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Chandidas Synopsis

This film is about Chandidas, a legendary 15th-C. Bengali Vaishnavite poet whose biography remains obscure but was an influence on the better documented Chaitanya (1486-1533), a school teacher who promoted the Vaishnavite ideology in Bengal, mostly through hymns about the Radha-Krishna legend. The film stressed the poet's teachings through the love story between Chandidas and a low-caste washerwoman, Rami. The conventional villain of the saint film genre, who represents the established order threatened by the outsider's revolutionary influence on common people, is the rapacious upper-caste merchant Bijoynarayan. When Rami rejects his advances, he persuades the high priest to insist that Chandidas must repent or be punished for associating with a low-caste woman. Chandidas agrees to repent but when he sees the injuries Rami has suffered at the hands of the merchant's goons, he rejects institutionalized religion in favor of the higher Vaishnavite call for a more democratic god and leaves the village with Rami.

The Key to Power Synopsis

Bruce Wendell, the son of West Virginia coal mine owner James Wendell, graduates from West Point and prepares to lead a fighting unit to the front during World War I. As his father lies dying, however, he convinces Bruce to remain at home and guard the mine. Bruce's fiancée Ann Blair assumes that he is a coward and breaks off their engagement, but her brother Bobbie remains Bruce's loyal friend. Meyer, a German agent, persuades railroad president Parrish to refuse to transport Wendell's coal, but when Bruce adamantly refuses to close the mine, the spy's men decide to blow it up. While Ann is being abducted by Meyer, Bobbie is buried in an explosion at the mine. Bruce rescues Bobbie and then sends a plea to Lieutenant Parrish to rescue Ann. Meyer and his gang are captured and Ann renews her vow of love to Bruce.