Garam Coat (1955)

Garam Coat is a gentle, realistic Hindi drama about the daily struggles of a lower-middle-class family. Balraj Sahni plays a humble post-office clerk who cannot afford a new woollen coat to replace his threadbare one, while his wife, played by Nirupa Roy, quietly makes sacrifices to keep the household going. When a single precious banknote goes missing, his small world is shaken and his dignity is put to the test. The story was written by the noted Urdu writer Rajinder Singh Bedi, drawing on Gogol's famous tale The Overcoat, and the film belongs to the socially minded cinema of the 1950s. It is remembered for one of Balraj Sahni's finest quiet performances as the decent common man.