Tagore Stories on Film

[perkizitore]

Can we buy this anywhere online?

[kekid]

The National Committee for Commemoration of 150th Birth Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (Government of India), in association with National Film Development Corporation has issued a 6-DVD set of Tagore stories on film. All films have digitally restored audio and video from best available sources. Films include "Three Daughters" and "Home and the World" by Satyajit Ray, "Khudito Pashan (Hungry Stones)" by Tapan Sinha, "Kabuliwala" by Hemen Gupta and "Char Adhyay (Four Chapters)" by Kumar Shahani. It also contains a 52 minute dramatized documentary on Tagore by Satyajit Ray (made in 1961). Lastly, it contains Natir Puja, a 20 minute silent film (with commentary in English) in making of which Tagore was directly involved.

Having spot-checked the two Ray films I can say that these are the best available DVD versions of those two films. The claim "digitally restored from best available sources" seems to be justified. All works have English subtitles.

The box set is sold for Rs 399 MRP. That would be less than $10 for the entire set. This has to be the bargain of the year. Clearly the entire project was a labor of love on part of somebody.

I picked up a copy during my recent visit of Mumbai. Rhythm House in Mumbai stocked numerous copies. I am not sure if they sell it online. If you like Tagore, or Satyajit Ray, or Tapan Sinha, the set is self-recommending.

[kekid]

Can we buy this anywhere online?

Try this. I have bought many CD's and DVDs from this retail store, but never bought anything online. However, it is a reputable store, and I think online purchase would be safe.

[MichaelB]

Thanks for the tip-off - I've just placed an order. I'd pay that price for the uncut Three Daughters on its own, never mind everything else!

Note that the automatic e-shopping software can't handle orders from outside India. They'll ship internationally, but negotiations over postage method and rates are apparently done via email. I'm just waiting for them to reply now.

[L.A.]

I'm definitely getting this!

[John Edmond]

Let us know how much the international shipping is/if there are any problems with the negotiations.

[MichaelB]

Update - they got back to me very quickly, proposing three delivery options ranging in price from 627 to 1310 rupees (this is to the UK, though I daresay other international destinations will be similar).

For some reason courier delivery was the middle-price option (835 rupees) despite being the fastest and potentially most secure (it's trackable throughout), so I went for that. They claim it'll take four to five days, so even allowing for the weekend I should have it by this time next week. (The cheapest option takes 10-20 days).

They then sent me a PayPal link in US dollars, and I was charged $29.37, or £18.25, which is an absolute bargain even if two-thirds of that went on delivery. I can definitely see a Sight & Sound review resulting from this if my editor's up for it, and I can't see why he wouldn't be.

[John Edmond]

Thanks for that, look forward to seeing the review. And $5 a pop is still a ridiculous bargain.

Anybody feel like identifying other catches from Rhythm House? Just in case I feel like making it more of a bargain.

[perkizitore]

I got this for 10 quid delivered using Paypal from this shop.

[MichaelB]

Cheapskate.

[perkizitore]

I am a student, i cannot afford to burn my cash.

[MichaelB]

You're a student with an Oppo Blu-ray player, so I'm guessing the cash has already been burned.

[knives]

Is there something wrong with the store he was using? If not I don't see what there is to be angry about.

[perkizitore]

Nope

[zedz]

I got this for 10 quid delivered using Paypal from this shop.

Sold! Unless the discs are pressed on sandpaper, this should be the second greatest bargain I've ever snagged.

[perkizitore]

Bear in mind I haven't received a shipping confirmation yet, but everything on my Paypal receipt seems perfectly legitimate.

[knives]

Cool, maybe next month though. List projects have sucked me dry.

[MichaelB]

Is there something wrong with the store he was using? If not I don't see what there is to be angry about.

No anger whatsoever, just gentle joshing. At the risk of sounding like Groucho saying "Well that's all right, there's no ink in the pen anyhow", there's every possibility that I can claim this on expenses in any case.

Zedz, what was your greatest bargain? I'm racking my brains trying to think of mine - possibly the complete Norman McLaren box for an unbelievable and very possibly mispriced £9.99 including delivery from an Amazon Marketplace seller (brand new, shrinkwrapped). But it went through without a murmur, so I bought another copy for a friend's birthday.

[zedz]

My greatest bargain, sure to remain unbeaten and almost too obscene to mention, was Ford at Fox for Free.

I'd pre-ordered the set from Barnes and Noble at an unholy discount, stacking the pre-order discount with the member's discount (back when they actually offered one!) and a 20% off one item voucher (back when these things could be stacked and used for pre-orders). Like many, I received my set with a number of scuffed discs (all turned out to be playable, ultimately), so I complained and they immediately refunded me the entire cost including shipping. So Barnes and Noble's customer service hasn't always been execrable!

[knives]

I envy you.

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, I got the Ultimate Astaire and Rogers set off of ebay for $3.98 plus S&H- but it was a pricing mistake, and they begged me to send it back, so I did. Kind of wish I hadn't, now.

[MichaelB]

It's just turned up - two days earlier than my "this time next week" prediction. Superb packaging, too - two thick layers of bubble wrap around the DVD box itself, enclosed in an even thicker corrugated cardboard package sealed tight with brown tape. So I'd definitely use Rhythm House again.

The presentation of the DVD package is equally impressive - it's a fold-out six-tray Digipack covered with sepia-tinted photographs of Tagore, all enclosed in a very thick cardboard sleeve - thicker even than the BFI's (original) Land of Promise and GPO sets. An eight-page booklet is enclosed, entirely in English (in fact, English is the only language visible anywhere on the packaging aside from the distributor logo).

As for the discs, I sampled the two that I've already seen on UK labels. Three Daughters is indeed the full version of what's better known in English-speaking countries as Two Daughters, the third short story having been completely excised for international distribution. So it's already a clear first choice over the Mr Bongo disc - but even if the running times of both were identical, the transfer quality absolutely blows it away.

I was a little apprehensive at first: the censor card at the start was blurred, and the actual film titles looked unnaturally frozen (presumably a by-product of the restoration: I'm guessing they scanned the best frames but didn't go the extra mile of returning a filmic "feel" in the form of grain and slight judder as the BFI did to The Great White Silence). But initial misgivings rapidly evaporated as the film itself started, revealing what is hands down the best black-and-white Satyajit Ray transfer I've ever seen, very much including Criterion's The Music Room.

That disc, though obviously expensively cleaned-up, still had lots of presumably unremovable damage, whereas Three Daughters looks damn near pristine - or at least the first 15 minutes does: I'll let you know if the quality dips later on. The Mr Bongo disc had burned-in subtitles, whereas these are optional, and seem perfectly idiomatic.

With The Home and the World, I was able to play the Artificial Eye disc side by side, and my initial assessment is that it's exactly the same transfer, right down to the subtitle translation (or at least the same source: Artificial Eye is PAL whereas all these discs are NTSC). Which is fine: that was by far the best disc in that Artificial Eye box, and was already my benchmark for the best colour Ray transfer.

So it's all looking very promising indeed - and I think I've already got my money's worth with those two discs, never mind the other four.

[kekid]

This wonderful edition would have been even better if it included Ray's Charulata. I am not sure why they decided not to include it. It is clearly one of the great renditions of a Tagore story on film.

[knives]

You can get it in one of the AE sets if you are so concerned.

[MichaelB]

This wonderful edition would have been even better if it included Ray's Charulata. I am not sure why they decided not to include it. It is clearly one of the great renditions of a Tagore story on film.

The first page of the booklet says that there have been nearly a hundred Tagore adaptations - in fact, it goes on to mention a lot of them by name, very much including Charulata. It's not pretending to be any kind of definitive survey - and I'd much rather have stuff that's otherwise unavailable, like the complete Three Daughters.

In fact, I'd have preferred it if they'd dropped The Home and the World in favour of something rarer, but it's obviously one of the most important Tagore adaptations and they had a decent transfer, so I can see why they went for it.