The Hero · reception & legacy

1966 · Satyajit Ray

How The Hero has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

In 1966 it was an event in Bengal — art-house Ray directing Uttam Kumar, the biggest matinee idol in Bengali cinema — and it picked up a Special Jury prize at Berlin, yet for decades it sat in the shadow of the Apu Trilogy and Charulata as 'minor Ray.' The 2010s restoration changed that: it's now routinely called one of his very best.

What's debated

Film fans still argue over the Bergman question — is the train-journey-with-flashbacks structure too indebted to Wild Strawberries, or is that comparison lazy and the film entirely Ray's own?

Its footprint

The dream sequence — a man drowning in mounds of money as skeletal arms reach out — is one of the most referenced images in Indian art cinema, and the film is a touchstone for the whole 'strangers confessing on a train' mode; Wes Anderson dedicated The Darjeeling Limited to Ray.

Where it stands

A genuine canon climber: long the connoisseur's deep cut in the Ray filmography, it's become a Letterboxd favourite and a common answer to 'best non-Apu Ray.'

★ Did you know? Ray wrote the role expressly for Uttam Kumar — the reigning superstar of Bengali commercial cinema playing a matinee idol confronting his own stardom — and later said he wouldn't have made the film without him.