Bimal Roy’s timeless displacement saga screened at Venice: As a new 4K restoration of Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin is screened at Venice Film Festival, Amborish Roychoudhury looks back at the film and what it stood for.  

Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin (1953), a landmark in Indian cinema, screened in its 4K restored version at the Venice Film Festival. A masterpiece blending realism with deep humanism, the film reflects on rural displacement, urban migration, and social inequality in India. Featuring stellar performances by Balraj Sahni and Nirupa Roy, editing by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, music by Salil Chowdhury, and cinematography by Kamal Bose, the film resonates with the struggles of farmers and labourers even today. The restoration, spearheaded by Film Heritage Foundation and Criterion Collection, not only preserves cinematic legacy but also reinforces why Do Bigha Zamin continues to inspire generations of filmmakers and audiences worldwide.

Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin returns in a 4K restored screening at Venice Film Festival, reminding us of its humanist power, cultural specificity, and timeless relevance in today’s world.  

There’s a moment in Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin when, as Balraj Sahni’s hapless farmer leaves his village for the city in search of work, a co-passenger in the train retorts: “Ab humein shahar chhod kar gaon mein basna chahiye. Go back to villages!” Both Sahni’s character and we, the audience, turn to the interlocutor in disbelief.

Here was Shambhu Mahato (Sahni), utterly exasperated and out of options, abandoning the tranquillity and warmth of his rural home for the urban promise of a better income, and this city-dweller says the exact opposite? Shambhu was as unaware of Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘back to the village’ slogan as the elite passenger, a stand-in for the audience, was about the peasant’s predicament. Bimal Roy peppers the film with several such moments of rich irony. One of its dramatic high points is a scene where the morally upright Shambhu gives in to a moment of greed (driven by desperation, but greed nonetheless), right before disaster strikes. As more and more money is offered to him if he pulls his rickshaw faster, Shambhu complies as inevitably, a wheel comes off and the rickshaw — along with his dreams — comes crashing down.

Humanism, Craft, and the Venice Restoration

Bimal Roy’s deep humanism, a hallmark of his filmmaking, seems, arguably, more evident in Do Bigha Zamin than most of his other work. The editing (Hrishikesh Mukherjee) and camera work (Kamal Bose) ebb and flow with the rhythm of the film. Or maybe it is the other way around. The poignancy of Do Bigha Zamin is accentuated by the stark visuals, the dramatic performances and an economical, minimalist score (Salil Chowdhury). One can, then, only wonder at the richly profound experience of the 4K restored screening organised at the Venice Film Festival this week.

Ever since it was first released over seventy years ago, this is the first time the film will be seen in the form that it was originally made. It is part of an initiative led by the Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) and Criterion Collection/Janus Films, both admirable institutions dedicated to preserving and celebrating the cinematic legacy of the world. The screening brought together, besides FHF Director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Venice Film Festival Director Alberto Barbera, President of International Jury Alexander Payne, and Criterion Technical Director Lee Kline, three generations of the Bimal Roy family. Twenty-one members of the family, which included Roy’s daughters Rinki Bhattacharya, Aparajita Sinha-Roy, his son Joy Roy, and a whole host of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

From Tagore to Salil Chowdhury: Seeds of a Story

The germ of Do Bigha Zamin, its central conceit — the eternal tale of a farmer being oppressed by a cruel zamindar — was originally conceived by a zamindar. Around 1890, a 30 year-old Rabindranath was tasked with overseeing the Tagore family estate in East Bengal. Housed at the iconic Patisar Kuthibari (bungalow), he was well-respected among his “subjects” for implementing welfare measures like his models of rural-centric development, and later investing his entire Nobel Prize corpus of one lakh rupees to set up a Krishi Bank. But he was a feudal lord nevertheless, the very embodiment of Marx’s much-loathed bourgeoisie. Whether it was the guilt and burden of that role or some other intellectual imperative that made Tagore compose Dui Bigha Jomi, is for experts to lose sleep over. The poem speaks of a farmer, Upen, being steamrolled under the hubris and greed of the zamindar who wants his two acres of land. The zamindar grabs it through legal shenanigans and Upen is thrown out, roaming the country as an ascetic. Years later, he comes back and, longingly, picks up two mangoes from the orchard on the land that was once his. The poem ends with Upen being branded a thief, as he tearfully contemplates the deep injustice and irony.

50 years later, another 30 year-old writer-composer named Salil Chowdhury wrote a short story called “Rickshawala”, about Shashi, whose arable two acres are being eyed by landlord Bhujanga Naskar. He wants to flood the entire area to start fish-farming and Shashi’s land comes in the way. When Sashi politely refuses to sell, Bhujanga brings up his loan, which he claims has now grown astronomically. The farmer is taken to court, and asked to repay within three months. The only recourse for Sashi was to go to Calcutta with his son Shambhu in tow, and ply a rickshaw for a living. Shambhu starts shoe shining to contribute to the family income.  

Parallel Realities and Enduring Relevance

Salil, an avowed communist and devoted IPTA member, discussed the story of Rickshawala with his comrade Ritwik Ghatak and the idea of a film was hatched. Salil says in an interview given to Suman Chattopadhyay (now Kabir Suman) that it was Hrishikesh Mukherjee who took him to meet Bimal Roy. By this time, Roy was already a revered figure in the Bengali film industry. His film Udayer Pathey was regarded as a masterpiece and young prospective filmmakers, which included the likes of Satyajit Ray, were inspired by it. Salil narrated the story and Bimal Roy, known for his reticence, listened patiently. Sometime later, on the day of his wedding, Salil received a telegram from Bimal Roy, asking him to come to Bombay. Roy was planning to make a film on the story, under his own banner.

Bimal Roy, with his trusted coterie of lieutenants, had moved to Bombay sometime back. In 1952, he had the occasion to attend the first International Film Festival of India (IFFI) held in Bombay. This is where he saw Vittorio DeSica’s Ladri di Biciclette/Bicycle Thieves and the neorealist aesthetic is supposed to have provided the impetus to make a film like Do Bigha Zamin which shares several parallels with the Italian film in interesting ways. Both had the journey of a father and son at the core.

Even the iconography of Antonio and his son Bruno sitting on the pavement in despair finds echoes when Shambhu and Kanhaiya lose their belongings after spending the night at the maidan. Antonio, barely able to make ends meet, puts up the glamorous poster of Rita Hayworth (ostensibly from Gilda though this poster only states her name) when his bicycle gets stolen. In Do Bigha Zamin, Kanhaiya, Laloo Ustad (Jagdeep in a brilliant turn as shoeshine boy with a silver tongue) and the other shoeshine boys sit around with their tattered rags, ogle at the image of a semi-clad Nargis from Awara (1951) affixed on man’s “bussirt”, as they call it. Both films have sons seeing their fathers at their weakest: Antonio trying to steal a bicycle, and Shambhu lying injured on the bed, unable to do a thing. Both Antonio’s bicycle and Shambhu’s rickshaw end up being symbols of degradation and moral decay.

But Do Bigha Zamin transcends these narrative parallels through cultural specificity. As pointed out earlier, Bimal Roy was a humanist above all else. While realism to Desica was an idiom to pursue, a point to prove — to Bimal Roy it was simply a means to an end. He wanted to tell a story of displacement, of urban migration and what the pace of modernization was doing to us as a society, even back then. Every tool in Roy’s arsenal was in the service of telling this tale. As Shambhu moves from his village to the city, we see faster edits and starker visuals.

Little Kanhaiya’s loss of innocence is heightened as he rummages through a purse he just stole under the flush tank of a public toilet. Roy’s masterful employment of Salil Chowdhury’s haunting tunes lends the film an emotional register that Italian neorealism could never match.  

The film boasts of riveting performances from a cast at the cusp of greatness. Balraj Sahni, a suave, western educated man, plays Shambhu with startling authenticity. Nirupa Roy, who was to embark on a lifetime playing mother on screen, and had mostly done mythological dramas till then, shines as an able compatriot. A very young Mehmood is seen in a bit role as a vendor, and Jagdeep shines as a shoeshine boy with a lot of spunk, often delivering witticism much beyond his age. Nazir Hussain plays an elder, a stock character he was going to ace in the years to come.

But one of the most notable performances is of Rajlakshmi Devi, a known name in Bengal, as the landlady who owns the tenement that shelters Shambhu and Kanhaiya from an otherwise unkind city. Even Bimal Roy’s trusted partners in crime, who usually remain behind the scene, make appearances: dialogue director Paul Mahendra as the lawyer who grills Shambhu in the court scene, production executive Asit Sen as a sweet shop vendor, and screenwriter Nabendu Ghosh in a stunning comic bit as a tenant who keeps running away from the landlady as he is behind on rent. It is a teamwork as cinema always is, but Bimal Roy excels in holding it all together, keeping it from falling apart.

Finally, it is a Bimal Roy film and there is light at the end of the tunnel. Even as Shambhu picks up a handful of earth from his land, now a construction site, and is chased away by the guard, he walks with his family towards a brighter horizon, and you know that there is still hope. There has to be.