Sensual attractions on the highway: Satyajit Ray’s ABHIJAAN – Ravi Vasudevan (Delhi)

Dilapidated cars speeding along potholed country roads, cab drivers loitering in cheap bars, pimping and opium trafficking, sensual attractions and fistfights: Satyajit Ray and his lead actor Soumitra Chatterjee invite us into a world of physical impulses and spaces beyond what is usually associated with Ray’s oeuvre.

Film historian Ravi Vasudevan is the co-director of Sarai, the media studies research program of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies Delhi and co-founder of the journal Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies.

Film: ABHIJAAN (The Expedition), India 1962, 145 min.