Mahanagar
India,
1963, 122 min
Shown in 1966
CREDITS
- dir
-
Satyajit Ray
- prod
-
R.D. Bansal
- scr
-
Satyajit Ray
- cam
-
Subrata Mitra
- editor
-
Dulal Dutta
- mus
-
Satyajit Ray
- cast
-
Madhabi Mukherjee, Anil Chatterjee, Vicky Redwood, Haradhan Bannerjee, Jaya Bhaduri, Haren Chatterjee, Sefalika Devi, Prasenjit Sarkar
- prod co
-
R.D. Bansal Productions
- source
-
Edward Harrison Productions
-
COMMENTS
Replaced The Romance of Aniceto and Francisca.
OTHER
A straightforward, realistic film about modern India, interlaced with satire, humanistic comedy and an emphasis upon the new Indian outlook, and, surprisingly enough, from the masterful director, Satyajit Ray. This does not mean that Ray altogether neglects a sympathetic look at the older generation, or abandons occasional cinematic touches with his famous lyrical interludes. Rather he reveals his capability for telling any kind of story with absolute brilliance. Mahanagar is set in Calcutta of the present, concerning itself with the dramatic crisis that occurs when a young couple, finding that the husband's job in the bank does not pay enough to make ends meet, agrees that the wife should take a job. The traditions of their family structure are upset: The grand-parents are scandalized; the husband is uneasy about his very contemporary solution to the problem; and Arati, the working wife, is just plain terrified. Ray's attitude is Chekhovian in describing these events, and the sequences illustrating Arati's job and her Anglo-Indian colleague, Edith, are wonderful moments to be treasured by all cinema devotees. For those spectators who know Calcutta, the film will reawaken memories of that turbulent city, for Ray makes every street, every myriad impression of the crowds along Chowringhee or the Howrah Bridge a major character in the work.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #4
2006 New Italian Cinema tributee Marco Belocchio’s debut film Fists in the Pocket screened at the Tenth San Francisco International Film Festival in 1966.
