THE BIG CITY Movie Review

Mahanagar

In the mid 1950s, a young Calcutta housewife—whose marriage is suffering from the same financial anxieties as much of the rest of the lower-middle-class—decides out of necessity to break with tradition and enter the work force. Her experience turns out to be liberating, but not in the manner she expected. Her crash course in office politics, racism, classism, sexism, and, ultimately, unemployment, marks a subtle shift in director Satyajit Ray's generally poetic tone from quiet observation toward social criticism sprinkled with a deeply knowing sense of humor. Ray was always a keen and sympathetic chronicler of women's issues in India, and The Big City remains one of his most heartfelt and persuasive depictions of a society in which women's progress has been slow in coming; the ironic result is that with a degree of equality comes a woman's hard-earned right to be just as out of work as her husband.

NEXT STOP … Two Daughters, Charulata, The Middleman

1963 131m/B IN Anil Chatterjee, Majhabi Mukherjee, Vicky Redwood, Haren Chatterjee; D: Satyajit Ray; W: Satyajit Ray; C: Subrata Mitra; M: Satyajit Ray.VHS COL