India, Aug. 2 -- More than a hundred years after Sarat Chandra wrote the novella and nearly a century after its first film adaptation, Devdas continues to invite reinterpretation.

Few works of Indian literature have enjoyed as extraordinary a cinematic afterlife as Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's Devdas. From its first silent screen version in 1928, Devdas has inspired more than two dozen direct adaptations across Indian languages and beyond. P.C. Barua's landmark Bengali (1935), Hindi (1936) and Assamese (1937) versions established the cinematic template, followed by the Telugu and Tamil Devadasu (1953), Bimal Roy's Hindi classic (1955), a Singaporean Malay adaptation (1955), a Pakistani Urdu version (1965), another Telugu remake (1974), ...