The Big City (Mahanagar) is a 1963 film from India, directed by Satyajit Ray.
Subrata and Arati are a husband-and-wife in Calcutta. Money is tight. On his salary as a bank clerk Subrata is supporting six people: himself, Arati, their son Pintu, Arati's teenaged sister Bani, and Subrata's elderly parents. All six live together in a cramped apartment. Economic necessity forces Arati to go out and look for a job.
Arati finds a job in short order, getting hired as a door-to-door salesman hawking knitting machines. The taboo against married women working is still strong in 1963 India: Subrata grudgingly approves, but his father Priyogopal is scornful. Arati does well in sales and makes a friend at work, an Anglo-Indian woman named Edith. Later Subrata tries to get Arati to quit, saying he will get a second job, but events take a turn when he loses his first job at the bank.
Film debut of Jaya Bhaduri (Bani), who went on to become a big star.
Tropes:
- Bilingual Dialogue: Edith is more comfortable in English and Arati is more comfortable in Bengali, but they each can understand enough of the other's language to get by. Each talks to the other in their own language.
- Establishing Character Moment: When Subrata gets home from work and Arati is late with his tea, he says "Is this how you neglect the earning member of the family?" He's only half-serious but the patriarchal dynamic of the family is firmly established.
- Family Versus Career: They don't have a lot of choice about Arati's job, especially after Subrata is thrown out of work, but Arati still feels guilty when litte Pintu gets a fever while she's out working.
- Gratuitous English: Most of the Indian men drop occasional English phrases, to make a point or to sound sophisticated. Arati's father, who had money in Subrata's bank, rants in Bengali for a while about losing his money and then says in English, "Two thousand rupees down the drain!"
- Half-Breed Discrimination: The real reason Edith got canned. Mr. Mukherjee, Edith and Arati's boss, dislikes Anglo-Indian people on principle. So when Edith was home sick for a couple of days, he fired her.
- Kitchen Sink Drama: A family in 1960s India struggling to make ends meet and adjusting to changing gender roles.
- "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending: As Arati and Subrata walk away and get lost in the Calcutta crowd, the camera pans up to show the sun in the sky over the city, before "The End" pops up.
- P.O.V. Cam: A POV cam demonstrates Priyogopal's difficulty as the old man struggles to get up a flight of stairs.
- Sex Sells: So believes Edith, Arati's Anglo friend, who gives her a tube of lipstick and says "It's good for business!" Putting on lipstick is a big deal for a demure traditionalist wife like Arati.
- Stay in the Kitchen: Many men in 1963 India say this. When Arati first raises the idea of a job, her husband says in Hindi "There's a saying in English," then delivers the saying in English: "A woman's place is in the home." Priyogopal, even more traditional than his son, is not happy at all when Arati goes to work.
- Take This Job and Shove It: Incensed at her boss for firing Edith on a pretext, Arati quits on the spot.
- Title Drop: At the very end, as the reality of both of them being unemployed sinks in. Arati expresses confidence that they'll get by, saying "Such a big city...so many jobs."
- Traveling Salesman: The door-to-door variant, as Arati canvasses middle- and upper-class Calcutta neighborhoods, selling knitting machines to housewives.
