Satyajit Ray’s Days and Nights in the Forest

The film poster for DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST (1970) from India.

Four carefree middle class bachelors from Calcutta journey deep into the bucolic countryside for a break from city life and to enjoy drinking and partying with the local native women. What they end up experiencing in this unfamiliar locale is both a reflection of their own ignorance and colonialist attitudes inherited from their former British occupiers about the lives of people in rural India. This is the basic premise of Ananyer Din Ratri (English title: Days and Nights in the Forest, 1970), which many film scholars and critics consider a mid-career masterpiece from director Satyajit Ray. Admirers of the movie also cite the plays of Anton Chekhov and the films of Jean Renoir, especially his 1946 short Partie de Campagne (English title, A Day in the Country) as distinct influences on this social comedy with its amusing and sometimes harsh observations about human foibles and cultural differences.

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