Madhabi Mukherjee is luminous in Satyajit Ray’s film about a Bengali housewife who experiences her first taste of freedom and financial independence when her husband (reluctantly) allows her to get a sales job to help subsidize the family income. A social talking point in Calcutta at the time, women across the emerging middle class were disrupting the traditional patriarchal family unit, and Ray brilliantly captures this quiet moment of rebellion, and the tiny – yet hugely telling – ripples of disquiet within the household.
The Big City
