Silpi (or Shilpi), 1956
Director: Agragami (a group of Bengali film directors who directed films as a team)
Music Director: Robin Chatterjee
Lyrics:  Pranab Roy
Playback: Sandhya Mukherjee, Gayatri Basu, Dhananjoy Bhattacharya 
Cast: Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen, Sikharani Bag, Kali Bannerjee, Molina Devi, Kamal Mitra, Pahadi Sanyal, Sova Sen

English translation included.

A poor village boy with artistic talents is brought to the big city to have a better chance in life. He becomes a member of the household of a wealthy man who also has a daughter about the same age as the boy. The two become fast friends after his artistic talents are discovered, and she becomes his muse. They grow up to be Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. They fall in love but the father has no intention of allowing the young man (Dhiman) to marry his daughter (Anjana) and arranges her wedding to the son of an old friend of his. The story goes downhill from there and eventually ends in tragedy. The film helped cement Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen as the greatest romantic couple in Bengali film history.

While watching you might notice something odd about the video. It's called 'crushed black levels' (you can look it up) and the morons that prepared the copy I used as a source are entirely responsible for it. Dark greys are moved down into black and the blacks are sent even further down. The result is there is no dark grey at all. Black clothes have no folds or wrinkles that would otherwise be easily seen from the light reflecting off of them at different angles. Black hair on heads look like solid black helmets, with no variations in the color you might ordinarily see from light bouncing off. And there's no way at all to fix it. You can shift the black levels higher into dark grey (as I've done to a degree) but then you have solid masses of dark grey. it's most obvious in dark and night scenes where you see two tones, almost; the solid dark grey and the very light grey/white color. This is only done by the inexperienced who don't know any better, and by the experienced who do know better but just don't care. It's a shame, as this is a fine film.

There's something like 20 minutes missing from the film, as compared to the original release, including one of the four songs.


Songs and Singer:

Tumi Je Amar...Sandhya Mukherjee


Rum Jhum Rum Jhum...Gayatri Basu

Nupurer Gunjane...Sandhya Mukherjee

Bondhure Tumi Bihane...Dhananjoy Bhattacharya