Satyajit Ray can reveal reality as can no other director in the world. He can give us the squelch of mud so that our feet are sucked into it; and the sound of birds frantically chattering so that we might reach out and touch a wing in flight; and the nearness of a great sluggish river so that we, too, are governed by it. One feels it possible to touch a Ray film, to make real tactile contact with objects and people which, in other films, we might admire for the patterns they made or the attitudes they struck.

One might see a thousand well-intentioned documentaries about India, yet learn less from them than from either of the two stories in Two Daughters. And besides his benevolently accurate eye, Satyajit Ray has a heart he has not controlled in the interests of sophistication. Director, producer, writer, composer—Ray...