Widely regarded as the crowning achievement of his career,
Louis Malle's 378-minute documentary
Phantom India provides an epic-length portrait of life in India circa 1968. Biographically, it succeeded Malle's United Artists period movie
Le Voleur and the production of the "William Wilson" segment in
Spirits of the Dead, and arrived at a time of intense personal crisis for the director: 34-year-old Malle, terrified of falling back into the same bourgeois mindset that he had worked so aggressively to escape, felt it re-encroaching; he also fell into a nasty funk that reportedly drove him to the brink of suicide. With his marriage to Anne-Marie Deschodt in pieces, Malle thus decided to wipe the slate completely clean: he dropped out of western society and headed to India, with a two-man crew (sound man Jean-Claude Laureux and co-cinematographer Etienne Becker), traveling without maps and without a compass - destination and whereabouts unknown. The three shot documentary footage instinctively, flipping on their cameras each time something caught their attention. The journey itself lasted a little under four months, from January 5, 1968 through May 1, 1968; it generated over 30 hours of footage, which Malle and editor
Suzanne Baron subdivided thematically and edited into seven segments of about 54 minutes each. The individual episodes are as follows:
Episode 1, "The Impossible Camera" -
Largely a heightened meditation on the overarching theme of the epic - the impossibility of viewer understanding within the cinematic framework of a documentary - this episode opens with glimpses of "westernized" Indian residents who demonstrate extreme influence by modern philosophical and political concepts such as Communism. Dissatisfied, and determined to find the "real India," Malle and his crew plunge deeper, photographing such indigenous events as a Hindu wedding, the celebration of Shiva, a bizarre Indian Catholic ritual performed in full drag and a trip to the temple of Konarak. They also encounter and question two "hippie" Frenchmen who have dropped out of western society and moved to India as wanderers. The episode wraps with an argument between shore fishermen and a trader.
Episode 2, "Things Seen in Madras"
Per its title, this episode compiles much of the footage shot by Malle and his crew during their time in Madras. It opens with a temple celebration at Kapaleshvara, then explores the political climate of Madras, with a glimpse of a satire performed on the stage. Later, Malle and co. visit the Family Planning Ward at the Madras fair (where tour guides offer humorous illustrations of birth control procedures). The episode wraps with a trip to a Bollywood movie studio, with a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the production of the movie
Thillana Mohanambal.
Episode 3, "The Indians and the Sacred"
This episode of
Phantom India explores the contradictions and paradoxes of Indian religion. Opening with the most grotesque image in the entire epic - a yogi who has pierced his entire body (face, arms, legs, groin, tongue, etc.) with a cage bearing giant needles -"The Indians and the Sacred" segues into a trip to see a giant statue of Nandi the Bull, and then into southern India, for a glimpse of more idiosyncratic and tightly-knit Indian belief systems. Later, Malle and his team visit the temple of Madurai, tour a
garbhagrilha, and greet the
saddhus, strange, potentially dangerous shaman-like figures who mingle with, and are possessed by, powerful and occasionally malevolent spirits.
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