Abhijan

Producer Bijoy Chatterjee planned to direct his friend Ray's adaptation of a novel by Tarashankar Banerjee himself, but got cold feet when shooting began, and left it to Ray. As a result, its story of taxi driver Soumitra Chatterjee (not ideally cast) making a new start in rural Bengal, but falling under the influence of a local opium runner, is not altogether characteristic Ray, tending as it does towards slightly rough-hewn melodrama. Even so, the gradual build-up of tension is expertly controlled, Bollywood star Waheeda Rehman is affecting as a village girl kidnapped into prostitution, and there's deft use of local landscape with the imposing Shyamnagar rocks a metaphor for the guilt carried by the protagonist as he becomes increasingly aware of his waywardness. Not major Ray, but effective and accessible enough to register his greatest success at the Bengali box office.