Nayak (The Hero)

Director: Satyajit Ray

1966 / 117min / 35mm

Uttam Kumar, one of the leading matinee idols of Bengali cinema in his day, plays a film star who, depressed by the middling box office of his latest film, decides to hop a train from Calcutta to Delhi, where he’s slated to receive a prestigious national award, en route baring his soul in a lengthy interview with a journalist played by Sharmila Tagore.

“Trains often spell escape for characters in Ray’s films; Pather Panchali’s image of children running through a field to chase a locomotive is one of his most poignant. Nayak reverses the situation somewhat. For fading movie star Arindam Mukherjee (played uncomfortably close to type by matinee idol Uttam Kumar), the train he boards to avoid a flurry of bad press ends up returning him, nightmarishly, to himself.” —Series curator Genevieve Yue

35mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. Restored by the Academy Film Archive with funding from The Film Foundation.

Part of Trains: Long Distance Passages