Mahanagar

Mahanagar (The Big City) 1963

Year - 1963
Producer - R. D. Bansal & Co.
Screenplay - Satyajit Ray
Based on - The short story Abataranika by Narendranath Mitra
Photography - Subrata Mitra
Editor - Dulal Dutta
Art Director - Bansi Chandragupta
Music - Satyajit Ray
Sound - Debesh Ghosh, Atul Chatterjee, Sujit Sarkar
Length - 131 min.
Print - Black & White

Cast:
Subrata Mazumdar - Anil Chatterjee
Arati Mazumdar - Madhabi Mukherjee
Bani - Jaya Badhuri
Pintu - Prasenjit Sarkar
Priyagopal - Haren Chatterjee
Sarojini - Sefalika Devi
Himangsu Mukherjee - Haradhan Banerjee
Edith Simmons - Vicky Redwood

Subrata Mazumdar, an unassuming employee of a bank in Calcutta, has problems providing for the needs of his family. Against established custom and the reproofs of her father-in-law, a retired professor, his wife Arati looks for a job. She finds work selling sewing machines door-to-door. When she proves successful in her work and gains untraditional self-confidence, her husband is unable to accept the situation and would love for her to quit. As the result of a crisis at the bank, however, he loses his job and his wife's work becomes even more essential. Arati establishes a friendship with a colleague, an Anglo-Indian woman, and takes her side when she is unjustly punished by their boss. On the strength of her convictions, Arati is willing to sacrifice her own job and her family's needs as an expression of solidarity with her friend. The film ends with a more equal re-alignment of the relationship between Arati and her husband.
The original negative of this film was lost in a fire.