Satyajit Ray concludes the Calcutta Trilogy by tracing the downward spiral of a promising young man. After failing to enter the corporate workforce, Somnath (Pradip Mukherjee) strikes out on his own as a “middleman” and quickly discovers how much greasing is needed to turn the wheels of commerce. A panoramic underworld film, The Middleman starkly depicts the predatory snake pit of corrupt hustlers and traffickers who populate Calcutta’s crowded margins as Somnath slowly transitions from dealing in stationery and industrial chemicals to seedier merchandise.  

DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: Satyajit Ray. WITH: Pradip Mukherjee, Satya Banerjee, Dipankar Dey, Lily Chakravarti. 1975. 131 min. India. B&W. Bengali. 35mm. Restored by the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project in 1996 through a collaboration of the Academy Film Archive, the Merchant-Ivory Foundation and The Film Foundation. Print courtesy of the Packard Humanities Institute Collection at the Academy Film Archive.

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