Chidiakhana (1967)

This relatively unknown Ray film, made to help out some friends, is his first real detective thriller (cf. Sonar Kella, 1974; Joi Baba Felunath, 1978) although he had deployed the generic narrative structure often before (cf. Kanchanjunga, 1962). The detective Byomkesh Bakshi (Kumar) is hired by a retired judge (S. Majumdar) to trace a former screen actress who lives in a colony for social outcasts (run by the judge to atone for sentencing several convicts to death). Bakshi ends up investigating the mysterious death of his own client. He unmasks the culprit when he notices that, in a series of tape-recorded interviews with the inhabitants, a woman (G. Roy) betrays her identity by her accent. The woman turns out to be the former film actress, whose career was ruined by her lover when he changed her looks with plastic surgery.