Antony Firingee (film)

Antony Firingee is a 1967 Indian biographical musical drama film directed by Sunil Bannerjee, starring Uttam Kumar and Tanuja on the lead. It is a biopic based on the life of Anthony Firingee (Hensman Anthony), a Bengali language folk poet of Portuguese origin. Antony Firingee was a Portuguese-Indian who became a famous Bengali poet musician and fell in love with Nirupoma. She agreed to marry him after revealing her tragic history. But his fame was not enough to overcome their ostracisation and tragedy struck again.

This musical drama is purely based on the life of a Portuguese named Hensman Anthony. Anthony (Uttam Kumar) came to India and made Bengal his home. The Bengali folk songs and traditional music changed his life forever. Such was the effect that he even looked Bengal as his motherland. He even married a Hindu widow Nirupama (Tanuja). But he could not protect himself against the dirty orthodoxy beliefs that used to plague the land in that period. His wife was burnt to death because Antony was planning for a Durga Puja which was termed blasphemy by the then Brahmins. However, in real life, despite the odds of the society, Anthony and his wife lived happily and died natural deaths. That is the only difference the 1967 film had.

After the film's release, the poet name became "famous".^[1] The film was noted for its music, sung by Manna Dey and Sandhya Mukhopadhyay, composed by Anil Bagchi & lyrics by Gouri Prasanna Majumdar and others. The film become an all-time blockbuster and the highest grossing Bengali film in 1967.