668-669 The Big City and Charulata

[swo17]

The Big City



The Big City (Mahanagar), set in mid-1950s Calcutta and directed by the great Satyajit Ray, follows the personal triumphs and frustrations of Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee), who decides, despite the initial protests of her bank-clerk husband, to take a job to help support their family. With remarkable sensitivity and attention to the details of everyday working-class life, Ray gradually builds a powerful human drama that is at once a hopeful morality tale and a commentary on the identity of the contemporary Indian woman.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New interview with actor Madhabi Mukherjee
• Satyajit Ray and the Modern Woman, a new interview program featuring Ray historian Suranjan Ganguly
• The Coward (Kapurush, 1965), a short feature by Ray that also addresses modern female identity and stars Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee
• Satyajit Ray (1974), a documentary short by B. D. Garga
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by scholar Chandak Sengoopta and a 1980s interview with Ray by his biographer Andrew Robinson


Charulata



This film about a woman's artistic and romantic yearning by Satyajit Ray is set in late nineteenth-century, pre-independence India. It takes place in the gracious home of a liberal-minded, workaholic newspaper editor and his lonely, stifled wife, Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee), whose exquisitely composed features mask a burning creativity. When her husband's poet cousin comes to stay with them, Charulata finds herself both inspired by him to pursue her own writing and dangerously drawn to him physically. Based on a novella by the great Rabindranath Tagore, Charulata is a work of subtle textures, a delicate tale of a marriage in jeopardy and a woman taking the first steps toward establishing her own voice.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New interview program with actors Madhabi Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee
• Adapting Tagore, a new interview program featuring Indian film scholar Moinak Biswas and Bengali literature historian Supriya Chaudhuri
• Archival audio interview with director Satyajit Ray by film historian Gideon Bachmann
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Kemp and a 1980s interview with Ray by his biographer Andrew Robinson

[Drucker]

I cannot wait for these releases. I adore the Ray films I've seen, and the extras look very promising.

[mteller]

These are my two favorite films by my favorite director. I'm ecstatic. The Coward is very good, too. Interesting that it's not paired with The Saint, which it is usually is. The Saint kinda sucks though, so that's okay with me.

[knives]

The Big City isn't his best film, but is very good. Charulata is more the highlight of the two (though the extras trade-off makes the releases equal to my eye) though even there I prefer Devi. I'll take the lack of the Tagore doc to mean that we'll be seeing Three Sisters or whatever they will call it sooner than later.

[chatterjees]

The Big City isn't his best film, but is very good. Charulata is more the highlight of the two (though the extras trade-off makes the releases equal to my eye) though even there I prefer Devi. I'll take the lack of the Tagore doc to mean that we'll be seeing Three Sisters or whatever they will call it sooner than later.

Totally agree with you. Now I wonder what will happen to Mahapurush (The Holy Man)? It can't be a solo release!
Its Teen Kanya (Three Daughters), Postmaster 56 min.; Monihara 61 min.; Samapti 56 min. (in USA/UK, its Two Daughters, Postmaster 56 min; Samapti 56 min)! That Tagore doc could very well be included with that release or would nicely fit as as extra with Ghare-Baire (Home and the World) as it was written by Tagore too.

[wigwam]

Agreed about Devi being best and The Saint being lower quality but also the latter would be a perfect extra for a future release of the former

The Big City is also one of the most accessible to modern/Western viewership in my opinion, if you've had problems getting into SRay in the past (like I did w/ Apu Trilogy)

[chatterjees]

Is Mahapurush known as The Saint?

[knives]

The Big City is also one of the most accessible to modern/Western viewership in my opinion, if you've had problems getting into SRay in the past (like I did w/ Apu Trilogy)

The funny thing about your statement is that it took me seeing the Apu trilogy to appreciate Ray's style and influence. Going back to the films I had dismissed earlier yielded great results and a love for most of the movies.

[wigwam]

Is Mahapurush known as The Saint?

yes i've seen it as both Saint and Holy Man

[Tommaso]

God, I somehow didn't believe that they would come so soon after the big announcement of the vast collection of Ray films they're going to release in the next few years. The extras sound as if they're pulling all the stops on these, which is of course exactly what these films deserve and what I still expect from the Criterion (of old). If these new restos are anywhere near "The Music Room", you'll have some nice new coasters in the form of those AE discs. The only letdown is that they come a month too late for the next B&N sale...

[manicsounds]

Yes! 3 Ray films with nice extras. I guess I won't be going for the UK BD releases then...

[MichaelB]

Its Teen Kanya (Three Daughters), Postmaster 56 min.; Monihara 61 min.; Samapti 56 min. (in USA/UK, its Two Daughters, Postmaster 56 min; Samapti 56 min)! That Tagore doc could very well be included with that release or would nicely fit as as extra with Ghare-Baire (Home and the World) as it was written by Tagore too.

All three (i.e. Three Daughters, The Home and the World and the Tagore documentary) were included in that Indian Tagore DVD box set - whose transfer of Three Daughters was, at least at the time (I hadn't seen Ray on BD then), the best Ray transfer that I'd seen by some distance. I presume there's an HD master of that?

Great news about the two Criterion discs - I'm usually torn between them and Artificial Eye (Criterion usually has nicer extras, but at a hefty mark-up - for a UK-based purchaser, AE discs are sometimes ridiculously cheap at a level that Criterion will clearly never get near even in a B&N sale), but this looks like an easier choice than normal.

[chatterjees]

I do have the Tagore box set, and each of the Ray films in it looked gorgeous. The box says the films are digitally restored, so I guess there must be some HD masters available. I am not sure if CC is going to use that source! I hope that when CC comes to releasing the daughter stories, they release Three Daughters not the Two Daughter version. Monihara is a great ghost story, and I would love to see that on HD.
Now that The Coward is out of the way, I wonder how they gonna package The Holy Man! They can give it a barebone spine number or tag it as an extra with a major film.
Based on the huge previous overlapping between CC and AE releases, will I be insane to dream about a Sep release of The Hero (Nayak) with The Holy Man as an extra (both related to acting!)? I know that it would be asking for too much, but such a release will put CC and AE on the same page regarding Ray films and make me the happiest person on the earth. Nayak is my all time favorite Ray film closely followed by Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest)! So, yesterday I was really hoping for Nayak, not Mahanagar, but something is better than nothing!

[DasMarcos]

These releases are welcomed with an exclamation point! A couple of years ago I had rented a DVD version of The Big City and was horrified to find that the subtitles did not sync up with the dialogue. Don't even get me started on the picture quality either! I'm just so glad that we can finally start to get quality releases of Satyajit Ray. If rumors are to be believed too, this is just the start!

[Andre Jurieu]

Slightly off-topic. I was reading the announcement about the August titles while on the phone with my parents yesterday. Since my parents are fan's of Ray's films (and have bought a tonne of poor-quality bootleg transfers of his movies over the years - some from India ... many others from local Spice Houses), I mentioned to my mom that these were coming out on blu-ray and asked if she wanted me to order them for her. She researched Tagore's work while earning her university degree. While we lived in India for a little bit over a year when I was very young, she actually taught Biology and some English classes at a local school. During the conversation she mentioned the Tagore novella that Charulata is based upon, Nastanirh (or The Broken Nest), was actually inspired a great deal by Ibsen's A Doll's House, which I thought was kind of interesting. Anyway, just thought I would mention it.

[chatterjees]

Very interesting information. I grew up in a very "Rabindrik Culture" in Kolkata, but never heard about such influence. Tagore was studying law in England around 1878 and might have been exposed to the literature. A Doll's House was published in 1879 and could very well have been an influence on Tagore's Nastanirh. Why did I never thought about this before? Thanks.

[wigwam]

yeah thanks for that info Andre, I didn't know that and really look forward to rewatching with that in mind

now if only that Fassbinder Eclipse set were his unreleased TV work we could double feature it with Nora Helmer...

[artfilmfan]

I'm very excited about these two releases. I hope The Coward is a restored version.

[knives]

I believe all of the Ray's Crit is using have UCLA restorations.

[artfilmfan]

That would be like icing on the cake.

[Matango]

Best news in a long time. It's gonna be a long summer till August.

[TMDaines]

If you've never seen any Ray, what would be a good starting point?

[neilist]

If you've never seen any Ray, what would be a good starting point?

Assuming you mean generally and not out of these two films specifically, I'd certainly start at the beginning with The Apu Trilogy. I'd say they're certainly among his finest films if not his finest, along with introducing many of the themes that occur throughout his body of work.

[Tommaso]

As Ray's films are so visually beautiful, I'd suggest to start with a film that has a transfer that does full justice to the images. Which makes CC's "The Music Room" the most obvious choice, and once it's released, "Charulata" of course. Both are among Ray's very best.

[wigwam]

I want to offer an alternative and analogy to starting with Apu Trilogy. Firstly, that's three films to start with. Also, this to me is analogous to starting Ozu with Tokyo Story which is how I started with both these directors and in my experience they were overhyped and underwhelming, especially as I was completely unfamiliar with cinema from these countries and these time periods when I saw them.

I think these entry points became (wrongly?) canonized pre-home video due to limits of distribution among cineastes. If that's not the case for others who started with these and became instant fans, I'm stoked for you. But now that I've become a fan of these two via other movies of theirs (and gone back w/ a deeper, more mature appreciation for Apu Trilogy and Toyko Story - they're rightfully seen as masterpieces, I just don't think they work well as starting points) I wish I would've started elsewhere and had the immediate enthusiasm I got from their other movies.

I echo Music Room as a starting point, worked great for me on VHS but will be even better with a Criterion. Otherwise I refer you to any of my top tier Rays: Devi, Nayak, Kanchenjungha (color!), Days and Nights in the Forest. I think any of those 5 movies are more characteristic of Ray's body of work and style.