Slate Money Goes to the Movies: The Big City
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Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2022
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
Welcome to Slate Money Goes to the Movies, a miniseries in which Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and a different guest each week discuss popular business-themed movies.
Shazna Nessa of The Wall Street Journal joins Felix and Emily to talk about the 1963 Bengali film, The Big City. They talk about how the feminist themes resonate today, what makes it an “art house” film, and why the ending seems like a low point, but doesn’t feel like one.
Email: slatemoney@slate.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Big City episode of Slate Money Goes to the Movies, where we |
| 0:20.1 | watch a movie with someone fabulous and I am Felix Amin of Axios, I'm here with Emily |
| 0:25.0 | Peck of Axios. Hello. And we do have one of the most fabulous guests of all time to talk |
| 0:32.7 | about what I'm just going to come out and say is one of the most fabulous movies that |
| 0:36.3 | we are going to watch in the entire season, if not all of the seasons. Shaz and Esa, |
| 0:41.2 | welcome to the show. Hi. Tell me about your amazing situation, Wall Street Journal. Yeah, |
| 0:48.0 | so I work at Wall Street Journal and I'm the Global Head of Visuals, so I oversee all of |
| 0:52.4 | our visual storytelling. I remember you talking to you a while, probably like a year ago now, |
| 0:58.5 | and we were talking about this season of episodes and you said something about some obscure black and |
| 1:06.6 | white movies from the 1960s and I was like, yeah, okay. And I should never not trust you because |
| 1:13.9 | this is an amazing movie. Yeah, it was during that point in the pandemic where I was, I just wanted |
| 1:20.7 | to see films that were not set in the place I lived. I wanted to be in other countries and |
| 1:27.3 | Satya Jitre is an incredible filmmaker and this was all set in Calcutta. In the 60s, I believe it |
| 1:35.0 | came out, but it was depicting the 1950s. So it was just such a great film. I had to tell you |
| 1:41.0 | about it and it had all these angles to it that were about contemporary or modern city life, |
| 1:47.6 | modern capitalism, this dichotomy between people who grew up in villages, who moved into the city, |
| 1:55.0 | you know, the lives of women, female emancipation, et cetera, et cetera. So many good themes and |
| 1:59.8 | feel like something I know you love, which is a bank run. And there were a few bank runs in this. |
| 2:05.9 | So bank runs were definitely a thing in Calcutta in the late 50s, which is a super fascinating time. |
| 2:14.0 | And I really want to talk to you about it. But like, first of all, I just want to say thank you |
| 2:18.7 | for making me watch this movie that I would never normally have sought out and watched because it |
| 2:23.9 | is one of the most beautiful and subtle and just perfectly made movies I've seen in years, |
... |
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