A family melodrama in a superbly recreated nineteenth century setting is the cover for a chilling--and daring--exposé of the feudal lifestyle that terrorized women behind its velvet facade. The marvelous Indian actress Meena Kumari stars as a middle-class girl, Chhoti Bahu, who is brought into the palatial home of a powerful family as the wife of one of two womanizing sons. She finds solace in drink and sympathy in the rustic wisdom of the factory worker Bhootnath (Guru Dutt), but when their relationship is discovered, Chhoti is systematically murdered for her pains. Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, based on a Bengali story, was Guru Dutt's last major contribution to the popular cinema. Although it is credited to Abrar Alvi as director, as Shampa Banerjee notes in Profiles, "The inventiveness in the use of camera and editing, the lyrical quality of the film, the careful recreation of the...milieu and its decadent aristocracy, all pointed to Guru Dutt's deep involvement with the making of the film."