The Big City (1963, Satyajit Ray)

Tuesday the 21st of November 5:30pm, Richard Hoggart Building cinema

Join us on Tuesday the 21st of November from 5:30pm (screening starts at 5:45pm) in the Richard Hoggart Building cinema for a screening of Satyajit Ray’s classic film The Big City [Mahanagar] (1963). The film is 2 hours 15 minutes long, so the screening will finish around 8pm.

Along with the ‘Apu’ trilogy, The Big City is one of Ray’s most famous and acclaimed films. Set in 1960s Calcutta – the first of Ray’s attempts to depict the realities of modern urban life in the city, and a prelude to his later ‘Calcutta’ trilogy – the film examines the clash between traditional patriarchal attitudes and the increasingly common presence of independent, middle-class women in Indian society. Arati, a young housewife, gets a job to supplement her husband’s increasingly inadequate salary as a bank clerk. This move is greeted with parental disapproval, and the new relations created between husband and wife create tensions. At once particular and universal, The Big City is an example of Ray working at the height of his mastery, and a film everyone should see.

For more about the film, see Chandak Sengoopta’s essay for the Criterion Collection release.