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Devdas (1935 film)

Devdas (Bengali/Hindi: देवदास) is a 1935 Indian bilingual film directed by P. C. (Pramathesh Chandra) Barua for the New Theatres studio of Calcutta, adapted from Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's 1917 Bengali novella of the same name. It was the first sound-film (talkie) adaptation of the novel, made simultaneously in Bengali and Hindi, and it became one of the landmarks of Indian cinema, fixing the doomed romantic hero as a template for Hindi film.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Source	Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's novella Devdas, published in 1917¹
Production	New Theatres Ltd, Calcutta; screenplay and direction by P. C. Barua¹
Lead roles	Barua played Devdas in the Bengali version; K. L. Saigal played him in the Hindi version, with Jamuna as Paro¹
Key crew	Cinematography Bimal Roy; music Timir Baran, Rai Chand Boral, and Pankaj Mullick; dialog and lyrics Kidar Sharma¹
Release	Bengali version released 30 March 1935 at Chitra Talkies; Hindi version usually dated 1935, some sources 1936³^•⁴
Survival	Indian prints of the Bengali version destroyed in a 1940 fire at New Theatres; a copy survived at the Bangladesh Film Archive and was acquired by the NFAI in 2015⁵^•²

Spoilers

Story and adaptation

The film follows the novella's tragic triangle: Devdas, the son of a zamindar (landlord), and Parvati, called Paro, his poor neighbor's daughter, are childhood sweethearts. Status and caste differences prevent their marriage; Devdas is sent to Calcutta, Paro is married off to an aged but rich widower, and Devdas, meeting the courtesan Chandramukhi, drinks himself toward death, returning to die in front of Paro's house.⁶

Barua's treatment departs from the book in one notable way: unlike the novella, or Bimal Roy's later remake, the film introduces its main characters not as children but as naive young adults, and it lets Paro introduce the narrative, so that, the title aside, it is largely her story.¹ Contemporary commentary read the story as social criticism. The authors of Indian Film wrote that "to some extent Devdas was a film of social protest. It carried an implied indictment of arranged marriage"; the novel's criticism of the "spinelessness of the feudal elite" was part of its appeal.⁷^•⁶

Production

New Theatres, established in Calcutta in 1931, was among the leading studios of the early sound era, and Devdas became its most successful early product.⁷ Barua, son of the Raja of Gauripur, wrote the screenplay and directed both language versions, casting himself as Devdas in the Bengali film; the pre-playback singing star Kundan Lal Saigal starred in the Hindi version, in which Jamuna played Paro and Rajkumari played Chandramukhi (Chandrabati Devi took the role in Bengali).¹^•⁸

The young Bimal Roy, who later directed the celebrated 1955 remake, served as cinematographer, with music by Timir Baran, Rai Chand Boral, and Pankaj Mullick and dialog and lyrics by Kidar Sharma, who went on to direct many films.¹^•⁹ Saigal also had a small part in the Bengali film as one of the visitors to Chandramukhi's house, singing two songs; the producers, unsure whether a non-Bengali could sing Bengali songs acceptably, obtained Saratchandra's personal approval.⁶

Dating the two versions is not straightforward. Most sources identify both as 1935 productions, and the Bengali film's premiere at Chitra Talkies is dated 30 March 1935; some sources instead place the Bengali version in 1936 and the Hindi version in 1939, and the Hindi version's release year is given as 1936 in several Hindi-language references.³^•⁴^•¹⁰ The two versions were otherwise virtually identical, apart from Saigal replacing Barua in the lead.¹¹ Barua went on to make a third version in Assamese in 1937, with Phani Sharma as Devdas.¹²

Reception and influence

The film was phenomenally successful and made Saigal a national sensation as a singing star; one Hindi-language account calls him Hindi cinema's first star on the strength of it.¹³^•¹⁴ Corey K. Creekmur, a scholar of Indian cinema at the University of Iowa, ranks Barua's Hindi version, with Roy's cinematography, among the most important films in Indian cinema history, noting its formal inventiveness for early sound cinema in its use of songs and voiceover dialog, and critics often cite its parallel editing, as when Devdas cries out and the film cuts to Paro stumbling, then back to Devdas falling in his train car.¹

The film established the Devdas archetype as a "mythological reference point for Hindi melodrama," and the story became one of the touchstones of popular Indian cinema through continual remaking: Bimal Roy's Hindi version with Dilip Kumar (1955), Telugu versions in 1953 and 1974, a Tamil version in 1936, a Bengali remake in 1979, a Malayalam version in 1989, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Hindi spectacle of 2002, among many others.¹¹^•¹ Eric Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy's Indian Film (1963) captured the response of the time: "virtually a generation wept over Devdas."¹¹ Both Barua and Saigal suffered from alcoholism in later life, and the suggestion of a pathological identification with the role has haunted later figures drawn to the story.¹

Survival of the film

The Bengali version's fate mirrors its hero's. All extant Indian prints were thought destroyed by a fire at New Theatres in 1940. In the 1970s P. K. Nair, founder-director of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), learned that a version survived at the Bangladesh Film Archive in Dhaka, but the film could not be brought to India at the time; it was screened at a Delhi festival in 2002 via diplomatic bag.⁵^•¹⁵ In August 2015 a visiting Bangladeshi delegation led by Martuza Ahmed, Secretary of Bangladesh's Ministry of Information, handed the NFAI a DVD copy of the film, which India reciprocated with a copy of the silent Raja Harishchandra; NFAI director Prakash Magdum called it a landmark addition, noting that India had sought the film for 30 years and that the only available original negative, held in Dhaka, was in poor condition.²^•¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Indian films (individual works) › Hindi films before 1970

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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