Had Louis Malle only made Phantom India, he would still hold an honored place in the history of film.  Made with a small crew consisiting of cinematographer Etienne Becker and sound man Jean-Claude Laureux, Phantom India is not only a remarkable document of a time and place, but also a meditation on the difficulty of truly knowing the Other. Malle found this work to be inspirational: "In the autumn of 1967 I was asked by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to present in India a series of eight French films... I was supposed to stay two weeks but I ended up staying almost two months... After those two months I realized that although India was impossible to understand for a foreigner - it was so opaque - yet I was so completely fascinated by it that I would have to come back.  So I returned to France at the end of 1967, and in a couple of weeks I raised the money I needed... My proposition was that we would start in Calcutta, look around and eventually shoot.  No plans, no script, no lighting equipment, no distribution commitments of any kind... It was enormously important for me, and I'm still trying to make sense of it today."