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Melodrama

The Cloud-Capped Star

Meghe Dhaka Tara

Year
1960
Length
127 minCriterion presentation Version sources ↓

A young refugee woman supports her family after Partition while each relative treats her sacrifice as a resource that will continue indefinitely.

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Country
India
Language
Bengali
BleakBeautiful Approachable · Moderate Melodrama
Original illustration for The Cloud-Capped Star: Torn blue-grey hills fill the upper two-thirds like overlapping wounded musical staves; beneath them a modest room's open window, folded sari cloth and a small working desk.

Image: Monocurator · source · Original Monocurator artwork

What to expect

Ghatak tears open domestic melodrama with abrupt sounds, broken compositions, music, and historical grief. Neeta’s labour belongs to one family, yet the film makes its extraction resonate with displacement across Bengal.

How to ease in

The emotion is intentionally intense. Follow who receives the benefit of Neeta’s work, and listen when ordinary sound suddenly becomes an impossible crack, lash, or echo.

Heads-up

A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes Partition displacement, economic exploitation, family cruelty, illness, infidelity, abandonment, and severe emotional distress.
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The family calls Neeta indispensable while building a future in which she has no room. I hear the soundtrack protest whenever gratitude becomes another way to demand more.

— Momo

Momo thinking about this film

Credits & versions

Version map

Criterion presentation 127 min 127 minutes is attached only to the named Criterion presentation. No unsupported cut, score, territory, frame rate, source element, or restoration detail is inferred. Source: The Criterion Collection — The Cloud-Capped Star Runtime reference · Checked 2026-08-21

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