Tony Mastroianni Review Collection
"Devi" Is Delicately Done
Cleveland Press 1966
The work of India's great director, Satyajit Ray, is on view currently at the Continental in a movie called "Devi" ("The Goddess").
The sensitive quality of the work and the stunning black and white photography overcome the slowness of the movie's pace.
IN "DEVI" a young man leaves home to attend college, leaving his extremely young wife with his father and the rest of his family. In a dream the girl's father-in-law sees her as the incarnation of the goddess Kali.
He calls it a vision and the bewildered girl finds herself being worshiped as a deity. The husband returns and tries to take her away, but -- because a dying child has been cured in her presence -- she stays, wondering: 'What if I am a goddess?"
There follows the inevitable tragedy as the goddess myth is put to the test.
Performances by Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore as the young husband and wife are movingly poignant.
"ODD OBSESSION" won a film festival award a few years back, but just why isn't apparent. The movie displays a cold-blooded fascination with the erotic in its study of an aging man and his search for restored virility.
The man is an intellectual with a young, attractive wife. He resorts to odd methods to regain his youth, including medicine, jealousy and throwing his wife into the arms of his daughter's fiance
Each character is revealed as he appears to others and as he really is and a more sick lot you are not likely to find.
The husband dies, his end brought on in a bizarre fashion, and the rest meet their fate in a rather grim conclusion to the whole affair.
The acting is uniformly good, especially that of the husband. The movie has been done in an attractive pale color.
