The Big City (Mahanagar), dir. Satyajit Ray, 1963)
“There’s a saying in English,” Bhombol (Anil Chatterjee) says to his wife, Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee): “ ‘a woman’s place is in the home’.” When Arati asks if he really believes that, Bhombol tells her that he does, that he’s like his father, very conservative.
But for Arati, this is an important issue. Her household – consisting of herself, her husband, their son, Pintu, and Bhombol’s parents and sister Binu (Jaya Bhaduri) is struggling on just Bhombol’s salary. There is barely enough money to keep the household running, and when Arati hears that a friend’s wife has taken a job, Arati decides that she, too, must find employment. Her reasoning is that it’s not right for her husband to have to be responsible for this whole household.
Bhombol may be conservative, but he is not so traditional that...
“There’s a saying in English,” Bhombol (Anil Chatterjee) says to his wife, Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee): “ ‘a woman’s place is in the home’.” When Arati asks if he really believes that, Bhombol tells her that he does, that he’s like his father, very conservative.
But for Arati, this is an important issue. Her household – consisting of herself, her husband, their son, Pintu, and Bhombol’s parents and sister Binu (Jaya Bhaduri) is struggling on just Bhombol’s salary. There is barely enough money to keep the household running, and when Arati hears that a friend’s wife has taken a job, Arati decides that she, too, must find employment. Her reasoning is that it’s not right for her husband to have to be responsible for this whole household.
Bhombol may be conservative, but he is not so traditional that...
- 7/13/2022
- by Katherine Matthews
- Bollyspice
Satyajit Ray's 1963 film about a Calcutta woman blossoming in the world of work is utterly absorbing
Satyajit Ray's glorious film Mahanagar, or The Big City, is rereleased 50 years on: it is an utterly absorbing and moving drama about the changing worlds of work and home in 1950s India, and a hymn to uxorious love acted with lightness, intelligence and wit. Madhabi Mukherjee is superb as Arati, the demure wife of Subrata (Anil Chatterjee), a sweet-natured, semi-competent bank employee in Calcutta. To help out with the family finances, she takes a job as a door-to-door saleswoman, promoting a new knitting machine – and is electrified by her new self-esteem and cash. Encouraged by her feisty, flighty colleague Edith (Vicky Redwood), an Anglo-Indian of the sort not much loved in the city, she insists on lucrative commissions for her rocketing sales and blossoms as a beautiful professional woman about town. Ray...
Satyajit Ray's glorious film Mahanagar, or The Big City, is rereleased 50 years on: it is an utterly absorbing and moving drama about the changing worlds of work and home in 1950s India, and a hymn to uxorious love acted with lightness, intelligence and wit. Madhabi Mukherjee is superb as Arati, the demure wife of Subrata (Anil Chatterjee), a sweet-natured, semi-competent bank employee in Calcutta. To help out with the family finances, she takes a job as a door-to-door saleswoman, promoting a new knitting machine – and is electrified by her new self-esteem and cash. Encouraged by her feisty, flighty colleague Edith (Vicky Redwood), an Anglo-Indian of the sort not much loved in the city, she insists on lucrative commissions for her rocketing sales and blossoms as a beautiful professional woman about town. Ray...
- 8/15/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Criterion brings two of auteur Satyajit Ray’s early 60s works to the collection this month with Charulata (1964) and The Big City (1963), both starring Madhabi Mukherjee in phenomenal performances. While both explore women’s lives in a rigidly male dominated world, it’s the earlier film that stands as Ray’s first look at contemporary life in his native Kolkata. While his nine previous films were either period pieces or set outside of the city (Charulata, in fact, sees him returning to period, set in 1870s India), the coalescence of budget and talent finally brought his modern times project to fruition, which he had apparently been wanting to make since his 1955 Palme d’Or winning debut, Pather Panchali. Beyond being simply the story of a woman, Ray constructs an intimate character study that examines an uncomfortably changing social climate, economic pressures, racial injustice, and the moral obligation to do the right thing.
- 8/6/2013
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
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