Ray, Satyajit - Penelope Houston

PENELOPE HOUSTON

To attempt to annex Satyajit Ray as the last Victorian would be absurd. But it isn't merely because Charulata is set in 1880, and full of references to Gladstone and Macaulay, to English politics and the rotundities of nineteenth century leader writers, that one is made aware of the connections. The film brings together the two characters who seem most thoroughly to arouse Ray's sympathies, and who have appeared most persistently in his films. And neither of them is, in Western terms, quite of the present day.

Amal …, the literary-minded cousin who awakens Charu, the editor-publisher's wife, from the lethargy of the long Indian afternoons, is a variation on Ray's eternal student, (p. 31)

The second Ray character is the New Woman—and she deserves those Victorian capital letters…. [She] is very closely related to the heroine of Mahanagar, his preceding film. There the setting is modern, and the girl finds herself...

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