The Big CityPG

Directed by Satyajit Ray | India | 1964 | 2h 15m | Bengali w/ English subtitles | Starring Anil Chatterjee, Madhavi Mukherjee, Jaya Bachchan, Haren Chatterjee

In 1960s Calcutta, a middle-class housewife is compelled to take the job of a saleswoman in order to support her family. She not only takes a job but proves a huge success in the workplace, relishing her new-found independence and thoroughly upsetting the family dynamic. Satyajit Ray builds a powerful human drama that is at once a hopeful morality tale and a commentary on the identity of the modern Indian woman.

Reviews

‘An utterly absorbing and moving drama about the changing worlds of work and home in 1950s India, and a hymn to uxorious love acted with lightness, intelligence and wit.’
★★★★★
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

‘A bustling urban drama about the conflicts of work, gender and money, richly believable in the details and fascinating in its social vision.’
★★★★
Tim Robey, The Telegraph

Sorry - you missed it!

We showed The Big City between September 11, 2022 and September 12, 2022.

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Today (Friday 9th June)

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Tomorrow (Saturday 10th June)

15:00

The Dam Cert-TBC
1h 20m | Arabic w/ English subtitles
Lebanese artist and filmmaker Ali Cherri’s quietly political first feature is an enigmatic and allegorical drama about Sudanese bricklayer who wanders into the desert to work on a mysterious construction.

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17:00

Beau Is Afraid 15
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Academy Award winner Joaquin Phoenix stars as a man in meltdown in this brilliantly baffling psychological epic from the director of modern horror classics Hereditary and Midsommer.

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20:30

Master Gardener 15
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Plan your visit

Our beautiful art deco inspired auditorium can be found just off East Oxford's Cowley Road. We are open 7 days a week. We open the cinema and box office 30 minutes before the scheduled start time of each film, and the Box Office then closes 10 minutes after the film starts. We don’t show adverts, just a couple of trailers, so don't be late as the film itself starts very close to the advertised time!