Calcutta

splits into three sorts of scenes: those in poverty, those in riches, and those in protest. more of a political statement than some of malle's other documentaries, pointing the finger at economic segregation that has existed since colonialism. some rather horrifying parts: a cremation scene, and a disfigured man talking about how other indians shame and reject him. there's a line between exploration and exploitation, whence something becomes poverty porn, but this is ok i think.

After having just seen Malle's Phantom India, this was a poor shadow of what I enjoyed of his eastern vision. (but only slightly).

It is a very challenging documentary because it refuses to be a dictator over the image, the camera-eye patiently waits and observes the Indians, their daily life and even the camera and people on the streets stare each other for prolonged moments. This might be the contrary approach to what Tim Mitchell writes in his article "World as Exhibiton".

At times shocking portrait of 1968 Calcutta, which doesn't have the opportunity to pursue as many dimensions or as much complexity as PHANTOM INDIA, but remains a powerful record of the poverty, inequality and fraught politics of a city that did not exist until it was created by the East India Company in 1690.

An intense experience. Pauline Kael: "In the late 1960s, Louis Malle, fed up, he said, with "actors, studios, fiction, and Paris," took off for India for a period of "total improvising." Working with a minimal crew (a cameraman and a soundman), he shot the footage out of which he made CALCUTTA and the 7-part PHANTOM INDIA--masterful personal documentaries. [Calcutta] fuses squalor, death, and beauty. It's an incomparable vision of the poetic insanity of India."

interesting portrayal of Calcutta in the late 60s which probably made more impact on viewers then than that it did in 2020 on me.

Malle's documentary focuses on appalling living conditions and social unrest in Calcutta. Having seen umpteen Ray and Ghatak movies, little of this was new to me, but it was still interesting (and quite depressing). But the French are sometimes insufferably eager to point fingers. I'm not one of these "freedom fries" Americans that hates the French. But really, don't they have enough colonial problems in their own past that they don't have to go "tsk tsk"-ing the English over India?

Louis Malle's fascinating look at life and culture in late 60's Calcutta. Malle focuses on the rituals of daily life, capturing the struggles of the mostly poverty-stricken Indian residents.