Shap Mochan - Bengali - Uttam, Suchitra

Shap Mochan, 1955
Director: Sudhir Mukherjee
Music Director: Hemanta Mukherjee
Lyrics: Bimal Ghosh
Playback: Pratima Bannerjee, Chinmoy Lahiri, Shyamal Mitra, Hemanta Mukherjee, D.V. Palusker
Cast: Uttam Kumar, Pahadi Sanyal, Suchitra Sen, Kamal Mitra, Bikash Roy, Gangapada Basu, Suprobha Devi, Jiben, Amar, Deepak, Tapati, Banani, Nitish

The source on which I worked was provided by Sudipta, to whom I'm very grateful. He has a channel here on YouTube consisting of classic Bengali-language film songs:
   / @amarbhuban2021  
And a new channel for classic Hindi-language film songs:
   / @myfavouritehindimoviesongs2024  

English subtitles provided.

After much work, the video looks pretty good. I wish I could say the same for the audio. Sometimes it's okay, sometimes it has a hollow sound, like everyone's in a cave. And there's everything in between. But there's one short period where the audio is completely unintelligible, from about 1:47:30 to 1:48:50. During that part, I've "hardcoded" English language subs. If you understand Bengali, that's the only place where you'll see them. If you prefer English subtitles, turn them on and you'll see them throughout.

There are also several minutes near the end where there's a lot of this annoying static noise. I removed most of it during silent passages, but left most of it during dialog and music.

Here's a playlist of the six songs from the film:
   • Shap Mochan - Bengali - All Songs  

The Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema says this about Shap Mochan:

An early example of a Kumar-Sen romance of
star-crossed lovers. Mahendra (Kumar) belongs
to a family of musicians cursed because an
ancestor once humiliated his guru (shown in
the film’s opening sequence). Mahendra’s elder
brother Debendra (Sanyal) became blind and
to avoid the same fate, Mahendra promises to
abandon the family vocation and moves to
Calcutta to live with the rich Umeshchandra
(Mitra), whose daughter Madhuri (Sen) tries to
make a bourgeois gentleman out of him.
However, the impecunious Mahendra sees
himself forced to return to music and he vents
his anger at urban values with the film’s hit
song Suno bandhu suno (sung by Hemanta
Mukherjee). The curse strikes and he falls
dangerously ill, but is rescued by a now-
chastened Madhuri. The hit followed on the
success of Pinaki Mukherjee’s Dhuli (1954)
and continued the famous theme of musicians
who physically suffer the clash between
traditional values and urbanisation (cf. Anjan
Choudhury’s Guru Dakshina, 1987).

Here are standalone versions of the three songs, the lower two being excellent club songs by Geeta Dutt:
Ei Je Chander Alo
   • Sonar Harin - Ei Je Chander Alo  

Tomar Duti Chokhe
   • Sonar Harin - Tomar Duti Chokhe  

Ei Mayabi Tithi
   • Sonar Harin - Ei Mayabi Tithi  


COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
The Indian copyright law:
https://copyright.gov.in/documents/co...

INDIAN COPYRIGHT ACT, 1957 CHAPTER I Preliminary 2. Interpretation(f)
"cinematograph film" means any work of visual recording on any medium produced through a process from which a moving image may be produced by any means and includes a sound recording accompanying such visual recording and cinematograph shall be construed as including any work produced by any process analogous to cinematography including video films.”

"CHAPTER V Term of Copyright 26.Term of copyright in cinematograph films.
In the case of a cinematograph film, copyright shall subsist until sixty years from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the film is published."

My words:
Indian film copyright (including video, dialog, music, lyrics, songs) lasts for sixty years and any film and its songs released more than sixty years ago is in the public domain. No extensions, no renewals, no exceptions. This film is no longer protected by copyright.