A Satyajit Ray film in Hindi narrated by Amitabh Bachchan starring Saeed Jaffrey, Sanjeev Kumar and Richard Attenborough. The Chess Players focuses on the British takeover of the city of Oudh while two resident noblemen obsess over chess, and neglect their wives.
Most interesting for me is how easily the Nawab (a poet, artist, and musician giften enough to be admired by a British officer) succumbed to the threat of British force. The distant, almost unfeeling nature of the film – so intrinsic to Ray’s output – is more tangible here, and its effects prove just as divisively destructive as his early work.