Satyajit Ray: The finest film maker.

[tamizharasan]

[tscii:21ae19bb1b]Let us talk about greatest film maker from India in this thread.

Critics on Ray

Akira Kurosawa, Film Director
"The quiet but deep observation, understanding and love of the human race, which are characteristic of all his films, have impressed me greatly. … I feel that he is a "giant" of the movie industry." … " Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon."

"I can never forget the excitement in my mind after seeing it (Pather Panchali). It is the kind of cinema that flows with the serenity and nobility of a big river.

People are born, live out their lives, and then accept their deaths. Without the least effort and without any sudden jerks, Ray paints his picture, but its effect on the audience is to stir up deep passions. How does he achieve this? There is nothing irrelevant or haphazard in his cinematographic technique. In that lies the secret of its excellence."
- As reported in Eksan, 1987 (Translation of remarks made in Moscow in 1975)


Academy Award Citation, 1992
"In recognition of his rare mastery of the art of motion pictures, and of his profound humanitarian outlook, which has had an indelible influence on filmmakers and audiences throughout the world.”


Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate Economics
"The work of Satyajit Ray presents a remarkably insightful understanding of the relations between cultures, and his ideas remain pertinent to the great cultural debates in the contemporary world, not least in India."
- Satyajit Ray and the art of Universalism, The New Republic, April 1, 1996.


Darius Cooper, Film Critic
"In film after film, he investigates India's social institutions and the power structures to which they give rise, or vice versa. He works out, in concrete terms, the conflicts and issues of his times, both in his own state of Bengal and in the larger Indian nation.
- The Cinema of Satyajit Ray: Between Tradition and Modernity, 2000


Elia Kazan, Film Director
"I want to add my voice to those of Scorsese and Merchant in asking the Academy grant Satyajit Ray an Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award. I have admired his films for many years and for me he is the filmic voice of India, speaking for the people of all classes of the country...He is the most sensitive and eloquent artist and it can truly be said in his case that when we honor him we are honoring ourselves."
(Nominating Ray for Life Time Achievement Oscar, 1991)


George Lucas, Film Producer/Screenwriter,1991
"Satyajit Ray is an extraordinary filmmaker with a long and illustrious career who has had a profound influence on filmmakers and audiences throughout the world. By honoring Satyajit Ray, the Academy will help bring his work to the attention of a larger public, particularly to young filmmakers, on whom his work will certainly have a positive effect."
(Nominating Ray for Life Time Achievement Oscar, 1991)


James Ivory, Film Director, 1991
"Satyajit Ray is among the world's greatest directors, living or dead...Isn't it curious that the newest, the most modern of the arts, has found one of its deepest, most fluent expressions in the work of an artist like Ray, who must make his seem less films--many have been masterpieces--in a chaotic and volatile corner of one of the world's oldest cultures, amidst the most stringent shortages of today's advanced movie-making material and equipment?...It would be fitting to honour this great man, who has influenced so many other film makers in all parts of the world, and to salute him with a Lifetime Award in the spring of 1992."
(Nominating Ray for Life Time Achievement Oscar, 1991)


John Schlesinger, Film Director/Producer/Writer, 1991
"...his extraordinary body of work has not only greatly influenced so many filmmakers, but has profoundly affected their humanitarian attitude. The seeming "simplicity" of his films is the mark of a truly great master and I would be overjoyed if he were to be honored by the Academy."
(Nominating Ray for Life Time Achievement Oscar, 1991)


Martin Scorsese, Film Director
" Ray's magic, the simple poetry of his images and their emotional impact, will always stay with me."

"We would like to bring to your attention, and to the attention of the distinguished board of directors of the Academy, a master filmmaker, Satyajit Ray... Though somewhat unwell, during the past few years he has completed two additional films, centered around his deeply humanitarian vision. His work is in the company of that of living contemporaries like Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa and Federico Fellini."
(Nominating Ray for Life Time Achievement Oscar, 1991)

"I was in high school and I happened to see 'Pather Panchali' on television. Dubbed in English. With commercials. "It didn't matter. It didn't matter. The image of the Indian culture we had had before, and I'm talking I was 14 years old or 15 years old, were usually through colonialist eyes. And when Satyajit Ray did his films you suddenly not understood the culture because the culture was so complex but you became attached to the culture through the people, and it didn't matter what they were speaking, what they were wearing, what their customs were. Their customs were very, very interesting and surprising, and you suddenly began to realize there are other cultures in the world."
- Martin Scorsese Pays Tribute to Satyajit Ray , Washington Post, February 28, 2002


Pauline Kael, Film Critic (I Lost It At The Movies, 1965)
"Like Renoir and DeSica, Ray sees that life itself is good no matter how bad it is. It is difficult to discuss art which is an affirmation of life, without fear of becoming maudlin. But is there any other kind of art, on screen or elsewhere? "In cinema," Ray says, "we must select everything for the camera according to the richness of its power to reveal."

Ray is sometimes (for us Westerners, and perhaps for Easterners also?) a little boring, but what major artist outside film and drama isn't? What he has to give us is so rich, so contemplative in approach (and this we are completely unused to in the film medium - except perhaps in documentary), that we begin to accept out lapses of attention during the tedious moments with the same kind of relaxation and confidence and affection that we feel for the boring sketches in the great novels, the epic poems."


Robert Steel, Film Critic
"[When] I did see [Pather Panchali]... I was bowled over. Here was an Indian film that was a film or that matched my concept of a film and a great one at that. It was the first film made in India that I had ever seen which did not embarrass, annoy, or bore me."
- Montage Special Issue on Satyajit Ray, 1966


Robin Wood, Film Critic (The Apu Trilogy 1972)
"Can we [the Western audience] feel any confidence that we are adequately understanding, intellectually and emotionally, works which are the product of a culture very different from our own?

... What is remarkable is how seldom in Ray's films the spectator is pulled up by any specific obstacle arising from cultural differences ... Ray is less interested in expressing ideas than in communicating emotional experience. "


Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Screen Writer/Author
"Out of his great body of work, my own particular favorite is his film Charulata. Although he was such a superb visual artist, Ray's main inspiration was literary. He always wrote his own scripts (as well as directing them and composing his own original score!) and his greatest films were all adaptations of favorite novels and stories, including Charulata, which was based on a novella by Tagore. It doesn't seem to matter through what medium — novels, plays, films, music — the most potent influences reach us. All great works stimulate a hopeful emulation that ends occasionally, as in the films of Satyajit Ray, in radiant success — ensuring the continuation of this business of influence and inspiration that makes us all try and try and try again."

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[tamizharasan]

related sites.
http://www.satyajitray.org/index.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyajit_Ray

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006249/

http://satyajitray.ucsc.edu/

[tamizharasan]

[tscii:262d22c105] Ray on Ray


Cineaste magazine interview with Satyajit Ray

Cineaste: How did Pather Panchali change you. Did it help you discover Bengal?

Satyajit Ray: I certainly discovered rural life while making Pather Panchali. There's no question of that. I'd been city-born, city-bred, so I didn't know the village firsthand. While hunting locations in rural areas, and, after finding the village and spending some time there, I began to understand. Talking to people, reacting to moods, to the landscape, to the sights and sounds—all this helped. But it's not just people who have been brought up in villages who can make films about village life. An outside view is also able to penetrate.

Cineaste: What have been other influences on your work?

Ray: Bibhuti Bhushan [the author of The Apu Trilogy and Distant Thunder] influenced me very much. In fact, I knew about village life by reading Pather Panchali. I felt a rapport with him, with the village and his attitude towards it, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to make Pather Panchali in the first place. I was deeply moved by the book.

I have also been moved by Tagore's work, which is not necessarily rural. Of course, our cultural background, our cultural makeup, is a fusion of East and West. This applies to anybody who has been educated in the city in India and who has been exposed to the classics of English literature. After all, our knowledge of the West is deeper than the Westerner's knowledge of our country. We have imbibed Western education. Western music, Western art, Western literature have all been very influential in India.

Film, as a purely technological medium of expression, developed in the West. The concept of an art form existing in time is a Western concept, not an Indian one. So, in order to understand cinema as a medium, it helps if one is familiar with the West and Western art forms. A Bengali folk artist, or a primitive artist, will not be able to understand the cinema as an art form. Someone who has had a Western education is definitely at an advantage.

Cineaste: Indian critics often contend that Pather Panchali was a radical film because it completely altered India's film economy. It proved that it was possible to make viable films without studio patronage. Did the film really have an immediate impact?

Ray: I don't think so. Although the audience and critics recognized the film as a landmark of sorts, filmmakers weren't that quick to follow. There was no immediate influence discernible in other directors' works. That came much later. In the last five or six years, filmmakers coming out of the Film Institute in Poona have acknowledged that they have been influenced by Pather Panchali.

Cineaste: Are you surprised that your films have been so well received outside of India?

Ray: I never imagined that any of my films, especially Pather Panchali, would be seen throughout this country or in other countries. The fact that they have is an indication that, if you're able to portray universal feelings, universal relations, emotions, and characters, you can cross certain barriers and reach out to others, even non-Bengalis.

Cineaste: What is the most unsatisfying film you've ever made?

Ray: The most unsatisfying film, Chiriakhana (The Zoo), is not being shown in my current retrospective. For one thing, it was not a subject of my choice. I was forced by circumstances to do it. Some of my assistants were supposed to do the film, but they suddenly lost confidence and asked me to take it on.

Chiriakhana's a whodunit, and whodunits just don't make good films. I prefer the thriller form where you more or less know the villain from the beginning. The whodunit always has this ritual concluding scene where the detective goes into a rigmarole of how everything happened, and how he found the clues which led him to the criminal. It's a form that doesn't interest me very much.

Cineaste: What's been your most satisfying film?

Ray: Well, the one film that I would make the same way, if I had to do it again, is Charulata. There are other films, such as Days and Nights in the Forest, which I also admire. Among the children's films, I like Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God). It works very well. It's got wit. It's got film eye. It's got a face, a very satisfying face, and some wonderful acting. I also enjoy making the musical films because they give me a chance to compose music. And they're commercially successful, which gives you a certain kind of satisfaction. I like Kanchenjungha, too. That's probably because it was my first original screenplay and a very personal film. It was a good ten to fifteen years ahead of its time.

Cineaste: It has a fragmented narrative.

Ray: Yes. Our audience likes a central character, or a couple of central characters with whom they can identify, and a story with a straight narrative line. Kanchenjungha told the story of several groups of characters and it went back and forth. You know, between group one, group two, group three, group four, then back to group one, group two, and so on. It's a very musical form, but it wasn't liked. The reaction was stupid. Even the reviews were not interesting. But, looking back now, I find that it is a very interesting film.

Cineaste: The women in your films tend to be much stronger, more determined, more adaptable and resilient than the men in your films. Is that a reflection of Bengali social history?

Ray: That is often a reflection of what the author has written, a confirmation of the author's point of view expressed in the books on which the films are based. There have been many strong women characters in Tagore and in Bankimchandra. But it also reflects my own attitudes and personal experience of women.

Cineaste: Which is?

Ray: Although they're physically not as strong as men, nature gave women qualities which compensate for that fact. They're more honest, more direct, and by and large they're stronger characters. I'm not talking about every woman, but the type of woman which fascinates me. The woman I like to put in my films is better able to cope with situations than men.

Cineaste: Is Charulata the archetypal Ray woman?

Ray: Yes, she is.

Cineaste: Starting from The Music Room and continuing on to The Chess Players, you go back and forth between old culture and new culture, tradition and progress. Sometimes I get the feeling that you are leaning toward tradition and the old culture and are somewhat disapproving of what is new.

Ray: I don't disapprove of what is new in The Chess Players. There is a very clear attitude expressed in the fact that the feudals are not involved in what is happening around them. Although I am sympathetic to the characters, there's also a clear suggestion that these people are no good. But I am more interested in a way of life that is passing and the representatives of that way of life. You can find the same thing in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and it fascinates me.

Of course, you risk flogging a dead horse in saying that feudalism is stupid and wrong. But you also feel for the characters in those films. They're pathetic, like dinosaurs who don't realize why they're being wiped out. There's a quality of pathos in that which interests me.

Cineaste: Most Western critics feel that your vision of India is a bleak and despairing one.

Ray: The Middleman is really the only film of which that sort of remark can be made.

Cineaste: But others have found Days and Nights in the Forest despairing.

Ray: I wouldn't call it such a despairing vision. Certain unpleasant truths are expressed in it, but that is part of drama, it applies to all kinds of films. You can analyze a Western film and find a very despairing statement about Western values. You can't make happy films all the time.

If you're making a film about problems, but you don't have a solution, there's bound to be a despairing quality. In The Big City, both husband and wife lose their jobs. There are no jobs around. They drift apart, there is misunderstanding, and they come together again. But they still don't have any jobs, and they may not have any for quite some time, but that doesn't make it despairing.

The only bleak film I have made is The Middleman. There's no question about that. I felt corruption, rampant corruption, all around. Everyone talks about it in Calcutta. Everyone knows, for instance, that the cement allotted to the roads and underground railroad is going to the contractors who are building their own homes with it. The Middleman is a film about that kind of corruption and I don't think there is any solution.

Cineaste: You've often said that you don't think it's right, important, or necessary for an artist to provide answers or make judgments, to say that this is right and this is wrong. You've stayed away from major political statements.

Ray: I have made political statements more clearly than anyone else, including Mrinal Sen. In Middleman I included a long conversation in which a Congressite discusses the tasks ahead. He talks nonsense, he tells lies, but his very presence is significant. If any other director had made that film, that scene would not have been allowed. But there are definitely restrictions on what a director can say. You know that certain statements and portrayals will never get past the censors. So why make them?

Cineaste: Given the political climate in India, is the filmmaker's role one of passive observer or activist?

Ray: Have you seen Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamonds)? There is a scene of the great clean-up where all the poor people are driven away. That is a direct reflection of what happened in Delhi and other cities during Indira Gandhi's Emergency. In a fantasy like The Kingdom of Diamonds, you can be forthright, but if you're dealing with contemporary characters, you can be articulate only up to a point, because of censorship. You simply cannot attack the party in power. It was tried in The Story of a Chair and the entire film was destroyed. What can you do? You are aware of the problems and you deal with them, but you also know the limit, the constraints beyond which you just cannot go.

Cineaste: Some people see that as an abdication of the filmmaker's social role. A number of critics, especially those in Bengal, feel that you aren't political enough, that you can go further, but that you just haven't tested your limits.

Ray: No, I don't think I can go any further. It is very easy to attack certain targets like the establishment. You are attacking people who don't care. The establishment will remain totally untouched by what you're saying. So what is the point? Films cannot change society. They never have. Show me a film that changed society or brought about any change.

Cineaste: What about filmmakers such as Leni Riefenstahl, who presented the Nazi version of the Aryan myth, or Sergei Eisenstein, who used film as a tool of the revolution?

Ray: Eisenstein aided a revolution that was already taking place. In the midst of a revolution, a filmmaker has a positive role, he can do something for the revolution. But, if there is no revolution, you can do nothing.

Riefenstahl was helping a myth, the Nazi ideology, and the Nazis were very strong at the time. In the early days of fascism, even the intellectuals were confused. Tagore was led to believe that Mussolini was doing something wonderful, playing a very positive role, until Romain Rolland told him he was wrong, that he hadn't understood the full implications of fascism.

Cineaste: How do you see your own social role as filmmaker?

Ray: You can see my attitude in The Adversary where you have two brothers. The younger brother is a Naxalite. There is no doubt that the elder brother admires the younger brother for his bravery and convictions. The film is not ambiguous about that. As a filmmaker, however, I was more interested in the elder brother because he is the vacillating character. As a psychological entity, as a human being with doubts, he is a more interesting character to me. The younger brother has already identified himself with a cause. That makes him part of a total attitude and makes him unimportant. The Naxalite movement takes over. He, as a person, becomes insignificant.

Cineaste: But can you make such a distinction between ideological gestures and emotional gestures? Isn't the ideologue also an intellectual being? How can you create such a dichotomy?

Ray: Why not? I don't see why not. Anybody who identifies himself with a movement is depending on directives from higher figures who are dictating, controlling their movement. If you took the controlling characters, that would be interesting. Then you could make a film about the Naxalite movement, an Eisensteinian film about revolutionary activity. But you cannot do that under the present circumstances in India.

Cineaste: I am not the only one who feels that you emphasize emotion. Robin Wood has written that you are more interested in communicating emotional experiences than in expressing ideas.

Ray: That's just not correct. One thing that should be clearly discernible in my films is a strong moral attitude.

Cineaste: Is that a product of your religious upbringing, of being Brahmo?

Ray: I don't think so. I don't even know what being Brahmo means. I stopped going to Brahmo Samaj around the age of fourteen or fifteen. I don't believe in organized religion anyway. Religion can only be on a personal level. I just find that the moral attitude I demonstrate is more interesting than any political attitude I could bring to my films.

Cineaste: Is the moral attitude sometimes too simple? In Pikoo you seem to be suggesting that infidelity can lead to a variety of problems, that changing social and sexual values have hurt the social and family fabric.

Ray: Pikoo is a very complex film. It is a poetic statement which cannot be reduced to concrete terms. One statement the film tries to make is that, if a woman is to be unfaithful, if she is to have an extramarital affair, she can't afford to have soft emotions towards her children, or, in this case, her son. The two just don't go together. You have to be ruthless. Maybe she's not ruthless to that extent. She's being very Bengali. A European in the same circumstances would not behave in the same way.

Cineaste: How did Charulata resolve the problem of infidelity? She, as we are led to believe, went back. Was she being unfaithful or just caught between....

Ray: She was unfaithful but she was also confused because the husband was good. He wasn't a rake. Charulata probably felt sympathetic and was attempting to patch up the situation. The husband realized too late that he himself was responsible for what had happened. That is why at the end of the film there is the suggestion that they will come together, but that it is too soon for a reconciliation.

Cineaste: How much of your own sentiments are in your characters? Reviewing Distant Thunder, Pauline Kael wrote, "Ray has put something of himself into Gangacharan, something of his own guilt, of weakness, of commitment." Is that accurate?

Ray: Critics forget that I'm basing the film on someone else's work that already exists in another form. In Distant Thunder, Gangacharan is very close to Bibhuti Bhushan's concept. The real question should be whether the author himself had this feeling of guilt and weakness. I'm not the originator of the story. Why drag me into it?

It's true, the fact that I have chosen to portray a character in a certain way does imply a sense of identity and understanding. I understand Gangacharan, his motivations, his behavior, his reactions. For me, he is a believable, fully-rounded character, and his transformation at the end is very moving, but he is not my reflection.

Cineaste: Are you suggesting that people who don't read the books from which your films are made may have a difficult time understanding or interpreting your films?

Ray: Yes, in the sense that they tend to ignore the original author completely. They're thinking of the narrative as a total creation, from beginning to end, by the filmmaker, and that is usually not true. I choose a story or a novel for certain elements in it which appeal to me. In the process of writing the screenplay, the theme may be modified, but most of the original elements will be retained. Often the screenplay evolves as a criticism of the original. After reading a story many times, you may feel that a certain character would not behave the way the author has described, so some changes are made. Once I have read a story and gotten to know it, I will leave the story behind and start from scratch. At the end, if I find that certain changes are convincing, I'll keep them and forget the original.

Cineaste: Some critics feel that you romanticize poverty, that the poverty and misery in your films never become ugly.

Ray: I think that Pather Panchali is fairly ruthless in its depiction of poverty. The behavior of characters, the way that the mother behaves towards the old woman, is absolutely cruel. I don't think anyone has shown such cruelty to old people within a family. Distant Thunder takes place in a very pretty setting and this is a point that Kael makes, that Babita is a baby doll or something. She doesn't know that some Brahmin wives in the villages were very beautiful.

Cineaste: Isn't the point in Distant Thunder that a famine occurred without a scorched earth and starving faces?

Ray: Yes, that's what happened during that famine. It was only after everyone started coming into the cities that it became clear that people could die of hunger even when there had been a good harvest. That was the point of that particular famine. As for my use of color, it came straight from the author's description—that nature was very lush, that everything was physically beautiful, and, yet, people were dying of hunger.

Cineaste: You, Fellini, Kurosawa, and Bergman all started making films around the same time. Many critics feel, however, that you have lagged behind, that you haven't taken the aesthetic and narrative risks that Fellini or Bergman have taken. As you come to the end of nearly thirty years of filmmaking, how do you see your own career in comparison with others?

Ray: I think I achieved maturity at a pretty early stage. It has been my preoccupation to achieve as much density as possible within a superficially simple narrative structure. I don't think of the Western audiences when I make my films. I am thinking of my own audience in Bengal. I am trying to take them along with me, and this I have succeeded in doing. At the beginning, this audience was extremely unsophisticated. They were used to trash or the naive Bengali film. You had to take them along slowly. Sometimes you took a leap as in Kanchenjungha or in Days and Nights in the Forest, and lost them.

These kinds of risks, especially in relation to their audiences, haven't been taken by Bergman or Fellini. Bergman is fairly simple, although he can be very austere and rigorous, and he is often aided by some marvelous photography. As for Fellini, he seems to be making the same film over and over again. There is a lot of bravura in his films, in spite of the fact that he's not so interested in the stories, and people go to see that bravura.

I can't do all that Bergman and Fellini do. I don't have their audiences and I don't work in that kind of context. I have to contend with an audience that is used to dross. I have worked with an Indian audience for thirty years and, in that time, the general look of cinema hasn't changed. Certainly not in Bengal. You'll find directors there are so backward, so stupid, and so trashy that you'll find it difficult to believe that their works exist alongside my films. I am forced by circumstances to keep my stories on an innocuous level. What I can do, however, is to pack my films with meaning and psychological inflections and shades, and make a whole which will communicate a lot of things to many people.


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[Bala (Karthik)]

Thanks for posting the interview TA

[Querida]

I am but an amateur when it comes to this subject...but my own experience is that Ray's films has influence far and wide...for example the friend who first introduced me to Ray's "Pather Panchali" was Romanian. I was no doubt surprised.

I throughly enjoyed "Pather Panchali" and went on to watch "Aparajito" but when trying to follow up shortly with "Apur Sansur" , I have to admit, it thoroughly depressed me. I think I will wait awhile before attempting the last one.

The words "timeless" apply to the aforementioned films in not so much as an evergreen topic or experience but rather a release of time in which I feel that I became so engrossed in such a simple tale of poverty and survival. I will always feel for Apu's mother and her calls to Apu will always haunt my dreams. Who you have cited have of course said it in a more eloquent way, but I can say that I certainly share the feeling.

The British Indian comedy series "Goodness Gracious Me" did a spoof of an interview with Satyajit Ray...If I can find it, I will post it.

[AravindMano]

It's amusing that any reporter or discussion on Ray would begin with 'romanticizing' poverty and such things. May be because Pather Panjali was his most popular film. He was much more than that.

Of the four Ray's films I have watched, I liked the rest better than Pather Panjali. (I badly need to revisit it anyway. I saw it long back).

'Nayak' & 'Aranyer Din Ratri' were absolutely fantastic. Keeping these two films in my mind, I voted for the third option.

[tamizharasan]

It's amusing that any reporter or discussion on Ray would begin with 'romanticizing' poverty and such things. May be because Pather Panjali was his most popular film. He was much more than that.

Of the four Ray's films I have watched, I liked the rest better than Pather Panjali. (I badly need to revisit it anyway. I saw it long back).

'Nayak' & 'Aranyer Din Ratri' were absolutely fantastic. Keeping these two films in my mind, I voted for the third option.

Did you see Charulata? It is a lesson for film makers on how to make movie.

[kid-glove]

Ray seems to be more satisfied with Charulata than Pather Panchali (and Apu trilogy in general), which is mostly mentioned as his masterpiece.

My favorite Ray films in no order:
Days and Nights in the Forest(his most challenging and in my humble opinion, his best)
Charulata (a rich feminist work that even tops Mahanagar/The Big City)
Pather Panchali
Jalsaghar/the Music room
Kanchenjungha
Sadgati (Tv movie starring Om puri and late Smita Patil that rivals their work in Nihalani and Benegal films of the same time)

His speech while receiving lifetime achievement award is a riot. Very sophisticated, and well-informed, even if he was quite ill (only recorded clip of ray receiving the award on deathbed)! His taste for irony and humor despite the situation is genuinely moving.

I'm currently reading his book, "Our films, their films", after being impressed by the portions I read in books.google.com, what a page turner. As usual, Ray treads that fine line between scholarly elitism and matter-of-fact prose.

[tamizharasan]

K_g
Thanks for your contribution. Write more about this legend. I have seen most of his movies now even though I started seeing his movies only 10 years back. Very strange feeling when I see them. Everything looks so genuine, sometime we forget the fact we are watching movie.

[AravindMano]

It's amusing that any reporter or discussion on Ray would begin with 'romanticizing' poverty and such things. May be because Pather Panjali was his most popular film. He was much more than that.

Of the four Ray's films I have watched, I liked the rest better than Pather Panjali. (I badly need to revisit it anyway. I saw it long back).

'Nayak' & 'Aranyer Din Ratri' were absolutely fantastic. Keeping these two films in my mind, I voted for the third option.

Did you see Charulata? It is a lesson for film makers on how to make movie.

Not yet, will do soon. Thanks!

[kid-glove]

"Any filmmaker who while at work bears any resemblance to the popular conception of artist as a withdrawn individual in rapt communication with his muse is obviously shirking & has no business to be within miles of movie camera" Ray, 'Our films, their films'. :lol2:

[tamizharasan]

[tscii:339f0325cf] Making of Pather Panchali


1950, Search for a Producer
On his return in late 1950, with absolutely no experience in movie-making, Ray collected a group of young men to work as technicians. Subrata Mitra was the cinematographer; he had been a still photographer and had to coaxed into taking up the assignment. Anil Choudhury became the Production Controller, Bansi Chandra Gupta the art director.

While looking for financial backers, he approached widow of Bibhuti Bhusan Banerjee, the writer of Pather Panchali for film rights. She admired Ray's illustrations for the book and works of his father and grandfather. She gave her oral assurance and retained her faith in Satyajit Ray despite a better financial offer.

To explain his concept for the film to the potential producers, Ray had a small note-book, filled with sketches, dialogue and the treatment. This script along with another sketchbook that illustrated the key dramatic moments of the film were greeted with curiosity by producers. While many of them were impressed, none came forward to produce the film. Later, Ray donated this script and the wash sketches to the Cinémathèque Française, Paris.

Many offered advise against shooting in outdoor locations as most films were made in studios at that time. He was told by many that rain sequences could not be shot in the actual rains but required a well equipped studio. At the earliest opportunity, Ray rushed out with a 16 mm camera to test-shoot monsoon rains.

About two years were spent in vain to find a producer. Meanwhile, undeterred Ray had begun assembling the cast and looking for locations.

1952, Cattle eat up the scene
Unable to find a producer, Ray decided that unless he could prove his bona fides by producing a few sequences of the film, he was not likely to find financial backing. He borrowed money against his insurance policy and from a few relatives and friends. The shooting was to be done on Sundays due to his job at D.J. Keymer.

On 27 October 1952, he set out to take the first shot. The scene was the famous 'discovery of train by Apu and his sister Durga in the field of Kaash flowers'. "One day's work with camera and actors taught me more than all the dozen books," Ray would write later.

The following Sunday when they returned to shoot, to their horror they discovered that the Kaash flowers had been feasted upon by a herd of cattle. He had to wait for the next season of flowers to complete the scene.

1952, Casting and locations
Meanwhile, efforts to find a backer and working on other production requirements and casting continued.

The cast was a mix of professional actors and a few with no prior experience in acting. Only Subir Banerjee who played Apu, Karuna Banerjee who played Apu's mother, and the villagers who played other smaller roles, had no prior experience of acting. The rest had either acted in films or theatre.

Chunibala Devi, an 80-year old, retired theatre actress was cast to play Indir Thakrun. Boral, a small village on the outskirts of Calcutta was to be the major location.

1952, Faith in realistic cinema gets stronger

A still from Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Jamin, 1953
During this time, Bimal Roy had made Do Bigha Jamin (Two Acres of Land), in India; The film had a few songs, shot largely on locations. It was about the struggle of a peasant family. The film was in the tradition of neo-realist cinema with natural acting (though using professional actors, including Balraj Sahni who pioneered natural acting in mainstream Indian films). The film won the Prix International at the Cannes Festival, 1954. Do Bigha Jamin and Kurosawa's Rashoman, further strengthened Satyajit Ray's faith in the kind of film he was making.

Pather Panchali was to be shot in sequence as Ray had realized that he would be learning as they went along. He had to discover for himself, "how to catch the hushed stillness of dusk in a Bengali village when the wind drops and turns the ponds into sheets of glass, dappled by the leaves of Saluki and Shale, and the smoke from the ovens settles in wispy trails over the landscape and the plaintive blows on conch shells from homes far and near are joined by the chorus of crickets which rises as the light falls, until all one sees are the stars in the sky, and the stars that blink and swirl in the thickets."

1953, A producer at last

Ray filming Pather Panchali
©Bansi Chandragupta
He found a producer, Ana Dutta, who provided some funds with a promise of more after seeing the results and releasing his latest film. Ray took one month's leave without pay to shoot a few more sequences.

The shooting began in the village. Ray recalls this period as a great learning experience. The film appeared to be shaping up well. It was not long before the funds ran out. The producer's latest film had been a box-office disaster so he was unable to provide any more finances. However, since the arrangements had already been made for shoot, some of Ray's wife, Bijoya's jewelry was pawned and shooting continued for a few days more.

Ray was back to work at Kaymer. The footage was later edited to about 4000 ft. Ray approached many producers with the edited footage and was turned down.
Ray's production manager, Anil Choudhury suggested approaching Dr. B. C. Roy, the Chief Minister of West Bengal for help. The government agreed to fund. On September 8, 1953, a son and the only child, Sandip was born.

1954, Shooting resumes after a long break

Ray rehearsing 80-year old Chunibala Devi
©Bansi Chandragupta
After a break of almost a year, the shooting resumed in the early part of 1954. The funding from the government meant that the money would come in installments. Before each installment, the accounts had to be submitted and cleared by the government. This would often take up to a month.

Later, Ray would describe it as a miracle that while making the film, "One, Apu's voice did not break. Two, Durga did not grow up. Three, Indir Thakrun did not die."

In the autumn of 1954, Monroe Wheeler, a director of Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York was in Calcutta for putting together some Indian highlights for an exhibition. In a chance meeting, Ray showed some stills of Pather Panchali. Wheeler offered to hold a world premier at MOMA.

About six months later, John Huston had come to India in search of locations for 'The man who would be King'. He had been asked by Monroe Wheeler to check the progress of the film. After seeing about 15-20 minute long silent rough-cut, John Huston gave rave reviews to Wheeler. The film was scheduled to premier at MOMA.

1955, Breakneck post-production
Ray wanted Pandit Ravi Shankar, renowned Sitar maestro, to compose music for the film. Ravi Shankar, due to his tight touring schedule, was able to see only about half of the film and recorded the music in a non-stop session of about eleven hours. "It was a marathon session and left us exhausted but happy, because most of the music sounded wonderful", Ray would write in 'My Years with Apu', many years later. Due to shortage of time, however, Ravi Shankar could not provide music for a few sequences. Subrata Mitra, Ray's cinematographer, devised music for the sweetmeat seller as he goes peddling his sweets. Mitra also played sitar for a sequence.

To meet the MOMA deadline, Ray and his editor worked ten days and nights continuously in the final stage of post-production. The first print of Pather Panchali came out at night before it was to be dispatched. There was no time or money for the subtitles.

Weeks after the scheduled screening at MOMA, a letter came form MOMA describing at length how well the film had been received by the audience.
A page from the script of Pather Panchali ©Ray Family

Apu

Durga


Indir Thakrun and Durga
©Teknica


Sketches by Ray, Durga and Apu discover a train
©Ray Family


Durga & Apu in a field of Kaash flowers ©Teknica


Chunibala Devi, an 80-year old, retired theatre actress played Indir Thakrun


Durga & her parents ©Teknica


Apu ©Teknica



It was a marathon session and left us exhausted but happy, because most of the music sounded wonderful.


- Satyajit Ray,
about music recording for Pather Panchali, 1955

[/tscii:339f0325cf]

[tamizharasan]

Triumph of Pather Panchali


1955, A huge success
A few months later, on August 26, 1955, Pather Panchali was finally released in Calcutta. Using his advertising experience, ray had designed five billboards including a full-sized 8ftX20ft. one. It had Apu and Durga running in vast landscape of dark monsoon clouds with Pather Panchali being the only legend. The film did only moderately well in the first two weeks. By third week however, the word spread and it was running packed at three cinema houses. The cinema house, however, had only booked for six weeks. It was then shown in another chain for seven more weeks. It was a box-office success.

Ray and his crew were feted at numerous functions. Dr. B.C. Roy, who had seen the film earlier, organised a screening for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India who was on a visit to Calcutta. Nehru was moved by the film and ensured that Pather Panchali was entered in the Cannes Films festival, 1956, despite a move by some to oppose the entry.

The screening at Cannes took place on one of the festival holidays at midnight. As result, most of the jury members did not turn up. On the insistence of a few film critics and Ray's friends, Lindsay Anderson and Andre Bazin among them, another screening was held with the full jury. The film won the special jury prize for "the Best Human Document". Pather Panchali went on to win a dozen odd prizes at home and film festivals abroad, including Best Actress for Chunibala for her role as Indir Thakrun at Manila.

The recognition persuaded him to take the plunge. He decided to give up advertising and turn to film making as a full time career. And thus began a long and illustrious career. His first film, Pather Panchali had established Satyajit Ray as a world-class director.

[kid-glove]

Interview with One of Ray's stellar collaborators, on One of Ray's best films. Acting by the ensemble cast is uniformly good. Soumitra Chatterjee was good (and charismatic), but it's fair to say that the women (Sharmila Tagore and Kaberi Bose) steal the show remarkably in far lesser footage. Except perhaps Simi Garewal as tribal girl, Duli - rather perplexing why Ray would cast her in one of the decidedly "non-acting" parts. Why hire her if you want to paint the whole body dark. Rather unnerving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUxnh0N_B_w

Ray writes quite a lot on Renoir in "Our films, their films", and in gushing praise for "The Rules of the game", he definitely had that film in mind before making this one. Even if it doesn't reach the summits of that undoubted masterpiece, "Days and Nights in the forest" is a superlative film (IMHO his best!).

[tamizharasan]

Oscar clip of Satyajit Ray. Interesting speech.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgXPStRWmsY

[tamizharasan]

Movie on satyajit ray by shyam benegal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u6V3ABjHiU&feature=related

[P_R]

Thanks for the link to this Thilak.

Lovely interview. Thanks thamizharasan.

I am still under the sway of Charulata.

The characters and the relationships are brought out so well. The personal vocabulary - arguably the loveliest manifestation of a relationship is brought out with such great control. Charu calls Amal Thakurpo (b-i-l) but on multiple occasions calls him 'dhikkach babu' (does dhikkach mean 'clever?'). For instance in the swing scene (which has amazing frames) she calls him thakurpo and when he doesn't respond he calls him 'o dhikkach babu'. The 'nabina' versus traditional woman - classification they playfully talk to each other about.

Of writing
The emotions in the act of writing - sequence is just fantastic. There is condescension in 'encouraging' her to write. She is piqued by the 'betrayal' felt by her when Amal publishes his work. he didn't take his promise to her seriously precisely because he thinks little of her judgement and fails to understand what the promise of the writing remaining in the embroidered notebook, meant to her. The coldness and frenzy of her writing is just marvellously well brought out. What is the point she has proven? Her 'worth' to Amal? What is her tragedy? That he has been such a blockhead that she had to go through such a 'demonstration'? What does her refusal to write mean? (As in feminisaum, role of nabina-wise: "talends are there to command but why would I need to if 'my man' knows me" seems the point to me). Amal is thoroughly shaken by her writing. He is totally confused about her reaction about publication. He's not had the realization yet...only later (after Bhupathi is betrayed by Umapada). And remember his PS in the letter: Charu should keep writing. How innocent and yet, within the vocabulary that only they two know, how strong a rejection. One can imagine Charu going livid.

Measured Catfight
The competing for attention that Charu's sil is awesome. She rejects her favorite kulfi when it comes only second hand. Charu and she cross swords ever so subtly, samosas, pan flinging (I know him better), Charu showing who's the boss (getting the laundry herself). She has a self-admitted non-nabini and makes no bones about it. Charu is judgemental of her (card game, where she rejects it's a no-brainer and then proudly 'wins' even that game). Such traditional poignance (that I am quite a sucker for) is her parting line to Amol where she says she'd like to see the magazine: 'even if I cannot read (and make sense) of your essay, I can atleast read your name'. How lovely!

Bhupathi
Bhupathi could have easily been caricatured but he is shown as a man of life and blood. Yes, with his won obsessions, but still a real man. His childlike trust of Umapada. Giving responsibility to a disinterested man!! The scene with the paper-merchant. He is mildly judgemental of Charu's Bonkim romance fascinations. But at the same time is truly 'each to his own'. The harshest thing he can summon himself to say (to Amol) is: "(political) suffering is real. Not this Romeo and Juliet stories" :lol: His inadequacies, his misgivings are things he is open about. "I was hurt" he plainly tells Charu about learning about her publication at the party only. When she slyly guilt-trips him he is quick to take the blame for that too. In the penultimate beach scene he struggles to say pleasantries to his wife: "perhaps it would be easier if I read Bonkim". What a thing to say! He does not say that with a cynical superiority, but with a earnest warmth, that he has to make his effort to relate to Charu.

And in his childlike enthusiasm he is taken by Charu's idea and moves to: "People talk about the roar of the waves, there is nothing as sweet as the sound of a printing press". :lol:

The words (Sentinel - fallen soldier in a play), the impromptu alliterations (Burdwan, Britain, Bristol, then back to Bengal and Bonkim babu) that so easily flow in their conversations was excellent.

Cinematography
The cinematography I guess would've been written by many periyavAs. The swing scene (no steadycam then, how did they do?) is awesome. The one with Amol in the foreground and Charu swinging the length of Amal is so memorable. The piano song has Amol executing small hops and looking at Charu and the camera hops!! The diagonal moves in the stage of indoor action make for wonderful scenes.A simple simple frame, just by lowering it by a few inches is made to include the bed railings in the frame. So when it moves across there is a heightened pace in the visual. idhellAm set property-ai paathu dhaanE yOsikkavE mudiyin :bow:

The scene where they return from the beach holiday. The letter is in focus slowly, the actors are in the fringe. We are uneasy about the frame as it is slowly and slowly excludes them more and more (what 'natural' dialogues in that scene, she is concerned about the homecoming, Bhupathi is already concerned about the 'new start')

I don't think I have had this satisfactory a movie experience in a loooong time.
Must sink my teeth into this man from now

[P_R]

'dhikkach babu' (does dhikkach mean 'clever?') naanE kELvi, naanE badhil. Apparently it means Mr.know-it-all. Whatay!

[kid-glove]

Excellent post P_R. :thumbsup:

[P_R]

Pratidwandi - spellbinding film.

Actually respect for Bengal now :bow:
Quite :ashamed: of my prejudice that I may not like these movies.
It was absolutely engaging from start to finish. :clap:
The writing, the performances, the 'moments', the filming - every damn thing was impressive !

More later..

[P_R]

Still chewing on Pratidwandi.


Dada, do you think I can become a model?
Model?..What if they ask you to wear something ridiculous?
Like what?
Like nearly nothing at all
My figure isn't that bad

What is it that Siddharth is unsure of? That his kid-sister is a sexual object? That her boss is exploiting her? Or that she is 'matter of fact' about this? Or that she is indeed the one calling the shots? (does mother want me to quit? - she brushes aside her mothers' concerns). The coincidence of the 'working woman' and 'stepping out to work' has scarcely been depicted so strongly.

Where are the lines drawn? Is modeling unacceptable if she is up for it? If not, then isn't the family's 'acceptability' of her current working condition itself soaked in self-deception of 'this far and no further'. Isn't the objection stronger than the kid brother putting his life on the line what he believes.

And that dream sequence- one of the best ever dreamy yet coherent and compelling. The shot down dream brother is attended to by a 'nurse'. A nurse whose 'maternal' instincts are suspect given she moonlights as a prostitute. Well isn't that the fundamental question deep seated in the male about: working women in general !!! Is that Siddhartha comes face to face with.

Watching his sister practicing dance in the terrace, you really wonder if he HAD to quit medicine as he says. Doesn't she seem to able to find means to climb social ladder?

How can a Siddharth ever be angry when he sees all sides of the issue? He sees the driver and the girls in the car. When you see everything you can do nothing. Sees breasts and thinks of glands and ducts. Is he is just making a medical point when saying 'all people are the same'. Though Keya does try to point out the absurdity of it, it only seems to strengthen the point he is making !!

And they remain where they are till the end of the movie. There isn't enough from each other to move on. That shot of the crowded maidan from the terrace. The expanse, the crowd, the loneliness, the companionship... o forget it...just fantastic.

And the throwbacks to the kids scenes are well done. The divergent expressions to the beheading of the hen etc. :bow:

The conversations are perfect. Not a single place simply 'pushing' things forward. And many places where something is not spoken, but that ambiguity is not confusing but exactly what makes it interesting.

Sister's boss goes out to answer the 'trunk call' and we hear offscreen : 'I have spoken to him, it is all settled'.
Now there is absolutely no need to jump to a conclusion that he is referring to Siddharth. But he thinks so and leaves in a huff. Or he thinks it is only a possibility but the pause in conversation has given him the time to assess how he has failed to make the conversation a 'confrontation' like he wanted to. And thus leave in a huff. Such minimal lines, excellent pacing, acting that you 'feel' his vacillation.

Brilliant I say :clap:

[KV]

Interview with One of Ray's stellar collaborators, on One of Ray's best films. Acting by the ensemble cast is uniformly good. Soumitra Chatterjee was good (and charismatic), but it's fair to say that the women (Sharmila Tagore and Kaberi Bose) steal the show remarkably in far lesser footage. Except perhaps Simi Garewal as tribal girl, Duli - rather perplexing why Ray would cast her in one of the decidedly "non-acting" parts. Why hire her if you want to paint the whole body dark. Rather unnerving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUxnh0N_B_w

Ray writes quite a lot on Renoir in "Our films, their films", and in gushing praise for "The Rules of the game", he definitely had that film in mind before making this one. Even if it doesn't reach the summits of that undoubted masterpiece, "Days and Nights in the forest" is a superlative film (IMHO his best!).

Kid, I'm just curious, what's it that makes you choose this movie over Ray's other works. I mean, yeah, good movie, super performances from the ensemble (especially the ladies), shot interestingly, et al, but beyond this, does the movie offer scope for readings at multiple levels, say, like a Charulatha? Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to question your preference. I'm just trying to understand your perspective.

[P_R]

Thoughts sparked by Mahanagar (http://dagalti.blogspot.com/2011/10/saw-mahanagar-last-night.html)

A wife of a conservative household takes up a job to make ends meet. The impact on the household, its people, the changes, her social experiences and their marriage is what the film is about. Each and every one captured on screen are fleshed out wonderfully, in all their complexities, that Ray earns our deep interest in the proceedings.

Home

What is particularly amazing is the way in which the home is painted. The child collecting the ticket, the child's own concerns quite orthogonal to the domestic situation, and the goodness of the family that humours the child are brought out with incredible ease. One would think the constraints of joint family would have been brought out well in many Indian films. But I can't recall anything half as good.

For instance...

You have the husband and wife in physical proximity - not even a private display of affection. The adoloscent sister - played wonderfully by young Jaya Bhadhuri - enters the room, sees them and exits immediately closing the screen. Of course, in such a house one cannot be beyond earshot. We the audience see her shadow as she waits a moment in the adjoining room. The wife has now moved away.

And from their sounds it can be inferred that the husband and and wife are in two different parts of the room and now it is okay for the sister to enter. All this happens in a couple of seconds - quick cuts and beautiful storytelling.

How many movies have captured quirks such as a middle-class man using his matchstick for a toothpick, an old woman cleaning up strewn about remains after a meal - suggesting the power structure in the household, a child who has become too old to lift now and makes his mother grimace (below)?



Dialogues and Believability

Some lines are trite and convenient but made convincing by acting. The old father verbally records how, as a teacher, proud as he is about the station of his students, he can't help feel jealous. A straight, self-summarizing line. But progressively the movie shows him 'changing', crossing limits of decency and sinking to new lows. It is always the first transgression that is the problem. After that the line cross becomes the standards and dictates the progress. And anyone can see the old man is 'sinking' because of the smouldering anger that things are going beyond his control.

The long line where the wife decides to take up the job, is said in quasi-soliloquy, to a half-asleep husband. Thus, the situation is easily becomes a valid justification for an unrealistically perfect enunciation of a logical sequence of thoughts.

The whole suggestion of the housewife seeking a job is fantastically dialogued. The husband comments half-jokingly about the pointlessness of his sister studying. He mentions his friend's wife working. But refuses to answer straight when his wife presses him on the question of whether he wants her to work. He even mentions the English quotation "a woman's place is her home" - but quite crucially - in a faux tone. What he intends is captured only in the weakness of his resistance to the idea, rather than in a direct suggestion from him. Or, to take an uncharitable point of view, the man does not want to take responsibility for the decision, but is content with appearing to be democratic in allowing the idea to pass. How much better can a marriage be captured?

Camerawork

There is something to be said about the allure of B&W camerawork. But such ambitious topics ought to be entrusted with someone more knowledgeable about the intricacies. I'll just leave you with some captivating frames and some lighting that I found impressive.

The musty gloom of the evening, punctuated by the sparks at each crossing of the tramway forms the entire opening sequence (first pic in the post above). Apart from the inherent loveliness, it feeds the appetite of those like me with a dangerous proclivity for seeing symbols everywhere.

Here camera ascends the stairs, camera approaches new houses she hesitantly enters as a salesgirl (heck this is the man who made the camera hop in tune with a dance step in Charulatha. In a couple of frames you have a small source of light/ reflection elevating it wonderfully.

One where the old father visits an opthamologist - a former student of his - and bares his vulnerabilities. Another is where the wife - just before entering the house after a day of work - checks to see ifshe has erased her lipstick. That she has begun to use lipstick is itself conveyed to us in this shot where she is checking that it is not there!




The recorded background running when people are driving - is something seen in many old films. Ray throws in a right-angle turn, grunts of horn, an arm hanging out of the window
Sounds

And all this is to say nothing of the sounds, the radio of some neighbour, the background sounds of household chores, the distant sound of a boss yelling behind a closing door, the temple bells of an evening and so on.

Women working

The central problem about women going out, stripped off all the euphemism, is about providing an opportunity for them to be viewed as sex objects and their being provided a chance to decide on such affairs outside the confines of the home.

In Ghare Bhaire - a film that deserves an even longer ramble than this - has Ray/Tagore confronting the problem quite directly. The inability of the woman coming out, to deal w
ith the complexities of the outside world, her emotional vacillation are presented beautifully but the question of sexual vulnerability is never deflected. In fact there is a lingering sense of doom, a certain inevitability that is evoked extremely well in the film. In Pratidwandi, the sexuality of the working sister is pretty much front and center. In fact Ray achieves an aesthetic high in translating into film some extremely tricky nuances of the novel there.

Here too, the 'attractiveness' of his wife is the point of contention, inevitable insecurity. And it is not as if they enter into it with no awareness about the issue, the advertisement for the job specifically calls for 'smart and attractive' women for the sales girl position.

As the couple read the ad, those specific words, Ray captures in a frame, the adoloscent sister - in the background but listening with rapt attention. After all, isn't it her world that they are talking about.



Control
And Ray is in perfect control throughout. With a film demanding us to understand what is running in the minds of various actors, we seem to have no problem at all given the impressive performances all around, right from Madhabi Mukherjee who plays the lead role of Arati Mazumdar, including those appearing for just a scene - like the man who plays Arati's friend's husband and jokes about the knitting machine she is trying to sell him: "knitting machine, washing machine...will they not let women do any work?"

He even teases you. The tension about the boss driving home is already built-up in the audience. He already has you anticipation a domestic disappointment, if not a showdown. He has a car honk and it is a wrong 'un. But it is the most appropriate wrong 'un ever. Because it brings a thread, you the viewer were not thinking about at that moment - but it is quite unforgivable that, that is not your central concern at that moment.

This is storytelling excellence. And a movie, will always be to me, a story well told.

Courtesy: Huge thanks to the soul who has uploaded the movie on youtube.

[raghavendran]

P_R
good write up :thumbsup:


I expect a film to acknowledge a natural limitedness in scope and choose modest subjects becoming of it and execute them to perfection. Themes where at no time the viewer - that is me - is struggling to grapple with the 'core' - so to speak.
When my cynicism is pierced and I react 'exactly' as the work expects me to: joy, anxiety, ball-in-throat, emotions heightened with musical cues etc. I know I am so in. There is joy in the helpless realization about the emotional vulnerability that the film has managed to wrangle out of me, by managing to tease out a degree of empathy with the situations of those who people the story. Yes I said story. Shoot me, you lovers of plotlessness.

i read in Kubrick's thread that u didnt like much of his works...his eyes wide shut more or less reflects what u have said here :)....such a simple story kept me glued throughout.....thangalin karuthu ennavo?

[P_R]

Thank You.
Haven't seen EWS. If and when I see, vandhu karuthu solREn

[kid-glove]

Have you read "Our films, their films"?

It's a lovely pocket book to have..

[P_R]

Yeah. Just a few months back.
Total respect :bow:

[kid-glove]

KV, read your post in Ray thread. Thought I'd respond with a lengthy post there.

But very quickly, didn't you find men etched out as self-contradicting Bhadralok(s) - not entirely a far cry from the men in Charulata or other pre-war Ray films? Isn't Ray making some sort of post-colonial commentary. Their stigma, societal & personal hypocrisies, stemming from social & parochial constructs. The women have spectral differences of a prachina/nabina. But they hold the cards here. Men, being Bhadralok(s) that they are, are exposed for the indecisiveness & dissected out for what they really are. A subtly made commentary about class attitudes as a constant undercurrent (so much so G.Ghose had a overblown Searchers-like reaction in sequel !). Even Hari isn't totally oblivious from this.

For heightened state of cinematic brilliance, that piece de resistance memory game sequence would rival anything Ray had ever done.*

All this done under a facade of a 'road film'. The genre serves a dialectic purpose as the repressed selves open up in vanity of a jungle trip. A valid criticism is that the tribes are very much left in mute here. Even Duli's character. But that is never an agenda of Ray's examination here..

Ray made many chefs d'oeuvres. but no other film (That I have seen of his) takes on a challenging narrative space interlacing different themes with stark contrast applied to every thread as this one IMHO.

*Except perhaps the lyricism of swing sequence in Charulata


Thanks for the explanation, Kid, and very well written.
The movie surely is a very interesting take on social issues presented in a road movie format. The subtle, yet strong upperhand of the female lead in each plot is what was interesting to me as well, and your reading surely helps in broadening my understanding. However, at the end of the film, I had a feeling if the undercurrents could’ve been made a wee bit more intense, just a little highlighting.

And my favorite, so far, has been the binocular sequence from Charulatha – starting from Charu getting curious about the udukkai sound, fetching the binoculars, following the fat man and finally ending in viewing her own husband in the binoculars – storytelling at its best!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOaDK_uhz_4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV8clWi_Vf0

[P_R]

"I have now come to the point where I use less and less music.Music is something that I always feel is..er... up to a point dispensible element. One uses music more with the public in mind than anything else, because one is afraid that the public will not be able to ...uh... 'get' the mood of a certain scene and you want to underline it so they don't miss it, which is unfortunate, but you have to do it." - 1984 interview (Interviewer Shyam Benegal)

[KV]

adhAvadhu, inga oru aalu thEvayE illAma 1000 pilimsku aaniya pudungIttrikkAru'nu kuththi kAmikkarInga, illa? :argh:
veliya va, veliya va, veliya vaaa :twisted:

[P_R]

enakku kooda dhaan Goundamani pudikkin.
avar illAinnA padaththukku periya izhappunnu solluvEn.
AnA avar 'essential'nu solla oru thayakkau

[Bala (Karthik)]

"I have now come to the point where I use less and less music.Music is something that I always feel is..er... up to a point dispensible element. One uses music more with the public in mind than anything else, because one is afraid that the public will not be able to ...uh... 'get' the mood of a certain scene and you want to underline it so they don't miss it, which is unfortunate, but you have to do it." - 1984 interview (Interviewer Shyam Benegal)
KV, indha vishayathula naama ore saving set-a irundhaalum, it's difficult to argue against this point, if you look at it from the OnAi's (or purists') point of view.

How did people like Kubrick, Kurosawa look at music in their films?

[P_R]

I like his anxiety about communicating. பயபுள்ளையளுக்கு புரியவைக்கிறதுக்கு என்னல்லாம் செய்ய வேண்டி இருக்கு
At the same time he talks about 'life-like' dialogue, cutting out the Victorian sentimentality of Tagore (he says those very words...namma oorla aRuvaa dhaan)
He talks about how he realized 'logical' flaws when adapting a screenplay so he changed the story (he is talking about Bengali literature stalwarts!!).
Logical 'ங்கறாருங்க. நெஞ்சுக்குள்ள மனுஷன் சோஃபா போட்டு உக்காருவார் போல இருக்கே :-)

[P_R]

One makes a film with a sort of ideal audience in mind. And one hopes that what one likes, gets excited about finds absorbing, there will be an audience to have the same sort of reactions to the film once it is made :bow:

[KV]

iyyahO! I was just legga-fulling'nga, P_R.

Meesic, no meesic and all left completely to the filmmaker’nga. If he can create the visuals that don't need any additional accentuation, it’s perfectly fine, there’s nothing to whine. Fassbinder, Kieslowski are few names that immediately pop up in mind. Ray and Adoor, too, generally use a very minimal score.
OTOH, there are guys who feel that music adds an extra dimension to their storytelling – sapAdu pOttu, ootiyum vidarAnga na, venAmna solluvOm?
To me, its first how less distracting it is, and, then of course, its at looking how they have conceived and incorporated this extra component into their story telling. A guitar playing on lazily somewhere in the background, enhances the backdrop beautifully when Kurosawa establishes the setting in Drunken Angel. And we already know the volume of stuff written on Clockwork Orange’s score.
This and all creative decisions – idhula karuththu solla naan karuththu kandasAmy illa.

[P_R]

Excellent 14 part intree of Satyajit Ray by Shyam Benegal. First one here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u6V3ABjHiU&feature=related

[Plum]

musicE thEvai illainA solRAr? avarE BGM-lAm pOturukkArE...
I have read that he only had reservations about XXXX Khans' aalaps as BGM in his first two movies. ingE pArthA vERa mAdhiri solRAr.

Music sariyA illainA me divorce moviesyA. Proper BGM illainA padamE pudikkaRadhillai. Would I like Hey Ram, Udhiri PookkaL without the music? mhmmm....can't imagine. avaru eduththa padathukku vENA music thEvai illainu avaru sollikkattum.
BTW, KV, nammALu, Adoorukku kooad minimal BGM elLAm koduthirukkAru. avaru Ray-kkum sariyA vandhirupPArunga - vAippilLAma pOchu.

Musicai pazhikkaravan only fit for treason and strategems-nu seshappa iyer solli irukkAr(thOrAyamA - I am misquoting for effect).

[rajraj]

Musicai pazhikkaravan only fit for treason and strategems-nu seshappa iyer solli irukkAr(thOrAyamA - I am misquoting for effect).

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sounds
Is fit for treasons,strategems and spoils


:)

[kid-glove]

A man who had painstakingly reversed haydn & sibelius to use as BGM shouldn't be saying this. But then again I've almost never seen him use the score to its utmost potency, in perfect harmony with images, like a Visconti or Kubrick.

But of course, he's right in saying that BGM is dispensable. But then lovers of purest form of cinema, the silent era, would argue that sound itself could be dispensed with. Perhaps then we'd have less abusers of visual medium. Hacks would stop being filmmakers. Other medium gypsies would be weeded out. We'd know who "owns" the film.

[P_R]

A man who had painstakingly reversed haydn & sibelius to use as BGM shouldn't be saying this.
Explain with appropriate annotations (10 marks)


Proper BGM illainA padamE pudikkaRadhillai. This too much.
Of course, edhukku padam pAkkaNum, pusthagam padikkalaamE etc. is where this will lead do.

I posted here because I thoroughly enjoyed the way he responded to questions.
indha ezhavu audience-kku purinju tholaikkaradhu illai. adhunaala sila tayaum meesic pOdavENdi irukkudhu. Very unfortunate. :lol:
He seem to regard the mood-underscoring business akin to adding a laughter track.

Of course I liked that he did not seem to regard (atleast in this interview) the BGM itself as central to overall aesthetic appeal, but as an 'effective' tool. But more than that, I liked the fact that he was so anxious that the audience precisely get the mood that he is trying to convey. I felt like saying: "Good, appadi thaan irukkaNum. Keep it up".

>digression>

fit for treason and strategems-nu seshappa iyer solli irukkAr
Stephen Fry quoted this article about people who don't enjoy Wodehouse - apparently the words themselves are a favourite of Wodehouse. Look at me (http://www.pgwodehousebooks.com/fry.htm)
<<

[Plum]

Yes, wodehouse solli dhaan enakku seshappa iyer solli irukkaarnu theriyin

[kid-glove]

Haydn symphony (Reversed) was used in Devi & the other one was in "The Music room", both establish the scenery well. When he does reversals & manipulations, you know how much he cared about the BGM. The painstaking arrangement in his BGM fusion (of WCM to native sounds) seems like he made it for himself, & not necessarily the audience. There seems to be a strong aesthetic & thematic* influence, not necessarily 'didactic', in his composition. Of course, I'm in agreement in that films should work with the sound muted. But when they added it, it heightened the visual's impact & tone, but it also sort of ate away the real merits of the image. I get the conundrum here. But it should be known that Ray himself explains (in his book) how a WCM structure is comparable to a film. He uses Beethoven's structure to character & plot, IIRC. And he makes multiple comparisons to Westerns & Noir. So it's hard to know that this man didn't embrace BGM.

*I think the problem here is thematic impact of BGM on film. That it could only intensify/hint/redirect/recur what is already part of the film, so why is it given as much importance in this forum. Perhaps because there's a thought? There's an intelligence? There's a craft & art in making different instruments operate & hit viscerally, but also when they operate as leitmotif, it hypnotically brings up the earlier reaction, and therefore makes a more cerebral connection.

[P_R]

Jana Aranya
Beautiful film again.
Perhaps not a great film. Acting is quite ordinary in many places.
The way things interlock - though slightly predictable - comes out well.

I haven't seen Seemabadhdha yet. This is surely not as captivating as Pratidwandi. But that is about the limitation of the source material. But for the story taken, Satyajit Ray has done a lovely job of executing.

The scene where Sukumar is describing the walks of people in various statures of life, as they come out of the match

Shouts aloud to a 'clerk' walking at a distance
Sukumar: Dada, who won?
Clerk: Mohan Bagan

Somnath laughs at his generalization and they see someone slightly older than him
Somnath: him?
Sukumar: graduate
Somnath: pass or honors?
Sukumar: Let us ask him....Dada..
'Graduate': (turns and looks)
Sukumar: Pass of Honors?
Graduate: Mohan Bagan

:lol:

Somnath's relationship with his elder brother's wife is enjoyable. She acted quite well.

(discussing his ex-girlfriend's wedding invitation)
Somnath: I remember you cried a lot at the day of your wedding
aNNi: (brief drop in smile) everybody does....don't you also want her to?
(The former line was used in Rituparno Ghosh's

(discussing letter from the ex..that comes later in the film)
aNNi: this fat a letter this long into her marriage is not good
Somnath:...
aNNi: call me after you have read it I will bring your tea (exits the room)
Somnath: (opens..sees a greeting...with a pic of his ex and her child....rips and throws them away and says aloud) Tea
:lol:
Such lovely moments.

It is aNNi who tells him she will never think ill of him. Well she does not understand the gravity and nor does he want to confide of course.
But the end shot in the movie is where she knows he has crossed a line. No one else does. The Gandhian father feels a 'relief', Somnath feels wretched about himself. But the one who has got the 'outsider's perspective on the outside world is the woman of the house. And she knows something horrible has been done.
How extremely well told. I would say this ending is even better than Charulata, where the famous freeze, dramatized things a little bit more than required.

The old vs. young conversations. The old man 'trying to be involved', derisive of other grumpy old men by the lake (how much like the father in Mahanagar) but then ruing how he has denied himself the sources of solace that other old men have. But then at some stage he seems to have settled to not trying to understand everything.

And what dialogue-action synchrony. The visitor says, 'there (in the West) the young and old build walls between themselves'.
At walls, Somnath pulls the screen of his room across to shield it from the place the old men are conversing. Happening neatly in the background.
The glovebox that keeps falling open, the keen audience notices the contents but not Somnath.
Utpal Dutt's delightful cameo.

Quite an enjoyable film.

[tamizharasan]

good to see this thread still active. Quite good discussions here.

[tamizharasan]

Agantuk(The stranger) is one of the least discussed movie of Ray but I found it fascinating. The Lawyer's interrogation with uncle related to find the truth was very interesting. Cannbalism and Civilization. The discussion gives lot of insights about the socieity and opinions. Insisting the fact country's technology development does not have much to say about the civilization. Very engaging and interesting movie.

[P_R]

Aparajito is not on yeeteep. There is one video with poor audio synch.
adhu paathuttu dhaan Apur Sansar (which is there) paarkkaNum.

Agantuk - and many others are not there

[tamizharasan]

Aparajito is not on yeeteep. There is one video with poor audio synch.
adhu paathuttu dhaan Apur Sansar (which is there) paarkkaNum.

Agantuk - and many others are not there

I watched Agantuk at my bengali's friends place few years back with english subtitles. Interesting watch for sure. I just want to tell one thing what North India media has to say about Ray. Ray makes boring movies related to only poor people and suffering. My bengali friend felt bad about it. What an insult to such a great film maker. The only good thing is he was born in bengal otherwise no one would have known Ray now.

[tamizharasan]

Satyajit Ray is a painter by profession before he started making movies, which helped him to learn about society. He has become a social scientist and anthropologist through his interest. That was the reason he could understand humanity and human relations in general very well. That is why no one in Indian cinema analysed human relations and behaviours better than Mr. Ray. Amazing personality.

[tamizharasan]

Biography


Satyajit Ray
Director, Producer, Screenwriter, Composer, Writer, Graphic Designer
Born: May 2, 1921, Kolkata (Calcutta), India
Died: April 23, 1992, Calcutta, India

Satyajit Ray, standing 6'-4" tall, was a towering figure in the world of cinema. He studied at the university in Calcutta and later joined Shantiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore's university to study art. He began his career as a commercial artist (1943-56). He founded Calcutta's first film society in 1947 and made his first film, Pather Panchali (1955) while working at an advertising agency. Pather Panchali was an immediate success and won Grand Prix at the Cannes Festival. Pather Panchali with his Aparajito (1956, The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (1959, The World of Apu) are known as 'Apu Trilogy'. His later films include Jalsaghar (1958, The Music Room), Kanchenjunga (1962), Charulata (1964, The Lonely Wife), Ashanti Sanket (1973, Distant Thunder), The Chess Players (1977), The Home and The World (1984), Ganashatru (1989, Public Enemy), and Agantuk (1990, The Stranger).

Ray also edited Sandesh, a children's magazine and wrote numerous fiction and nonfiction works. In 1992 he received an honorary Academy Award.

[tamizharasan]

Growing up, 1921 - 39


1921, Ray Family
Satyajit Ray was born on May 2, 1921, in an intellectual and affluent family in Calcutta, India.

His grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray (Roychowdhury) was a distinguished writer, painter, a violin player and a composer. He was also a pioneer in half-tone block making and founded one of the finest presses in the country - U. Ray & Sons. He died six years before Satyajit Ray was born.

His father, Sukumar Ray (1887-1923), the eldest son of Upendra Kishore, studied printing technology in England and joined the family business. He too was an eminent poet, writer and illustrator of nonsense literature in the tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.

Sukumar Ray fell ill the year Satyajit Ray was born with a dreaded tropical disease of the time - Kala-azar. He regularly contributed poems, stories and illustrations to 'Sandesh', a children's magazine in Bengali which Satyajit Ray's grandfather had started publishing and printing. Need less to say the child Satyajit was fascinated by the block making and the printing process.

In 1880's, Ray family had embraced 'Brahmo Samaj', sect within Hindu society. Brahmo was a reaction to Christianity (at that time, India was under British colonial rule and Calcutta was the seat of power), western literature and orthodox Hindu practices such as 'Sati'. With a cosmopolitan and rational outlook, Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo. Later Brahmos were led by Devendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath Tagore.

The progressive outlook of the Brahmo Samaj strongly influenced Satyajit Ray's work. Many of Ray's films would later show this progressive outlook and a strong aversion to religious fanaticism (Devi, Charulata, Teen Kanya, Sadgati, Ghare Baire and Ganashatru to name a few).

1926, Early Childhood
About three years after his father's death, the printing business changed hands and Satyajit and his mother had to leave their spacious house. They moved to Satyajit's maternal uncle's house. His mother taught needlework to supplement the household income. Here he would also meet cousin Bijoya, his future wife.

At an age of eight, Satyajit joined Ballygunj Government School, until then he had been taught by his mother. Satyajit was an average student.

While still at school, he became a film fan, regularly reading Hollywood trivia in magazines like Picturegoer and Photoplay. Western classical music was another interest. He would often pick-up gramophone records at flea markets. He matriculated when he was just short of fifteen.

1936, At College
His mother insisted upon Satyajit joining college. At the Presidency College, Satyajit read science for the first two years and for the third year, he took economics. (An uncle had assured him a job if he graduated in economics.)

At the cost of academics, Satyajit was spending more and more time and energies in pursuit of his two interests- Watching films and listening to western classical music on his gramophone.

In films, his interest had shifted from stars to directors, savouring offering of Ernst Lubitsch, John Ford, Frank Capra, and William Wyler. He became a subscriber of Sight & Sound.

He graduated in 1939. At the age of eighteen, he decided to give up further studies. Even though he had no formal training, he was planning to become a commercial artist. He had a natural flair for drawing. His mother however felt that he was too young to take up a job. She suggested that he should join as a student of painting at Shantiniketan. After initial resistance, he agreed.

[tamizharasan]

At Shantiniketan


1940-41, Discovering Oriental Art
In 1940, he joined Rabindranath Tagore's Vishva-Bharati University at Shantiniketan despite the initial reluctance. The desire to learn about Indian arts to be successful as a commercial artist, mother's wishes and the lure of Tagore, perhaps, were too strong to ignore. Tagore had been a close friend of his grandfather and father.
Trips to nearby villages for sketching exercises, were his first encounters with rural India for the city-bred Satyajit Ray.

During this period, he discovered the oriental art- Indian sculpture and miniature painting, Japanese woodcuts and Chinese landscapes... Till then, his exposure to art had been limited to only the western masters. He also undertook a long tour of places of artistic interests in India along with three friends. For the first time, he had begun to appreciate qualities of Indian art. The tour drew his attention to use of small details in Indian art to signify a bigger meaning. A quality that his films would later demonstrate.

Binode Behari Mukherjee, his art teacher at Shantiniketan, also demonstrated this quality in his work. He had an impressionable influence on Ray. About 30 years later, Ray would make a loving documentary on him - The Inner Eye, 1972.

At Shantiniketan too, Ray had found means to pursue his interest in music and films. A German Jew, professor of English, had a collection of western classical records. Ray would often listen to music at his cottage in the evenings. He also found books on cinema in the university library such as Paul Rotha's 'Film Till Now' and Raymond Spotiswoode's 'Grammar of the Film. Despite his great love for films the thought of becoming a filmmaker had not yet occurred.

Tagore died on August 7, 1941.

1942, Back to Calcutta
As the year 1942 was coming to an end, Ray missed the city life and his inability to see films at Shantiniketan. Soon he was making weekend trips to Calcutta, visiting his mother and cousin Bijoya, looking for bargains on books and gramophone records at flea markets and watching movies. He was also in love with cousin Bijoya who lived in the same joint-family house as his mother.

In the remote Shantiniketan, he also felt being out of touch with what was happening in Calcutta, India and the world. Mahatma Gandhi had launched Quit India movement against the British Empire, the war was at Calcutta's doorsteps, and he had missed Citizen Kane that played in Calcutta only for a few days.

In December 1942, Ray left Shantiniketan for good, the day Calcutta was bombed by Japanese for the first time


To be Continued

[tamizharasan]

Calcutta Film Society


1947, A Film Critic
The aftermath of the world war saw Calcutta filled with American GI's. The cinemas were showing the latest Hollywood productions. It provided Ray and his friends a feast of films.

In 1947, with a few friends like Bansi Chandra Gupta, Ray co-founded Calcutta's first film society. Battleship Potemkin was the first film they screened.

Soon, Ray started writing and publishing articles on cinema in newspapers and magazines, both English and Bengali. A collection of such articles, written during the period 1948 - 1971, was later published as 'Our Films, Their Films'.

Meanwhile, Ray had developed an another interest - writing screenplays for his own pleasure. He would take a story or novel for which a film had been announced, and would write a screenplay. He would then compare his screenplay with the finished film. Some times, he would even write a second version after seeing the film.

His friend Harisadhan Das Gupta had acquired rights for Tagore's Ghare Baire. Ray wrote the screenplay; Harisadhan Das Gupta was to direct it. The film was not made because Ray refused to make changes in the script as suggested by a doctor of venereal diseases who was a friend of the producer. Thirty-five years later when Ray made a film on the same novel, he thought it was a good fortune that film was not made. He found his old screenplay "an amateurish effort in Hollywood tradition".

[tamizharasan]

Encounter With Jean Renoir


1949, Encounter With Jean Renoir
Renoir had come to Calcutta to scout locations for The River. Ray walked into the hotel where Renoir was staying and sought a meeting. Soon Ray was accompanying Renoir on his trips in search of locations to outskirts of Calcutta during the weekends.

Seeing his enthusiasm and knowledge about cinema, Renoir asked him if he was thinking of becoming a filmmaker. To his own surprise, Ray said yes and gave Renoir a brief outline of Pather Panchali, which he had recently illustrated.

Ray had now married his cousin Bijoya in a simple ceremony of signing a register at Bombay. This was followed later with Brahmo ceremony in Calcutta. Bijoya shared his taste in films and music.

Renoir returned to Calcutta later to shoot the film. Renoir hired Ray's friend Bansi Chandra Gupta as an art director and Harisadhan Das Gupta as an assistant. Subrata Mitra, who would later become Ray's cinematographer, took stills.

Ray too wanted to be part of the unit, but he was now an art director in an advertising agency, D.J. Keymer and was sent to London to work at the agency's head office.


To be continued

[tamizharasan]

'Bicycle Thieves' Effect


1950, 'Bicycle Thieves' Comfirms Ray's Belief in Realistic Cinema
A business trip to London in 1950 proved a turning point. Ray and wife travelled to London by ship, a journey that took 16 days. With him, he was carrying a notebook in which he had made some notes on making a film of Pather Panchali. He wanted the film to be shot on actual locations, no make-up with new faces. The reaction to this had been negative from his friends. Shooting on locations with unknown actors was thought be a totally unfeasible idea.

In this six-months long stay abroad, Ray saw about a hundred films including Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves.

Bicycle Thieves made a profound impression on Ray. Later, in the introduction of 'Our Films, Their Films', he wrote- "All through my stay in London, the lessons of Bicycle Thieves and neo-realist cinema stayed with me".

The film had reconfirmed his conviction that it was possible to make realistic cinema with an almost entirely amateur cast and shooting at actual locations.

He had completed his treatment of Pather Panchali on the return journey to India by a ship.

[tamizharasan]

Making of Pather Panchali

1950, Search for a Producer
On his return in late 1950, with absolutely no experience in movie-making, Ray collected a group of young men to work as technicians. Subrata Mitra was the cinematographer; he had been a still photographer and had to coaxed into taking up the assignment. Anil Choudhury became the Production Controller, Bansi Chandra Gupta the art director.

While looking for financial backers, he approached widow of Bibhuti Bhusan Banerjee, the writer of Pather Panchali for film rights. She admired Ray's illustrations for the book and works of his father and grandfather. She gave her oral assurance and retained her faith in Satyajit Ray despite a better financial offer.

To explain his concept for the film to the potential producers, Ray had a small note-book, filled with sketches, dialogue and the treatment. This script along with another sketchbook that illustrated the key dramatic moments of the film were greeted with curiosity by producers. While many of them were impressed, none came forward to produce the film. Later, Ray donated this script and the wash sketches to the Cinémathèque Française, Paris.

Many offered advise against shooting in outdoor locations as most films were made in studios at that time. He was told by many that rain sequences could not be shot in the actual rains but required a well equipped studio. At the earliest opportunity, Ray rushed out with a 16 mm camera to test-shoot monsoon rains.

About two years were spent in vain to find a producer. Meanwhile, undeterred Ray had begun assembling the cast and looking for locations.

1952, Cattle eat up the scene
Unable to find a producer, Ray decided that unless he could prove his bona fides by producing a few sequences of the film, he was not likely to find financial backing. He borrowed money against his insurance policy and from a few relatives and friends. The shooting was to be done on Sundays due to his job at D.J. Keymer.

On 27 October 1952, he set out to take the first shot. The scene was the famous 'discovery of train by Apu and his sister Durga in the field of Kaash flowers'. "One day's work with camera and actors taught me more than all the dozen books," Ray would write later.

The following Sunday when they returned to shoot, to their horror they discovered that the Kaash flowers had been feasted upon by a herd of cattle. He had to wait for the next season of flowers to complete the scene.

1952, Casting and locations
Meanwhile, efforts to find a backer and working on other production requirements and casting continued.

The cast was a mix of professional actors and a few with no prior experience in acting. Only Subir Banerjee who played Apu, Karuna Banerjee who played Apu's mother, and the villagers who played other smaller roles, had no prior experience of acting. The rest had either acted in films or theatre.

Chunibala Devi, an 80-year old, retired theatre actress was cast to play Indir Thakrun. Boral, a small village on the outskirts of Calcutta was to be the major location.

1952, Faith in realistic cinema gets stronger

A still from Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Jamin, 1953
During this time, Bimal Roy had made Do Bigha Jamin (Two Acres of Land), in India; The film had a few songs, shot largely on locations. It was about the struggle of a peasant family. The film was in the tradition of neo-realist cinema with natural acting (though using professional actors, including Balraj Sahni who pioneered natural acting in mainstream Indian films). The film won the Prix International at the Cannes Festival, 1954. Do Bigha Jamin and Kurosawa's Rashoman, further strengthened Satyajit Ray's faith in the kind of film he was making.

Pather Panchali was to be shot in sequence as Ray had realized that he would be learning as they went along. He had to discover for himself, "how to catch the hushed stillness of dusk in a Bengali village when the wind drops and turns the ponds into sheets of glass, dappled by the leaves of Saluki and Shale, and the smoke from the ovens settles in wispy trails over the landscape and the plaintive blows on conch shells from homes far and near are joined by the chorus of crickets which rises as the light falls, until all one sees are the stars in the sky, and the stars that blink and swirl in the thickets."

1953, A producer at last

Ray filming Pather Panchali
©Bansi Chandragupta
He found a producer, Ana Dutta, who provided some funds with a promise of more after seeing the results and releasing his latest film. Ray took one month's leave without pay to shoot a few more sequences.

The shooting began in the village. Ray recalls this period as a great learning experience. The film appeared to be shaping up well. It was not long before the funds ran out. The producer's latest film had been a box-office disaster so he was unable to provide any more finances. However, since the arrangements had already been made for shoot, some of Ray's wife, Bijoya's jewelry was pawned and shooting continued for a few days more.

Ray was back to work at Kaymer. The footage was later edited to about 4000 ft. Ray approached many producers with the edited footage and was turned down.
Ray's production manager, Anil Choudhury suggested approaching Dr. B. C. Roy, the Chief Minister of West Bengal for help. The government agreed to fund. On September 8, 1953, a son and the only child, Sandip was born.

1954, Shooting resumes after a long break

Ray rehearsing 80-year old Chunibala Devi
©Bansi Chandragupta
After a break of almost a year, the shooting resumed in the early part of 1954. The funding from the government meant that the money would come in installments. Before each installment, the accounts had to be submitted and cleared by the government. This would often take up to a month.

Later, Ray would describe it as a miracle that while making the film, "One, Apu's voice did not break. Two, Durga did not grow up. Three, Indir Thakrun did not die."

In the autumn of 1954, Monroe Wheeler, a director of Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York was in Calcutta for putting together some Indian highlights for an exhibition. In a chance meeting, Ray showed some stills of Pather Panchali. Wheeler offered to hold a world premier at MOMA.

About six months later, John Huston had come to India in search of locations for 'The man who would be King'. He had been asked by Monroe Wheeler to check the progress of the film. After seeing about 15-20 minute long silent rough-cut, John Huston gave rave reviews to Wheeler. The film was scheduled to premier at MOMA.

1955, Breakneck post-production
Ray wanted Pandit Ravi Shankar, renowned Sitar maestro, to compose music for the film. Ravi Shankar, due to his tight touring schedule, was able to see only about half of the film and recorded the music in a non-stop session of about eleven hours. "It was a marathon session and left us exhausted but happy, because most of the music sounded wonderful", Ray would write in 'My Years with Apu', many years later. Due to shortage of time, however, Ravi Shankar could not provide music for a few sequences. Subrata Mitra, Ray's cinematographer, devised music for the sweetmeat seller as he goes peddling his sweets. Mitra also played sitar for a sequence.

To meet the MOMA deadline, Ray and his editor worked ten days and nights continuously in the final stage of post-production. The first print of Pather Panchali came out at night before it was to be dispatched. There was no time or money for the subtitles.

Weeks after the scheduled screening at MOMA, a letter came form MOMA describing at length how well the film had been received by the audience.

[tamizharasan]

Triumph of Pather Panchali


1955, A huge success
A few months later, on August 26, 1955, Pather Panchali was finally released in Calcutta. Using his advertising experience, ray had designed five billboards including a full-sized 8ftX20ft. one. It had Apu and Durga running in vast landscape of dark monsoon clouds with Pather Panchali being the only legend. The film did only moderately well in the first two weeks. By third week however, the word spread and it was running packed at three cinema houses. The cinema house, however, had only booked for six weeks. It was then shown in another chain for seven more weeks. It was a box-office success.

Ray and his crew were feted at numerous functions. Dr. B.C. Roy, who had seen the film earlier, organised a screening for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India who was on a visit to Calcutta. Nehru was moved by the film and ensured that Pather Panchali was entered in the Cannes Films festival, 1956, despite a move by some to oppose the entry.

The screening at Cannes took place on one of the festival holidays at midnight. As result, most of the jury members did not turn up. On the insistence of a few film critics and Ray's friends, Lindsay Anderson and Andre Bazin among them, another screening was held with the full jury. The film won the special jury prize for "the Best Human Document". Pather Panchali went on to win a dozen odd prizes at home and film festivals abroad, including Best Actress for Chunibala for her role as Indir Thakrun at Manila.

The recognition persuaded him to take the plunge. He decided to give up advertising and turn to film making as a full time career. And thus began a long and illustrious career. His first film, Pather Panchali had established Satyajit Ray as a world-class director.

[tamizharasan]

charulata New York Times review
Movie Review
The Lonely Wife (1964)
September 11, 1965
Film Festival: Ray's 'Charulata' Given:Simple Story Makes Exquisite Movie
HOWARD THOMPSON.
Published: September 11, 1965

NOBODY but Satyajit Ray could have made "Charulata."

Indeed, had not the distinguished Indian moviemaker been represented in the New York Film Festival, as he was last night at Philharmonic Hall, the current international event would be sadly lacking. To put it baldly, as the Ray camera could never do, the picture is an artistic masterpiece, impeccably performed, but diluted in impact and power by a stately, inchworm pace that accentuates a plot as old and familiar as the hills.

The Indian import was preceded yesterday by a showing of "Camille Without Camelias," a 1952 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. But Mr. Ray's festival contribution was obviously the main event of the evening.

Produced by R. D. Bansal, it comes to us laden with prizes from overseas. This time the man who made the memorable "Apu" trilogy is delineating an emotional marital triangle that develops in a comfortable Bengali household. Not only has the director fashioned a scenario from a story by Rabindranath Tagore, but also Mr. Ray has composed a tremulous musical score, with two vocal interludes for good measure.

What happens on the screen? Actually, very little. Husband, a liberal newspaper publisher, neglects pretty young wife. Wife is attracted to husband's young cousin, a dashing derelict. He nobly departs just in time, and the couple begin again—yes, older and wiser. That's it. It takes nearly two hours. As do all Ray films, it moves like a majestic snail.

As usual, Mr. Ray has composed the picture in the most literal sense of the word—and exquisitely. He has made the most of beautiful young Madhabi Mukherjee, who gives a lustrously affecting and almost mind-readable performance as the yearning heroine.

In a sense, the very opening shot—Miss Mukherjee's hands darting a needle into an embroidery hoop—keys all that follows. Arranging every single camera frame to convey nuance, mood or tension, Mr. Ray has photographically embroidered a steady flow of quiet images with precise, striking acuity. One montage—when the day-dreaming wife, in a garden swing, rocks to and fro like a pendulum—is unforgettable. And the final shot in the film—a stop-motion close-up of two hands—is a memorable period to Mr. Ray's structure.

But it remains a long, long trail a-winding over familiar dramatic terrain, India or no India. And even with Miss Mukherjee ably supported by Sailen Mukherjee (no relation) and Soumitra Chatterjee, "Charulata" is not top-notch Ray. But, again, nobody else could have made it.

Mr. Antonioni's early film, "Camille Without Camelias," gives clear promise of the Italian director's personalized camera style in such later, major works as "L'Avventura," and "La Notte." With a hopeful young actress at the center of his story, Mr. Antonioni details the background of a money-minded movie studio, which he appraises with knowing irony.

The film is particularly effective in its photography of the Cinecittá Studio and as a wintry panorama of Rome.


http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A02E0D91130E23ABC4952DFBF66838E679EDE

[P_R]

oru singathOda life historyE :clap: TA...innum padikkalai..oru ukkAndhu end to end padichchirrEn

Soumitra Chatterjee gets Dadasaheb Phalke it seems :clap:

[tamizharasan]

P_R thanks seekkiram padinga

[tamizharasan]

A Film a Year


1956-1981, Impressive oeuvre
The success of Pather Panchali gave Ray total control over his subsequent films; in his numerous functions—writer, director, casting director, composer (since 1961). Two sequels based on the novel (Aparajito, The Unvanquished, 1956; Apur Sansar, The World of Apu, 1959) completed the acclaimed 'The Apu Trilogy'.

Aparajito, his second film, was about his young protagonist's journey towards freedom from his mother's protection and love. The film won the Golden Lion in Venice.

What followed was a long career as a world-class filmmaker. Until 1981, he would make a feature length film every year.

His later films included - Parash Pathar (The Philosopher's Stone, 1958), Jalsaghar (The Music Room, 1958), Devi (The Goddess, 1960), Teen Kanya (Two Daughters, 1961), Kanchenjungha, (1962), Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964), Pratidwandi (The Adversary 1970), Shantranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players, 1977), and Ghare-Baire (Home and the World, 1984).

[tamizharasan]

Ray's Literary Career

1961-1992, Writer of non-fiction, stories and novels
In 1961, Ray revived Sandesh, a children's magazine founded by his grandfather, to which he continued to contribute illustrations, verses and stories throughout his life.

Ray wrote numerous short stories, articles, and novels in Bengali.

He made a significant contribution to children's literature in Bengali. Most of his fiction was written for teen age children. His detective stories and novels were particularly popular with them.

His stories are unpretentious and entertaining. The subjects included: adventure, detective stories, fantasy, science fiction and even horror.

See http://www.satyajitray.org/booksandvideo/books_by_ray.htm for the available English translations of his Bengali fiction and other books by Ray.

[tamizharasan]

Final Offerings


1984-1992
About forty years of filmmaking, with a film a year, was interrupted by his fragile health in the mid-1980s. Ray's Ghare-Baire (Home and the World, 1984) based on a novel by Rabindranath Tagore, was a return to his first screen adaptation. While shooting, he suffered two heart attacks and his son, Sandip Ray, completed the project from his detailed instructions.

1989-1992
Ill health kept Satyajit Ray away from active filmmaking for about four years. In 1989, he resumed making films with Ibsen's An Enemy of the People as the basis for his Ganashatru (Enemy of the People, 1989). This was followed with Shakha Prashakha (Branches of the Tree, 1990) and Agantuk (The Stranger, 1991).

This series of three films were to be his last. Many film critics and film historians found these films a marked departure from his earlier work.

In 1992, He accepted a Lifetime Achievement Oscar from his sickbed in Calcutta through a special live satellite-television event and Bharat Ratna (the Jewel of India), the ultimate honour from India.

Satyajit Ray died on April 23, 1992.

[tamizharasan]

The Apu trilogy



Satyajit Ray's first film, Pather Panchali, is one among the finest films ever made. The film won about a dozen awards at various film festivals world-over. Pather Panchali, eventually, became the first film of a trilogy.

After the critical and commercial success of Pather Panchali, Ray made Aparajito. The novel itself was a sequel to Pather Panchali. Ray recounts in "My Years with Apu" on what finally led him to do another film about Apu was, "One single attitude of Apu in the second novel Aparajita ... After Sarbajaya's (mother) death Apu feels relief... he felt happy to be free of a bondage. ... The idea of Apu growing up and away from his mother... and much stress is laid on Sarbajaya's slow realization of the fact."After a special screening for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India and Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the President of India, Nehru is said to have asked Ray, "what happens to Apu now?" Ray replied that he did not have a third Apu film in mind.

The film was not very successful with the Bengali audience at the time of its first release. Ray read many Bengali stories and novels, looking for a future film. He wrote a screenplay based on a short story by Tarasankar Bannerji, Jalsaghar (The Music Room) . However, he had to postpone the project as the actor he had in mind for the lead role was going to be abroad for a few months. Meanwhile, he made a comedy fantasy, Parash Pather (The Philosopher's Stone). Just before the film's release, Ray and Aparajito were invited to the Venice Film Festival. Aparajito was hailed as a masterpiece. Despite the bad subtitling, the film won the Golden Lion for the best feature film at the Venice Film Festival. Ray was asked if he had a trilogy in mind at a press conference during the festival. And to his surprise, Ray found himself saying yes.

His two subsequent films - Parash Pather (The Philosopher's Stone) and Jalsaghar (The Music Room) were commercial failures. Ray says in his book 'My years with Apu', "After three consecutive failures at the box office, I badly needed a film which would not only make the critics happy but the public as well." Satyajit remembered his statement at the Venice Film Festival about a trilogy. In just one reading of the novel Aparajita, he had found a subject for his fifth and the final film of the Apu Trilogy.

Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road, 1955)
Pather Panchali tells the story of a poor family living in a Bengal village. A priest - Harihar, his wife - Sarbajaya, his two children - Apu and Durga, and his aged cousin - Indir Thakrun, struggle to make both end meet.

Harihar is frequently away from home on work. The wife is raising her mischievous daughter Durga and caring for elderly cousin Indir. Apu is born. Soon, Durga and Apu build a bond as they explore the world around the village. The sequences of Durga and Apu are the most cinematic moments in the film. On a stormy day, following a joyous dance in the monsoon rains, Durga dies. On Harihar's return, the family leaves their village in search of a new life in Benaras. The film closes with an image of Harihar, wife and son - Apu, moving way in an ox cart.
More»

Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956)
Aparajito opens in the city of Benaras. The father dies after an illness. Apu's mother decides to return with Apu to the countryside. Young Apu and his widowed mother struggle for existence. She wants him to become a priest like his father, but he persuades her to send him to school. She makes sacrifices to make it possible for Apu to study. Apu wins a scholarship and leaves for the city, Calcutta. Sarbajaya, the mother, falls ill. Delayed by his exams, Apu arrives too late. She has died. He leaves again for Calcutta.
More»

Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959)
Apur Sansar is about Apu the man. Soumitra Chatterji, who would act in several later Ray films, played Apu. Apu has to give up studies and look for work. Unable to find a job, he is writing a novel based on his life. He gets married unexpectedly to a village girl (played by Sharmila Tagore in her debut role). Young wife finds herself disoriented in the new city life. Both soon develop a companionship and fall in love. They are blissfully happy for a year. She is pregnant and leaves to be with her family for childbirth. She dies while giving birth to their son. Apu blames the infant for its mother's death and refuses to see it. At last, he gives up his novel and goes to meet his son. Reunited, the two of them leave for Calcutta.
More»

Comments
All the trilogy films have their share of cinematic magic movements - Discovery of train by Apu and Durga, the candy seller sequence, Indir Thakrun's death, Durga's death and Harihar's realization of Durga's death in Pather Panchali; Harihar's death, Sarbajaya's (Apu's mother) death on a night sparkling with fire flies and Apu's encounter with the empty house in the village in Aparajito; and Apu's marriage, developing of bond with wife and the first encounter with his son in Apur Sansar. These sequences are pure cinema, handled with Ray's usual understatement

Despite being rooted deep in Indian culture, these films evoke a universal humanistic response. That is because the trilogy is all about human relationships. In Pather Panchali - Apu and his sister Durga, in Aparajito - Apu and his mother, and in Apur Sansar - Apu, his wife and his son form the core of the films. Death too plays a pivotal role in all the films.

[P_R]

Seemabadhdha
Easily the weakest of the Calcutta trilogy.
Very superficial, predictable and unidimensional.
Sharmila Tagore- quite a subtle actress I say!

[P_R]

Ghanashatru - tedious and quite boring.
Ray has put no effort at all to make the movie interesting, nor has he made the effort to portray the complexities. Totally dropped the ball on this one.

[tamizharasan]

Ganashatru (Enemy of the People)


1989, India. 100 min., Color, In Bengali with subtitles.
Credits
Producer: NFDC, National Film Development Corporation of India
Screenplay & Direction: Satyajit Ray; Adapted from the play: 'An Enemy of the People' by Henrik Ibsen.
Cinematography: Barun Raha
Editing: Dulal Dutta
Art Direction: Ashoke Bose
Sound: Sujit Sarkar
Music: Satyajit Ray

Cast
Character: Performer
Dr. Ashoke Gupta: Soumitra Chatterjee
Maya, Dr. Gupta's wife: Ruma Guha Thakurta
Indrani, Dr. Gupta's daughter: Mamata Shankar
Nisith: Dhritiman Chatterjee
Haridas Bagchi: Dipankar Dey
Biresh: Subhendu Chatterjee
Adhir: Manoj Mitra
Summary
The film is an adaptation of a play by Henrik Ibsen: An Enemy of the People.It is set in a small town in Bengal. Dr. Ashoke Gupta (Soumitra Chatterjee) is the head of a town hospital. Gupta's younger brother, Nisith (Dhritiman Chatterjee), is the head of the committees running the hospital and a temple. Both were built by a local Industrialist. The temple is also a big tourist attraction.

Dr. Gupta is convinced that the holy water of the temple is contaminated due to faulty pipe-laying. It is causing an epidemic in the town. He warns his brother Nisith.

Nisith, the Industrialist and other town officials reject the idea that holy water might be the cause of the epidemic. They refuse to close the temple to carry out the repairs.

Dr. Gupta wants to write an article in the newspaper to warn people, but giving-in to the pressure from the powerful people, the editor refuses to publish it.

Left with no alternative, Dr. Gupta organises a public meeting that is also sabotaged. And Dr. Gupta is proclaimed an enemy of the people.
Comments
Due to his medical condition after a heart-attack during making of Ghare-Baire, Satyajit Ray was told by the doctors not to do any location work. He was forced make a film totally in studio. For this, he thought a play would be more suitable rather than a story or a novel. Unfortunately, this constraint of shooting only in studio does mar the film as a whole. Ironically, when he began making films, Ray himself had said that he wanted to remove "the last trace of theatricality" from his work. In fact, Pather Panchali was so refreshingly fresh due to its location sequences.

Having said that, Ganashatru has its merits. As Ray commented in an interview with Andrew Robinson, his biographer:

"I found that for once one could play with human faces and human reactions, rather than landscapes, Nature in its moods, which I have done a lot in my films. Here I think it is the human face, the human character which is predominant."

This is true of not only Ganashatru but also Shakha Prashakha (Branches of the Tree) and Agantuk (The Stranger).

Soumitra Chatterjee, the young romantic Apu of Apur Sansar, now much matured and many more lines on his face, plays Dr. Gupta. As always, a superb performance. Ruma Guha and Mamata Shankar, as Dr. Gupta's supportive wife and daughter, also give commendable performances.
What others say...
Its message, about the perils of greed, religious fanaticism, and environmental pollution, may be topical, but the film is too static to have total impact. Still, there are enough flashes of Ray's brilliance to make it worthwhile.
- Leonard Maltin
Awards
Best Bengali Film, New Delhi, 1989
Other Online Reviews
Ganashatru, Satyajit Ray Film & Study Collection

[P_R]

adhellAnjari, unga karuththai sollunga.
I found it very stagey, uninteresting, simplistic. Quite unlike Ray.

[P_R]

Aranyer Din Ratri - avvaLO oNNum piramAdhamA illeengaLE.

k-g, what is this Carnivalesque?

[kid-glove]

MP - Woody's own personal favorite of his oeuvre,

ADR - Ray's own favorite film. Sublime filmmaking.

[KV]

P_R, here (http://www.mayyam.com/talk/showthread.php?8634-Satyajit-Ray-The-finest-film-maker&p=752051&viewfull=1#post752051)'s in case you haven't read kittu's old post on ADR.

[tamizharasan]

adhellAnjari, unga karuththai sollunga.
I found it very stagey, uninteresting, simplistic. Quite unlike Ray.
I will. I have not seen this thread for the last 3 days.

[iqxamuxe]

Nayak is one of my favourites. Here was Ray working with Uttam Kumar for the first time, and what a perfect casting!!! The matinee idol, caught in his own success, chats with a cynical journo and finds solace. Well, somewhat. Loved the dialogues, especially the last conversation between Uttam Kumar and Sharmila Tagore. Who says Ray's best is with Soumitra Chatterjee only? He went beyond the heros, frankly. What strong characters, what casting!!! BTW, have you heard Soumitra Chatterjee sing? Yes, the mush-respected 'Thinking-man's actor' sang a jingle recently -- http://bit.ly/Soumitra. I loved it!!!

[tamizharasan]

I hope this is not posted yet here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlojSRL_x0I

[tamizharasan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aF5q2R9JFI

[tamizharasan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKm4cXzWD9A

[tamizharasan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N269tSLba1w