The Adversary (Pratidwandi)
Satyajit Ray’s first film of the 1970s starts boldly with a series of hallucinatory negative-printed sequences. The opening chapter in Ray’s Calcutta Trilogy, The Adversary depicts medical student Siddhartha’s travails in the bustling West Bengal capital as he tries and fails to find work. Explosions rock the streets as random, communist ideology is entering middle-class discourse. Ray evokes the camera-eye immediacy of Dziga Vertov in the textures of urban life.

Company Limited (Seemabaddha)
After making a film about the ups and downs of the young people of West Bengal in a desperate search for work and meaning—The Adversary—Ray turns his attention to the people who have managed to find employment. Company Limited continues Ray’s Calcutta Trilogy with a vibrantly modernist look at a fan factory sales manager whose big contract with an Iraqi client could secure him a promotion. Ray takes us on a tour of swinging Calcutta with its clubs, salons, horse races, posh restaurants, and cabarets.

The Adversary (Pratidwandi)
DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: Satyajit Ray. WITH: Dhritiman Chatterjee, Krishna Bose, Indira Devi, Kalyan Chowdhury. 1970. 110 min. India. B&W. Bengali. 4K DCP. New 4K restoration DCP, courtesy of National Film Archive of India.

Company Limited (Seemabaddha)
DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: Satyajit Ray. WITH: Barun Chanda, Harindranath Chattopadhyay, Parumita Chowdhury, Sharmila Tagore. 1971. 112 min. India. B&W. Bengali. 35mm. Restored by the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project at the Academy Film Archive with funding from The Film Foundation. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

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