Mahanagar (1963)

User Rating:

8.5/10   

Director:

Satyajit Ray

Writers:

Narendranath Mitra (story)
Satyajit Ray (writer)

Release Date:

6 March 1976 (Japan)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Life at home changes when a housewife from a middle-class, conservative family in Calcutta gets a job as a salesperson.

Plot Keywords:

Money | Calcutta India | Big City Life | Working Woman | Tradition

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Anil Chatterjee	...	Subrata Mazumdar
Madhabi Mukherjee	...	Arati Mazumder
Jaya Bhaduri	...	Bani
Haren Chatterjee	...	Priyogopal (Subrata's father)
Sefalika Devi	...	Sarojini (Subrata's Mother)
Prasenjit Sarkar	...	Pintu
Haradhan Bannerjee	...	Himangshu Mukherjee
Vicky Redwood	...	Edith

Also Known As:

The Big City (USA)
The Great City
The Metropolis

Runtime:

India:131 min | USA:122 min | West Germany:122 min (25 fps)

Country:

India

Language:

English | Bengali

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono

Filming Locations:

Calcutta, West Bengal, India

Company:

R.D.Banshal & Co.

Quotes:

Arati: [to her husband] You would not recognize me if you saw me at work.

A fascinating dissection of gender roles in the age of modernity.

I loved this film. Madhabi Mukherjee is gorgeous and so engaging, with the virtuosic ability to represent the stresses of a changing Calcutta through a simple glance. Mahanagar is a fascinating dramatic case study of the collision of modernism and traditionalism that produced a sociocultural duality/dichotomy in twentieth-century India's urban landscapes.

We see all sorts of manifestations of duality in Mahanagar. The tension-cum-rivalry of Arati and Subrata is, of course, the most obvious manifestation. However, we also have the duality of the new- generation Arati/Subrata and the old-generation Sarojini/Priyogopal (Subrata's mother and father) and Arati, who wears traditional clothing and speaks Bengali, versus Edith, the English-speaking Anglo-Indian in Western dress. These instances of duality speak directly to the moment in which things began to make a 180-degree shift in India, when women became the breadwinners of the household and traditional gender norms became subsumed by sexual liberation.

With a leading lady as precise as Mukherjee, Ray was able wrap these complex coterminous processes up in a relatively tidy package. Mahanagar is essential viewing.