Molina Devi (1917 — 13 August 1977), also known as Molina Debi and Malina Debi, was an Indian Bengali actress of Bengali and Hindi film and theatre. As an actress, she played a wide variety of parts, later frequently playing matronly parts, especially Rani Rashmoni, patroness of the 19th century Bengali mystic Sri Ramakrishna. She acted in several dozen films, mostly in Bengali and Hindi. With actor Gurudas Banerjee, she also directed a Calcutta-based theatre troupe, M. G. Enterprises.[1]: 688
Early life
Molina Devi was born on 13 August 1917 in Calcutta.[2]: 275 [3][4]: 13
Career
Molina Devi started her career as trainee under Aparesh Chandra Mukhopadhyay. She debuted in a silent film at the age of 8.[a] Thereafter worked as dancer in mythological and historical plays in the Bengali theatre in the 1920s, and later sometimes played roles as a young boy, such as the role of Dara in Jahangir (1929), and later played roles as a heroine.[2]: 275
She also performed some memorable roles in Hindi films. She took various roles, even vamps in her early career such as in Pramathesh Barua's Rajat Jayanti in 1939.[5]
In 1954 she got a break through in Puran Bhagat[6] and in 1955, Molina played the title role in the film Rani Rasmani. She also directed a Kolkata based theatre troupe, M. G. Enterprises. Molina worked in Rangana theatre as chief artist. She performed as a singer on radio and contributed for formation of Mahila Silpi Mahal, a welfare association for female artists of Bengal. For her contribution in the field of drama, she receives the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award.[3]
Molina Devi and actor Gurudas Banerjee[7] together they operated their own touring theatre, M. G. Enterprises,[1]: 688 which "specialized in commercial productions of devotional drama" in which Banerjee played the role of Sri Ramakrishna and other holy men."[2]: 275
Molina Devi died on 13 August 1977 in Kolkata.
Roles
Molina Devi acted in a variety of roles, many times as Rani Rashmoni, which she played on both stage and in film.
From the 1950s through the 1970s, Molina Devi commonly portrayed Rani Rashmoni in the Bengali Theatre and films.
Sushil Mukherjee explains that the drama Jugadevata, which debuted on the Calcutta stage on 19 November 1948,
was a devotional drama... on the life of the Saint of Dakshineswar [Ramakrishna] [that] became immensely popular and established two artistes who became wholly identified with the two characters they represented. These were Gurudas Banerjee who was seen as Sri Ramkrishna and Molina Debi who appeared as Rani Rasmoni, the founder of the famous Bhabatarini (Kali) temple at Dakshineswar. Since their appearance in Jugadevata at Kalika in 1948 Gurudas and Molina have appeared in the characters of these two persons in a number of other plays, both on the stage and on the screen....[1]: 288
Films in which Molina Devi played the role of Rani Rashmoni included Rani Rashmoni (1955).
Theatrical plays in which she played Rani Rashmoni included Jugadebata (1948) and Thakur Sri Ramakrishna (1955).
Reception
According to Sushil Mukherjee, in the many screen and stage appearances since 1948 in which Molina Devi and Gurudas Banerjee have played Rani Rashmoni and Ramakrishna Dev together, they "have carried the audience with them in every performance."[1]: 288
In 1966, The Illustrated Weekly of India mentioned Molina Devi's troupe's performance in a review of the 1965-66 theatre season in Delhi.[8]
The Weekly stated that
Milan Samity of Delhi sponsored the M. G. Enterprise of Calcutta, who brought two plays, Thakur Shri Ramakrishna and Baskunther Will, and an able company of actors. The credit for composing Thakur Shri Ramakrishna, round the story of Rani Rashmoni, and for bringing this legendary figure to life on the stage, goes to Molina Devi and Gurudas, who headed the company.... It is not easy to put across a religious theme, but Molina and Gurudas did so convincingly, helped greatly by the telling effects of light and music.[8]
Theatre roles
The following table partially chronicles Molina Devi's stage career. It is not complete.
Roles and details of selected films of Molina Devi appear in the table below.[9] Films known to be dubbed versions of other films have not been listed. Any films known to be multilinguals (separately filmed in multiple languages) are explicitly noted as multilinguals.[b][11]
^"Trained in acting by Aparesh Mukhopadhyay, she debuted in a silent movie as an 8-year-old. She began her stage career, like many of ... She teamed up with Gurudas Bandyopadhyay, her co-artist in theatres to form a troupe, M. G. Enterprise, which specialized in commercial productions of devotional drama where he enacted Ramakrishna and other holy men. She made quite a stir as the lead in the ...": 275[2]
^Some Indian films are known as "multilinguals," having been filmed in similar but non-identical versions in different languages. According to Rajadhyaksha and Willemen in the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (1994), in its most precise form, a multilingual is "a bilingual or a trilingual [that] was the kind of film made in the 1930s in the studio era, when different but identical takes were made of every shot in different languages, often with different leading stars but identical technical crew and music." They wrote that in seeking to assemble the Encyclopedia, it they often found it "extremely difficult to distinguish multilinguals in this original sense from dubbed versions, remakes, reissues or, in some cases, the same film listed with different titles, presented as separate versions in different languages.... it will take years of scholarly work to establish definitive data in this respect."[10]
^Information in the table of selected films is derived, as noted in the final column, from film entries in YouTube, or CITWF.
^Rajadhyaksha, Ashish; Paul Willemen (1994). Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema. New Delhi: Oxford University Press; British Film Institute (London). ISBN019-563579-5.
^At present, no pairs of films listed in the table are known to be multilinguals; however, this category has been added for clarify, and to accommodate possible additional information (12 Feb 2013)
^The actor appearing as Sri Ramakrishna in the last two minutes of Vidyasagar (1950) is readily identifiable as the same as the actor appearing in the role of Sri Ramakrishna in Mahakavi Girish Chandra (1956), as viewable in the State Awards for Mils Programme (1956)Archived 22 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine (page 9) (accessed 12 Feb 2013).
