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Mahanagar (The Big City), 1963 |
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Production: R.D. Bansal |
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Screenplay, Music and Direction: Satyajit Ray |
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Based on the story, Abataranika, by Narendranath Mitra |
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Photography: Subrata Mitra |
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Art Director: Bansi Chandragupta |
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Editing: Dulal Dutta |
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Sound: Debesh Ghosh, Atul Chatterjee, Sujit Sarkar |
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Duration: 131 mins |
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Date of release in India: 27th September, 1963. B&W |
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| The husband and his younger sister look up the paper for a job suitable for Arati, the housewife. |
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| The couple ponders over the prospect of both of them working in offices. |
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Cast: Anil Chatterjee (Subrata Mazumdar), Madhabi Mukherjee (Arati), Jaya Bhaduri (Bani), Haren Chatterjee (Priyagopal, Subrata's father), Sefalika Devi (Sarojini, Subrata's mother), Prasenjit Sarkar (Pintu), Haradhan Banerjee (Himangshu Mukherjee), Vicky Redwood (Edith). |
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| Awards |
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Certificate of Merit,President Award's,New Delhi, 1963 |
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Silver Bear for Best Direction,Berlin Film Festival, 1964 |
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| The Story |
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The bank crashes, the husband loses job, an annoyed father-in-law accuses him in front of his father, already vulnerable. |
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| Subrata Mazumdar, an unassuming employee of a bank in Calcutta, has problems providing for the needs of his family. Against established custom and the reproofs of her father-in-law, a retired professor, Subrata's wife Arati looks for a job. She finds work selling sewing machines door-to-door. When she proves successful in her work and gains untraditional self-confidence, her husband is unable to accept the situation and would love for her to quit. As the result of a crisis at the bank, however, he loses his job and his wife's work becomes even more essential. Arati establishes a friendship with a colleague, an Anglo-Indian woman, and takes her side when she is unjustly punished by their boss. On the strength of her convictions, Arati is willing to sacrifice her own job and her family's needs as an |
expression of solidarity with her friend. The film ends with a more equal realignment of the relationship between Arati and her husband.
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| Contributed by DKB and AKD |
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