The Hero

1966. India. Written and directed by Satyajit Ray. Uttam Kumar, Bengal's legendary movie star of the 1960s and 1970s, plays a matinee idol who journeys by train from Calcutta to Delhi to collect a prize. Ray's themes of fame and idol worship are complicated and enriched by Surrealist dream sequences, flashbacks within flashbacks, and self-conscious camera angles, all of which evoke the interior moral life of a man trapped in an illusory world of stardom. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, Los Angeles. In Bengali; English subtitles. 120 min.