Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970)

Subhendu Chatterjee, Samit Bhanja, Soumitra Chatterjee and Rabi Ghosh in Days and Nights in the Forest

Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee, Subhendu Chatterjee, Samit Bhanja, Rabi Ghosh, Pahari Sanyal, Sharmila Tagore, Kaberi Bose, Simi Garewal, Aparna Sen. Screenplay: Satyajit Ray, based on a novel by Sunil Gangopadhyay. Cinematography: Soumendu Roy. Production design: Bransi Chandragupta. Film editing: Dulal Dutta. Music: Satyajit Ray. 

Four men from the city take off for the country in search of adventure and encounter the unexpected. Satyajit Ray's Days and Night in the Forest has a setup similar to Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972). In both films, the city guys are condescending to the rurals with unexpected consequences. But Ray's amusing, low-key story is focused on character more than action. Ashim (Soumitra Chatterjee), Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee), Hari (Samit Bhanja), and Shekhar (Rabi Bhosh) leave Kolkata for the district of Palamu in eastern India, their heads full of tales about beautiful tribal women and peaceful forests. They're all bachelors, though Hari has just had a bruising breakup with his girlfriend. They hire a local boy to guide them to a vacation home, where they bribe the caretaker to let them stay there although they don't have a reservation. After symbolically severing their ties to civilization by burning a newspaper from back home, they go out to a village to get drunk and flirt with women, one of whom, Duli (Simi Garewal), hits it off with Hari. The next day, they discover that one of their neighbors is the owner of a country home who is currently being visited by his daughter, Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) and her widowed sister-in-law, Jaya (Kaberi Bose). Suddenly their decision to go native takes a turn in another direction, when Ashim is attracted to Aparna and Sanjoy to Jaya. Only Shekhar is left to his own devices. With his usual insight into human nature, Ray beautifully produces a satire on urban attitudes and a comedy of manners that transcends both genres.

The Stranger (Satyajit Ray, 1991)

Utpal Dutt and Bikram Bhattacharya in The Stranger

Sudhindra Bose: Dipankar Dey
Anila Bose: Mamata Shankar
Satyaki Bose: Bikram Bhattacharya
Manomohan Mitra: Utpal Dutt
Prithwish Sen Gupta: Dhritiman Chatterjee
Ranjan Rakshit: Rabi Ghosh
Chhandra Rakshit: Subrata Chatterjee
Tridip Mukherjee: Promode Ganguly
Sital Sarkar: Ajit Banerjee

Director: Satyajit Ray
Screenplay: Satyajit Ray
Cinematography: Barun Raha
Production design: Ashok Bose
Film editing: Dulal Dutta
Music: Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray's final film, The Stranger, based on one of his own short stories, ends with a rather sentimentally gratifying gesture on the part of its central character, but even this rather conventional narrative twist doesn't spoil the lovely seriocomic mood cast by the film as a whole. It's the story of a long-lost relative who suddenly, after 35 years without contact, arrives at the home of his one surviving family member, a niece who was 2 years old when he disappeared. Anila Bose and her husband, Sudhindra, are well-to-do residents of Calcutta who can't help being suspicious that the man who arrives on their doorstep may not be who he says he is, her mother's brother, Manomohan. Sudhindra is especially cautious, warning that the man may be planning to filch some of the valuable antiquities they have collected, so Anila dutifully locks some of them away. But almost from the beginning, the "uncle" begins to win Anila and especially her son, Satyaki, over with tales from his travels and unusual insights into the way of the world. Even Sudhindra is disarmed when the man produces his passport but also warns him that passports can be forged. Some curious friends of the Bose family "drop in" to form their own opinion of the stranger, and they, too, are won over. Anila begins to have her doubts, however, when, while reading an Agatha Christie novel in bed, it occurs to her that the long-lost uncle may be there to collect his share of her grandfather's will.  Finally, it falls to another, more deeply skeptical friend to challenge the man and his ideas: his observations on civilization that he has formed from his travels. Their heated debate is the intellectual and dramatic turning point in the story. Ray's typically roving camera keeps the film from becoming stagy: It takes place mostly  in the Bose home, because Ray's doctors had warned him to do most of his filming indoors, but there are also some lovely outdoor scenes, especially toward the end, when Manomohan takes the family to a tribal village where dancers show the family that there is more to Indian culture than their privileged middle-class lives. The Stranger is a fine farewell to an illustrious career.