Bengali movies that broke our hearts with their tragic endings

Not every story has a happy ending. While most of the Tollywood movies are pure entertainers with happy endings, there have been a number of movies with tragic endings that have become cult favourites with film buffs. Here we offer you an elite list of Bengali movies with tragic endings that will leave you in tears and a heavy heart.

This romantic tragedy directed by Ranjan Ghosh portrayed Abir Chatterjee as Abhijit, a mathematics professor who falls in love with Debjani (Raima Sen) a cardiologist at the peak of her career. The twisted narrative leads one thing to the other and Abhijit's seemingly perfect life slowly crumbles around him when his obsessive love for his wife Debjani swells over just like a hungry tide on the sands of time and it turns out both fatal and transient.

Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s ‘Antaheen’ deals with an endless wait beautifully wrapped in an almost poetic film narrative. In the movie, Radhika Apte was cast as Brinda, a journalist who comes close to an IPS officer Abhik Chowdhury but doesn’t know his actual identity. She manages to take an interview with him, but she walks a long way to ultimately recognize the IPS officer as her love. Brinda requests Abhik to meet, sadly the meeting never takes place.

Srijit Mukherji's second directorial 'Baishe Srabon' revolves around a fascinating story between a serial killer, an ex-cop played by Prosenjit Chatterjee, and a young police officer played by Parambrata Chatterjee. The twisting narrative weaves around a recent series of killings in Kolkata. Prosenjit as Probir Roy Chowdhury stays in his ancestral house, guzzles whisky, smokes cigars and continues his killing spree silently. In the end, he commits suicide at his same sprawling house. Everybody felt the pain of a once-renowned, high-ranking Kolkata police officer who was banished from the force for his insanity while torturing prisoners in custody.

The iconic bike sequence of this Bengali classic turned out to be a template for many Bengali romantic tracks. Came to the celluloid during the height of the Uttam-Suchitra wave, ‘Saptapadi’ is all about the doomed romance of a Bengali Brahmin boy and a Christian girl. Krishnendu and Rina’s heart-wrenching sad story, the outstanding camera work, brilliant script, heart-touching music and above all Uttam Kumar’s one of the career-best display turned ‘Saptapadi’ into an almost near perfect movie experience for cine-lovers.

‘Dweep Jwele Jai’ is touted to be one of the finest Bengali films from the ’50s and an iconic entry in Suchitra Sen’s acting career. Radha (Suchitra Sen), a nurse at a psychiatric clinic in Kolkata, falls for a patient Tapas (Basanta Choudhury) during an experimental psychiatric treatment; she eventually gets drawn into Tapas’ case only to watch history tragically repeat itself as she suffers another heartbreak and she herself ends up becoming a psychiatric patient.

Tarun Majumder adapts the famous Bibhutibhushan story into a Bengali classic ornamented mellifluously with Tagore’s songs. The titular character, played by Rituparna Chakraborty, after her marriage becomes a village’s most prized possession. At the climax, even after her tragic demise while giving birth to her daughter, she looks like an intangible entity flowing along with the breeze spreading soul-stirring melody among the villagers. She literally stands up to the meaning of her name: Alo. She manages to shower the village in a divine light bordering on a halo. But her death remains the most tragic incident in the film.

This film was written and directed by one of Bengali cinema’s iconic figures Ritwik Ghatak and is based on a popular novel by Shaktipada Rajguru. This Bengali classic is based on the infamous 1947 partition of Bengal and how the refugees coped with their tragic fate. ‘Dada Ami Bachte Chai’ (Brother I Want To Live) could still send chills down anyone’s spine, couldn’t it? The way a selfless young woman (Supriya Choudhury) sacrificed her own happiness for her unappreciative family in the film, is one of the most heartbreaking sagas of Tollywood.

This Mrinal Sen directorial is based on the backdrop of India during the 1930s, depicting the prevalent bourgeois attitude. The socio-economic division and a touch of loneliness become the main theme of the film. The constant use of three-point lighting, music and songs brought out the melancholy feel perfectly. To interpret the title, it says despite everyone being under the same sky, people differ in their outlook towards life and other classes. Kali Bannerjee played a poor Chinese hawker Wang Lu who sells China silk in the streets of Calcutta.