Indian Scenes

La Vie aux Indes

This is, for 1906, a strikingly ambitious prototype-documentary travelogue filmed in and around the cities now called Kolkata and Mumbai. It's full of precious, occasionally startling images, from an extended 'phantom ride' down busy Calcutta streets to thronging port life, street trading, even the cremation of a human body and the ritual decapitation of lambs on a Bombay street – a scene some viewers may find upsetting. This is a French production but, like many of the 'exotic' travel films so popular in early cinema, it travelled widely itself – hence this version, with English language intertitles.