रानी

A 1943 social drama produced, written, directed and headlined by P. C. Barua for his own Barua Productions in Calcutta. Made simultaneously in Hindi as 'Rani' and in Bengali as 'Chandar Kalanka' (The Taint on the Moon), the film paired Barua with Jamuna and Patience Cooper, with music by the Calcutta composer Kamal Dasgupta and lyrics by Pandit Madhur. It opened at Bombay's Super cinema on 4 June 1943.

The score was composed by Kamal Dasgupta with all lyrics written by Pandit Madhur. Surviving sources document nine Hindi songs, sung in the melody-first Calcutta idiom, though individual playback credits for most numbers were not preserved in the gramophone-era documentation. Contemporary listeners and later commentators considered the music a comparative disappointment among Dasgupta's 1943 output, even as some numbers — such as the drinking song 'Piyo Ji Khoob Piyo' — survive as collectors' rarities.

Rani belongs to P. C. Barua's later, Calcutta-based directorial phase after his New Theatres triumphs of the 1930s. As a Hindi-Bengali bilingual, it represents the eastern studio tradition's continued attempt to reach the national Hindi audience even as the commercial centre of gravity was shifting to Bombay. Kamal Dasgupta's melody-led Bengali sensibility marks the score apart from the Punjab-folk energy then sweeping Lahore and Bombay film music.