Urban Baggage: The Absent Kolkata in Satyajit Ray's 1960s Films

Abstract

In the 1960s, Satyajit Ray's international popularity as India's foremost film director was tempered by the criticism that his lyrical masterpieces failed to capture the fast-changing realities of his home city of Kolkata, and that they were silent on the city's steadily increasing culture of political unrest and youth unemployment.This essay argues that, contrary to this assertion, the changing city was in fact central to Ray's films in this period. This argument is based on an analysis of three of Ray's films made in the beginning, middle, and end of the 1960s which, taken together, clearly map the changing trends in the city's politics and youth culture. As with most of Ray's work, much of this discourse is personal and understated but nuanced and unambiguous at the same time.