This lively, charming, but pointed tale of a young man who attempts to vault over class barriers into Calcutta's competitive business world via marriage to an affluent girl, was Mrinal Sen's homage to the French New Wave (in particular, Jules and Jim and The 400 Blows), which had recently hit India's art houses with a splash. ("Perhaps," Sen has since said, "one can see in Akash Kusum an overdose of Truffaut, but I have no regrets.") The film also came to be the first major controversy in Sen's career when Satyajit Ray used it as the basis of a critical dismissal of Sen, sparking Sen's spirited self-defense and a wide debate about politics and form in the Indian cinema.