Calcutta

One of two works to come out of the months Louis Malle spent in India. The other is the seven-part television series Phantom India; this is a hundred-and-five-minute cinema film assembled only from three weeks in Calcutta. It premiered at Cannes in 1969. Malle does not refuse narration, but he does not explain either: the camera looks at a market, a cremation ground, a child born in the street, a sacrifice at the Kali temple and a strike march from the same distance. Duration replaces commentary; the scenes are not cut away from, they are watched. Its consequences played out beyond cinema. The Indian government and Indians in Britain accused Malle of showing only the country's poverty. When the BBC began broadcasting Phantom India in 1970, the Indian High Commission asked for it to be stopped; the request was refused, the BBC's New Delhi bureau was shut, and British media were restricted in the country for years. Who it is for: viewers who like observational documentary and a camera that does not comment. Who it is not for: anyone who wants context. The film does not explain Calcutta, and the criticism that this is an outsider's European gaze turning poverty into spectacle still holds.