The Music Room / Charulata

THE MUSIC ROOM (JALSAGHAR), 1958, New Yorker Films, 100 min. Dir. Satyajit Ray. An arrogant member of the declining aristocracy demonstrates both his refined taste and his ruinous self-indulgence by holding lavish concerts in his prized music room. Splendidly decadent settings and virtuoso musical performances mark this potent mixture of nostalgia and irony, which ranks with Visconti's THE LEOPARD and Welles' THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS as a double-edged elegy for a dying upper-class world.

CHARULATA, 1964, New Yorker Films, 117 min. Dir. Satyajit Ray. In Victorian India, a restless young woman struggles to come to terms with her enforced upper-class idleness, suppressed literary talent and illicit love for her husband's cousin.