Ranked #35 of 100
Arth
अर्थ · 1982
A wife left for another woman refuses to take her husband back, and builds a life instead. Autobiographical and unsparing.
- Director
- Mahesh Bhatt
- Year
- 1982
- Genre
- Drama
- Cast
- Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Kulbhushan Kharbanda
Why it's at number 35
The ending — 'no' — was radical in 1982 and is still bracing. Shabana Azmi's masterclass.
A wife left for another woman refuses to take her husband back, and builds a life instead. Autobiographical and unsparing.
Arth sits in the 1980s alongside Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and Umrao Jaan — a decade this canon treats as formative.
The Bollywood 100The essentials
- Directed by Mahesh Bhatt.
- Released in 1982, in the 1980s — see everything else from that decade.
- Filed under Drama.
- Read more on Wikipedia, check the full crew on IMDb, or find a legal stream via JustWatch.
Film record Wikipedia — Arth (1982) · data last revised 9 August 2026 · title, year, director and cast are read from that article; this site keeps no independent print record and does not claim one
Editorial The ranking and the case made for each placement — not a measurement · last revised 9 August 2026 · signed by Amit Sharma · the scoring is published in full so the machinery can be argued with, not just the result
No box-office figure, rating or audience score is printed on this page, because none has been independently verified for this film. The dated, sourced money figures the site does stand behind are on the box office page.
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