The Bengali film industry is in fact going through a mediocre phase,' said Dutt.

Young filmmaker Suman Ghosh, whose 'Dwando' roped in Hollywood's second largest distribution house LongTail, partly agrees.

'Honestly, I don't think there has been any seachange in the Bengali movie world. But certain filmmakers like Dutt have brought some polish to Bengali films that attract cinegoers who previously may have been shunning them, making an exception only for works by Rituparno Ghosh and Aparna Sen,' he said.

Bengali movies have always had two separate wings - an intellectual arm represented by filmmaking geniuses of the class of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak, and a commercial side for directors who made films with matinee idols like Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen in the past.

And till now, for the average moviegoer in West Bengal's small towns and villages, low-brow stuff like 'Poran Jai Joliya Re' (Bengali adaptation of 'Namastey London') and 'Mon Mane Na'.

'There's a serious dichotomy in our industry and the two threads - new Bengali films that have a cosmopolitan appeal and the other catering to the rural and semi-urban bases - are far removed from each other,' said Gautam Ghosh.

Veteran filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta points out that even Ray's films did good business only in urban areas.

'They were never acceptable to the rural audiences as they did not cater to their tastes. So if we only paint a rosy picture about the success of new urban Bengal films, it would not be appropriate.'

Producers also feel Bengali cinema is no more a 'bridge between the urban and rural audiences'.

'Even in multiplexes, the ticket sales of urban Bengali films are not very encouraging. It does not offer a good value for our investment,' said Abhijit Sarkar, creative head of T. Sarkar Productions that produced Sandip Ray's whodunits like 'Tintoretor Jishu' and 'Kailashey Kelenkari', based on his father Satyajit Ray's stories.

'So we producers have to bank on the rural audiences and they want no intellectual subject, but a package of commercial treatment.'

(Soudhriti Bhabani can be contacted at soudhriti.b@ians.in)