American interest in Satyajit Ray appears to have peaked in the Peace Corps era of the early '60s. One wonders if he didn't forfeit his status as a Third World filmmaker once it became apparent that his theme was not the plight of India's landless masses but the social evolution of its Brahman bourgeoisie. That The Middleman (1975) … reiterates Ray's obsessive concern should be obvious from its title. What's uncharacteristic about the film—Ray's best since his chamber drama Charluta (1964)—is its bleak pessimism.

Shot during the early days of Indira Gandhi's "emergency rule" in the pressure cooker atmosphere of Ray's native Calcutta, The Middleman is played against a tatty backdrop of matter-of-fact chaos. The recurrent power failures and perpetually crossed phone wires are almost too routine to deserve comment. The lines of the unemployed snake through half the exterior scenes; the clamor of the street invades every...