PHANTOM INDIA Movie Review
L'Inde Fantome
In 1967, after a disappointing critical reception for his still-underrated The Thief of Paris, Louis Malle took a cinematographer and a sound recorder and flew to India. Malle wanted to recharge his creative batteries and to get away from the rat-race of the commercial film business by making a documentary on Calcutta. The resulting 90-minute film, Calcutta, is remarkable, but Malle achieved still more on his journey. Continuing to film as he toured the rest of the country, he accumulated hundreds of hours of footage, which he sorted and edited over the following year into a seven-part, 6 1/2 hour documentary diary titled Phantom India. The experience of Phantom India is unique; not because of the movie's length (there are longer) or because of its subject (India has been the focus of countless documentaries), but because of the probing, brilliant, generous-spirited man who accompanies us. And the word “accompanies” is the key, because Malle doesn't condescend to us as a guide to any predigested sights or sounds. Phantom India is thrilling because we're on this journey with him—discovering, marveling, hearing him ask the questions that have just popped into our heads at the moment he voices them. The seven parts of the movie examine different aspects of the country, but they all affect each other; the multitude of religions, the concept of the sacred, the arts, poverty, literacy, hunger, and the caste system are all examined, but the closer Malle looks, the more he and we realize that definitive conclusions are impossible. Phantom India is perhaps better described as a cycle of films rather than a series, since in the end we're led back to the questions that brought us there in the first place; we may well be left with the feeling that we're less certain about everything than we were when we came in. The experience of Phantom India is awesome, moving, and humbling, as much for what we see as for the artistry by which we see it. Narrated in English by Malle.
NEXT STOP … Pather Panchali, Aparajito, The World of Apu
1969 378m/C D: Louis Malle; C: Etienne Becker. NYR