The Big City

A woman’s place is with her cooking pots: that is the firmly articulated belief of Subrata Mazumdar, a young bank clerk struggling to support his entire extended family on a meagre salary, and he is duly horrified when his wife Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee) offers to help by going out to work as a ‘salesgirl’.
Satyajit Ray’s wonderfully enjoyable portrait of mid-'50s Calcutta, a society still adjusting to Independence, displays warmth, wit and genuine insight into its large, multi-generational cast of characters, including Arati’s conservative old father-in-law, her studious teenage sister-in-law, and her benevolently despotic boss.