Woman At The Window

Cinematic conventions tend to be embedded in the patriarchal. The controlling look is always male, with women subjected to the gaze - voyeuristic, investigative, looking for titillation. Yet, Satyajit Ray’s cinema strove to steer clear of this. None of Ray’s women protagonists - most memorably in his adaptations of Tagore’s stories but true of other films too - can be reduced to a cliché. They defy every imaginable stereotyping.

Woman at the Window attempts a completely new way of looking at Ray’s films in general and his adaptations of Tagore in particular, through an examination of objects that are the familiars of his female protagonists. A lorgnette in Charulata, a box of jewels in Monihara, a bag of gold coins in Ghare Baire, a squirrel in Samapti and in the non-Tagore stories, a stick of lipstick in Mahanagar, a hairpin on a rumpled pillow in Apur Sansar. What do these everyday objects subtly suggest about the characteristics of their owners and users? What role do they play in the lives of the characters? Do they offer a new dimension or perspective in the study of Ray’s cinema?

Award-winning author Shoma Chatterji offers an entirely new understanding of the differences and synergy between Tagore’s original stories and Ray’s celluloid readings of them, as also fascinating material for anyone interested in cinema or gender.