Days and Nights in the Forest (1969)

is the first part of another, looser trilogy which observes characters in relation to their work. Four executives out for a holiday in the country. Their page 11 attempts to find some sort of tranquility are constantly undercut by conflicts within the group, and the inability of each to discover himself outside the western-style values and habits they have adopted. The film's extraordinary visual beauty is counterpointed by a growing sense of foreboding the knowledge that behind the facade of pleasure-seeking an enormous crack in political and social consciousness is about to open up. Chekhovian strains are apparent in subject and treatment, and although it is strange to think of Ray's open spaces in these terms the comparison is extremely fitting.