The Big City at Glasgow Film Theatre
22 – 24 July, 2022
Wonderfully enjoyable, with the scope and density of a richly absorbing novel, Satyajit Ray’s tale of family and city life is set in mid-1950s Calcutta, a society still adjusting to India’s independence.
Subrata Mazumdar (Anil Chatterjee), a young bank clerk struggling to support his entire extended family on a meagre salary, is horrified when his wife Arati (a ravishing, spirited performance from Madhabi Mukherjee) dares to challenge his cherished belief that ‘a woman’s place is with her cooking pots’. She not only takes a job but proves a huge success in the workplace, relishing her new-found independence and thoroughly upsetting the family dynamic.
Bengali star Mukherjee, here working with Ray for the first time, confessed herself ‘stunned’ by his extraordinary ‘woman-centred’ screenplay, so different from anything she had previously encountered. Yet, for all his focus on Arati, Ray – who is renowned for his breadth of sympathy – also deploys warmth, humour and acute psychological insight in his depiction of Arati’s conservative old father-in-law, her studious teenage sister-in-law and her benevolently despotic boss.
GFT 12 Rose Street, G3 6RB
This section: Cinema
Filed under: Cinema
Related Pages
- Youth Screening: Grey Gardens at GFT
- If Only I Could Hibernate
- Fantastic Machine at GFT
- Bleeding Love at GFT
- Sometimes I Think About Dying at GFT
- Special Screenings to Mark Anniversary Year at Glasgow Film Theatre
- The Lives of Others – 35mm, Special 50 Anniversary Screening GFT
- Cinema Paradiso – Special 50th Anniversary Screening GFT
- Jean de Florette + Manon des Sources (Double-bill) – 50th Anniversary Screening GFT
- Late Night: Escape from New York
- Fellini’s Roma + Introduction
- Take 2: Kids Animations: Why’s the Sky Blue?
- Billy Connolly’s Big Banana Feet at GFT
- At the Volta with James Joyce, GFT
- B Movie.Lust and Sound in West Berlin
- One Night In Millstreet
- The Teacher’s Lounge
- Close Your Eyes
- Ratcatcher – 25th Anniversary
- Silver Haze plus recorded Q & A