L'Inde fantôme

L'Inde Fantôme consists of six parts, the first three of which will be shown within the framework of Dennis O'Rourke's Top 10. In the first part, The impossible Camera, Malle explores India with his camera. From the deplorable situation in Calcutta to the south of the subcontinent he searches for the traditional India. He films fishermen, shepherds and farmers, and is amazed about the immense contradiction between the people who are dying of hunger and the impressive landscape they do it in.Things seen in Madras focusses on South India, where religion is omnipresent. In this part, Malle shows the government attempts to modernize the traditional countryside, as exemplified by the instructions of the family planning centre to the perplexed villagers. He also shows the contradictions between the commercial dancers who perform in musical like Indian feature films and a group of girls in Kaltchetra, who are learning the traditional sacred dances.Religion is the central theme of The Indians and the sacred. Malle argues that religion can be regarded as 'opium for the people', utilizing bizarre rituals, fetishism and (sometimes) myopia. But Malle emphasizes the beauty and the mystical passion, in an attempt to explain that religion offers the only way to escape for the majority of Indians.. In an interview in 1972 Malle called this documentary his "best work". The authorities were less content about it and the film created an international scandal when the Indian government send away the BBC from New Delhi after it had shown the film on tv.