The old Minerva theatre, converted into the Chaplin: this was where a crowd of invitees gathered on the evening of January 9. They had come, of course, to see a film. But, first, the felicitations, the speeches, the presentation of bouquets to the film directors and actresses and singers of the past, seated on the dais, some looming upright in their chairs, another frail but perky, another's hair rejuvenated with dye. Each had some reminiscence to relate about Bimal Roy, whose film, Udayer Pathe, made in 1944, would be shown later. About one thing each was certain; all had this memory in common: that Bimal Roy was a quiet man. He did not speak much; he kept to himself. I look at his photographs again in the light of these remarks; he is smoking a cigarette, or smiling faintly at the camera. Here is a quiet man, I think, with a large family, working in a profession that requires constant interaction with several people. I am struck by how quietude can express itself through a lifetime of work. Later, the dais was cleared, and the half-forgotten, briefly celebrated figures, cradling their bouquets, scattered into the hall. As the lights dimmed, I saw an outline, bouquet in hand, receding towards the seats at the back; then a familiar white light flooded the screen. The hall itself was filled with a curious mix of people. I myself had distributed cards amongst my relatives; my wife had distributed some amongst hers. Then there were the many people I didn't know, probably with members of their family; Bimal Roy 'buffs'; the ageing actors and singers of yore (some of them had gone home). Then there were the younger people, including a friend from Oxford who'd leave Calcutta in two days, and his brother and sister-in-law. Behind me sat a few members of my wife's family; my two uncles, who had seen Udayer Pathe in their youth, sat elsewhere, at the back. It was like being in a limbo, sitting in that dark hall - somewhere between familial memory and private expectation, between an improvised public event and the accumulated bittersweetnesses of our lives. Within the first ten minutes, it was evident we were watching an extraordinary film. What must it be like for a contemporary audience to see a classic for the first time? Of course, not all classics are recognized for what they are when they are first shown; some years before Udayer Pathe, Jean Renoir's La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game), perhaps the most influential film, was savaged by critics in France. That evening on January 9, there were gasps of surprise and appreciation in the dark, as the audience praised the film, even as it progressed, noisily amongst themselves. The chatter was not the usual commentary of people who have watched a hit film twenty four times, and know all the lines by heart; these rather intrusive exclamations came from an audience that had been taken unawares. That is why watching Udayer Pathe that evening was a deeply contemporary experience, rather than a retrospective one. Of course, Udayer Pathe is a landmark film in the history of Indian cinema; but its time, we sensed, had finally come. After it was over, we stood in the foyer and in the dimly lit street, talking, as if we had seen a great film on its opening night. The story is simple, even symmetrical, enough. On the one hand, we have a rich young man, played by Devi Mukherjee, and his beautiful, accomplished sister (the actress is Binota Ray). On the other hand, we have a sort of inverse mirror image of these two: the poor, idealistic writer, Radhamohan Bhattacharya, and his sister, played by Rekha Mallik. Binota Roy and Rekha Mallik are friends, and the latter, upon her friend's insistence, visits her mansion to attend an upper-class social gathering. Here, she is insulted, and wrongly accused of theft by a family member. Although Binota Ray demonstrates the accusation is a false one, Rekha Mallik returns, humiliated, to her brother. The brother, Radhamohan Bhattacharya, is unemployed, and, as it happens, appears for an interview the following day; his interviewer is Devi Mukherjee. The interview is a strange, if a hugely entertaining, one: the idealist writer answers the interviewer's questions in epigrams excoriating the rich, while the discomfited Mukherjee, an admirer of Radhamohan's journalism, gently upbraids him for being too serious. So begins a banter between the two that lasts for about three quarters of the film, in which Radhamohan's semi-serious pronouncements on the urban rich (which so delighted the audience that night; the brilliant screenplay is Roy's) is constantly subverted or deflected by Devi Mukherjee, like two contradictory voices in an interior monologue. This film does many things excellently, too many to mention in this short article; among them is a dramatization of the self's inward struggle within the parameters of possibilities thrown up by urban life. The villain, Devi Mukherjee, and the hero, Radhamohan Bhattacharya - although they do not look exactly alike - mirror each other remarkably in their broader physical dimensions: both young, tall, moustached, and regular-featured. So, while the narrative keeps hammering home to us the irreconcilable difference between rich and poor, powerful and powerless, the camera, by presenting us with the illusion of the twinned protagonist and adversary, seems to show us the single chameleon self from different angles. Radhamohan gets the job; he begins to write Devi Mukherjee's pieces - fine speeches, for which the latter is praised. The employer invites the employee to his mansion, and introduces him to his magnificent library; here, on his frequent interludes, Radhamohan runs into his employer's sister again and again. The first meetings are prickly; Radhamohan has not quite forgiven Binota Ray for that early humiliation involving his sister; and Binota Ray cannot quite abide Radhamohan's spiritual superciliousness, his 'plain living, high thinking' ways. Yet this is precisely what draws her to Radhamohan; and they fall in love, even before they've said so in so many words. The film, in all its themes, is structured around polarities and attraction; like a composition in European music, it contains within it both counterpoint and harmony. Indeed, the film itself is orchestrated and paced like a piece of music, while, interestingly, there is hardly any background score. In the course of their conversations, Radhamohan tells Devi Mukherjee he has written a novel; he gives him the manuscript to read. But it is Binota who discovers it; she reads it and is much moved; meanwhile, Mukherjee has promised to publish it. Publish it he does, but in his own name. The book is a great success. Radhamohan relinquishes his job; he takes up the cause of the workers in his former employer's factory; in this, he is joined by Binota Ray. Mukherjee plots to have him silenced; and he divides the workers against each other. As Radhamohan decides to leave Calcutta permanently, Binota Ray rebels against her family and leaves home; she joins Radhamohan as he walks on the Grand Trunk Road from Calcutta to Asansol. I do not know if Guru Dutt saw Udayer Pathe, or Humrahi, its Hindi version, but, certainly, Roy's film presages Dutt's Pyaasa. Both films constitute key moments in Indian cinema; both films are exacerbating and unsettling meditations on the work of art in the marketplace, and the loss of identity of the creator. In Udayer Pathe, this loss of identity is enacted literally; Devi Mukherjee publishes Radhamohan's novel in his own name. Dutt takes this crucial conceit in Pyaasa, and makes it central to the work; the protagonist, a poet, is put into a madhouse, then presumed dead; his enemies publish his book of poems - which becomes a bestseller - and then celebrate his work 'posthumously'. In both films, the protagonists withdraw from the duplicity of the marketplace with a woman by their side; and the films culminate, alike, in a shot, taken from the back, of the man and the woman walking down a road into the distance. In the earlier film, that shot is a reminder, obviously, of the film's title and its dream - the road to a new dawn. In Pyaasa, the ending was inserted later as a compromise; but it may also be a reference to the same dream dreamt earlier. Certainly, Bimal Roy, the quiet man, might have used his silence to strategically withdraw from the marketplace he himself had to work in, and in which he had to place his creations; Dutt's withdrawal, as we know, was, eventually, radical and final. These questions and preoccupations continue to haunt us today. So do the characters, played so superlatively by the actors I have named. After Binota Ray reads Radhamohan's manuscript, she, upon being asked to comment on it, says (I don't recall the exact words): 'But tell me, is a character like this one plausible - an upper-class woman who is found late at night in a slum?' Radhamohan replies: 'My concern was not whether she was plausible or not. I wished the reader to ask, 'What if such a character should exist?'' It is a fair question, and the one legitimate question that a work of the imagination - a story, a play, a film - can raise: not, 'Might such characters exist?' but, 'What if such characters were to exist?' It is a question that, sitting in the hall that January evening, we found we were asking ourselves.