Lost in the Movies: Learning to Look: Eye Contact in Satyajit Ray's The Big City (video)

Learning to Look: Eye Contact in Satyajit Ray's The Big City (video)


Note: True Detective episode 3 will go up on Thursday. I haven't watched it yet.

My second video for Fandor went up a few weeks ago, but yesterday it was posted on the site itself. The reception so far has been very enthusiastic, which is certainly encouraging. Here is what I wrote about it:
It’s all in the eyes, and this case they belong to Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee), a housewife-turned-saleswoman in Satyajit Ray‘s classic film The Big City. Her personal growth is charted through her gazes, whether they are exchanged with husband, customers, boss—or even her own reflection. Throughout The Big City, Ray uses eye contact to establishes familiarity, intimacy and shifting power dynamics; the story of the film is told through the way the characters look at one another.
And here is the video, along with a couple images...



uploaded to YouTube in 2017:



2 comments:

msmariah said...

Wow, that kind of eye contact would scare me. I don't think people really look into each other's eyes like that. Perhaps we should.

Joel Bocko said...

Yes, I think that's one of the great things about the movie. How unnerving it can be to really look at someone else, even a loved one, because it may disrupt what you think you know.

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