Mahanagar [The Big City] (1963)

(On Cable TV, December 2021) As someone who bounces off writer-director Satyajit Ray’s films with unbecoming ease, I thought I had it all figured out when I deliberately selected The Big City to lull myself to sleep during a bout of insomnia: After complaining that his films were snooze-inducing, why not use that to my own benefit? Surprisingly, it did not work:  I really got into the film, as it follows the adventures of a middle-class wife who gets a job and upsets the power balance of her family. A terrific performance from Madhabi Mukherjee (playing off a frequently-irritating turn from Anil Chatterjee) anchors the entire film, but Ray’s script is interesting on a moment-to-moment basis even as we can see the big plotting threads evolve throughout. The portrait of early-1960s Calcutta is fascinating, in-between the clashing cultures left in the wake of the British occupation, and the lively everyday mixture of languages. My attempts to go to sleep went nowhere — I just wanted to see where things were going next. The ending is slightly too open-ended for my taste, but The Big City itself is a surprisingly accessible piece of neorealism whose effectiveness went past my usual objections.