. ISBN 978-0195385625. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ Ayan Ray, Bari Theke Paliye {The Runaway} (1959), retrieved 19 April 2024
^ "The Runaway". Film at Lincoln Center. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
^ "Bilingual E-archive Digital Platform for Bengal's Cinema". Bengal Film Archive. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
^ Chandrima S. Bhattacharya. "There is nowhere left to run". Retrieved 19 April 2024.
^ Das, Soumitra (27 July 2021). "Finding Ritwik Ghatak's boy hero". BusinessLine. Retrieved 19 April 2024.