The Big City

The Big City

Directed by Satyajit Ray • 1963 • India
Starring Madhabi Mukherjee, Anil Chatterjee, Jaya Bhaduri

THE BIG CITY, the great Satyajit Ray’s first portrayal of contemporary life in his native Kolkata, 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 builds a powerful human drama that is at once a hopeful morality tale and a commentary on the identity of the modern Indian woman.

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The Big City
  • The Big City

    Directed by Satyajit Ray • 1963 • India
    Starring Madhabi Mukherjee, Anil Chatterjee, Jaya Bhaduri

    THE BIG CITY, the great Satyajit Ray’s first portrayal of contemporary life in his native Kolkata, follows the personal triumphs and frustrations of Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee), who decides, despite t...

Extras

  • The Coward

    Directed by Satyajit Ray • 1965 • India
    Starring Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee

    Satyajit Ray explores the ache of desire in this exquisitely brief, emotionally layered chamber piece, in which Amitabha (Soumitra Chatterjee), a screenwriter from Kolkata, finds himself unexpectedly reunited...

  • Madhabi Mukherjee on THE BIG CITY

    The following interview with actor Madhabi Mukherjee, who plays Arati in THE BIG CITY, was conducted in Calcutta in 2013.

  • Jhumpa Lahiri on THE BIG CITY

  • Suranjan Ganguly on Satyajit Ray

    In the following interview, conducted in 2013, Satyajit Ray scholar and author Suranjan Ganguly discusses how Ray presents women faced with the challenges of modernity in THE BIG CITY, CHARULATA, and THE COWARD.

  • B. D. Garga’s SATYAJIT RAY

    This short 1974 profile by B. D. Garga, one of India’s pioneering documentary filmmakers and a leading Indian film historian, features narration by director Satyajit Ray and on-set footage from the making of THE BIG CITY.