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One of the more memorable screenings at this year’s Sydney Film
Festival was Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy— Pather Panchali (1955),
Aparajito (1956) and Apu Sansar (1959)—which traces the life
of a Bengali family and their son Apu, as he moves from childhood in a
rural village, through his youth in Benares where the family later moves,
to manhood and marriage in Calcutta. The three films, which have been
restored by the Merchant-Ivory Foundation, include new subtitles and a
digitally remixed and remastered version of Ravi Shankar’s original
soundtrack.
The Apu Trilogy, which made Satyajit Ray India’s first internationally
recognised director, helped to redefine cinema for the most serious Indian
filmmakers at this time and influenced and encouraged many others
internationally. Such was the power of Ray’s work that Japanese master
director Akira Kurosawa remarked: “Not to have seen the cinema of Ray
means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon.”
Ray was born in Calcutta 1921 to a family of distinguished
intellectuals and grew up surrounded by art, literature and music. His
father and grandfather, who were closely associated with India’s social
reformist Brahmo Samaj movement and its leading poet and dramatist
Rabindranath Tagore, were printers and publishers who also wrote and
illustrated children’s stories and poetry. Ray’s mother was an
accomplished singer and other relatives were scientists, photographers,
artists and physicians. Ray developed an early interest in western
classical music and the cinema. He watched hundreds of films, mainly
American, in his youth and wrote to Hollywood stars and directors,
including Billy Wilder.
After graduating from the University of Calcutta where he majored in
physics and economics, Ray attended Santiniketan University in Kala
Bhavan, studying fine art and graphic design under renowned Bengali
artists Binode Bihari and Nandala Bose. Bihari taught him Chinese and
Japanese drawing and calligraphy techniques. In 1942 Ray returned to
Calcutta and took a job the following year with a British advertising
agency as a graphic designer and illustrator.
Increasingly passionate about movies, Ray helped establish the Calcutta
Film Society in 1947, organising special showings of Hollywood, European
and Russian films. He began writing film reviews and in 1948 published a
short but perceptive comment entitled “What is Wrong with Indian Films”.
It criticised the predominance of saccharine sweet musicals and religious
mysticism in Indian cinema and declared: “The raw material of the cinema
is life itself. It is incredible that a country which has inspired so much
painting and music and poetry should fail to move the moviemaker. He has
only to keep his eyes open, and his ears. Let him do so.”
Soon after writing this essay, Ray met French film director Jean Renoir
who encouraged him to begin making his own films. In 1950 the talented
29-year-old illustrator was sent to London for six months to work in the
advertising agency’s head office. Ray spent most of his spare time there
watching movies—more than 90 odd films—including Vittorio de Sica’s The
Bicycle Thief (1948) and several other Italian neo-realist cinema
classics.
Italian neo-realism, which had a profound impact on Ray and other
filmmakers, was characterised by its naturalistic documentary style,
on-location shooting, conversational speech rather than literary dialogue,
and the use of mainly non-professional actors. De Sica’s film follows the
heartrending efforts of a poor Italian man and his son to recover a stolen
bicycle the father needs in order to get to work.
The Bicycle Thief, Ray wrote in a 1951 essay, was “a triumphant
rediscovery of the fundamentals of the cinema” and the “simple
universality of its theme, the effectiveness of its treatment, and the low
cost of its production make it the ideal film for the Indian filmmaker to
study.”
“The present blind worship of technique emphasises the poverty of
genuine inspiration among our directors,” Ray continued. “For a popular
medium, the best kind of inspiration should derive from life and have its
roots in it. No amount of technical polish can make up for artificiality
of theme and dishonesty of treatment. The filmmaker must turn to life, to
reality. De Sica, and not [Cecil B.] DeMille, should be his ideal.”
Song of the Little Road
Ray had been commissioned in 1945 to illustrate a children’s edition of
Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), the popular
semi-autobiographical novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandhipadhyaya. Inspired by
de Sica’s film, Ray decided to make the novel the subject of his first
film and spent the two-week boat trip from London back to India preparing
shooting sketches and a basic plan for its production.
While work began on Pather Panchali in 1950, the first footage
was not shot until October 1952 and continued over the next two years on
weekends and holidays. The production had a miniscule budget with a mainly
amateur crew and cast. In fact, Sabrata Mitra, Ray’s cinematographer, had
never made a film before and the only experienced members of the
production were the editor, art director and an 80-year-old retired
theatre actress, Chunibala Devi. The film was finally completed, after a
one-year interruption when Ray ran out of funds, with a grant from the
West Bengal government. It was released in India in August 1955 and
screened the following year at the Cannes Film Festival where it won the
festival’s Best Human Document Award. This international recognition
allowed Ray to quit the advertising agency and devote the rest of his life
to filmmaking, literature and art.
Pather Panchali, which is set in the early 1900s, has a
relatively simple plot. In fact, the film largely consists of a series of
short, loosely-connected vignettes tracing out the life and times of a
poor Brahmin family in rural Bengal and the birth and childhood of their
only son Apu. Head of the family, Harihar (Kanu Banerji), who dreams of
being a poet, has brought Sarbajaya (Karuna Banerji), his pregnant wife,
and Durga (Uma Das Gupta), his daughter, from Benares back to the
ancestral rural home. The young family also takes care of an aged aunt,
Indir Thakrun (Chunibala Devi).
The home is in serious disrepair with part of the land having been sold
to settle debts. Harihar, who obtains occasional bookkeeping work for a
local landlord, is forced to spend long periods away from the family in
search of full-time employment. The mischievous Durga steals fruit from
orchards, which she gives to Indir, thus creating conflicts with the
neighbours and between Sarbajaya and Indir. Blamed for encouraging the
young girl, Indir leaves the family but returns following Apu’s birth.
Pather Panchali follows the trials and tribulations of this poor
family: the first conscious experiences of Apu (Subir Banerji), his early
school years and close bond with his sister Durga, and their adventures in
the nearby forest and fields. The underlying strength of the film is Ray’s
unsentimental but intensely artistic exploration of many universal themes.
He carefully examines the interaction of life and death, the aged and the
young, and makes subtle references to the tensions between rural and city
life and how it is being changed by new technology—in this case
electricity and the railway.
In one memorable sequence, which also cuts to the last difficult
moments of Indir’s life, the children, who have been quarrelling, are
playing in fields far from home and come across some high tension
electricity pylons. Fascinated by the humming sound of the wires they walk
on through long grass, see the smoke of a distant train and then run to
the railway tracks. The train, which has previously been an occasional
background sound in their lives, is seen in all its power, the hope of a
better life beyond their immediate environment. Their quarrels are
forgotten in their fascination with the train but on the way back home
they stumble across Indir who has collapsed and is dying in the woods.
Pather Panchali has some extraordinarily joyous moments combined
with periods of deep sadness, including the death of Indir, and then the
tragic loss of Durga, who catches a fever after a dancing in the monsoon
rains and dies just before her father’s long-awaited return.
The success of Pather Panchali allowed Ray to begin work
immediately on Aparajito (The Unvanquished), also based on a
Bandhipadhyaya novel, which was completed in 1956 and won the Golden Lion
award at the 1957 Venice Film Festival. This film is more complex in terms
of plot and characterisation compared to Pather Panchali and set
new standards for Indian cinema actors.
Set in the 1920s, Aparajito begins in the holy city of Benares
on the Ganges where the family, still in shock over Durga’s death, had
moved. Harihar is attempting to maintain Sarbajaya, his wife, and the
10-year-old Apu (Smaran Ghosal) by reciting Hindu scriptures and selling
religious trinkets to pilgrims visiting the holy river. While the family
is still poor and Harihar’s health is declining, he is happy to be
reunited with his wife and son, who is animated and excited about city
life. Tragedy strikes, however, when Harihar catches a fever and collapses
one day after climbing the steps from the river and dies soon after.
Having lost her husband and only daughter, Sarbajaya decides to
relocate to her uncle’s village in Bengal where Apu resumes his education
at the local school. The central focus of Aparajito is the changing
relationship between Apu (now played by Santi Gupta) and his mother. The
years go by and Apu wins a scholarship to a Calcutta college and leaves
the village. Sarbajaya is proud of her son but concerned about who will
care for her in his absence.
The final part of the film alternates between Apu’s life with his
school friends in Calcutta and what he considers to be boring vacations in
the quiet village with his mother. Apu is unconscious of his mother’s
loneliness and disdainful of village life. Sarbajaya, who scolds him for
not writing to her enough, is torn by her isolation and the recognition
that the young man must make his own way in the world. As in Pather
Panchali, the train is a potent symbol in the film: for Apu it is his
lifeline to the outside world; for Sarbajaya it is a vehicle of hope that
carries Apu back to the village for his brief vacations.
Ray produced two films— Paras Pathar (The Philosopher’s Stone)
and Jalsaghar (The Music Room) between 1957 and 1959—before
deciding to make Apu Sansur (The World Apu) the last of the trilogy
in 1959. In this film Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee), now in his mid-20s, has
given up studying and, although unemployed, harbours hopes of becoming a
writer. Living in a small room near the Calcutta railway tracks he is
persuaded by an old school friend, Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee), to attend a
wedding in the country. The arranged marriage of Aparna, the young bride,
however, is cancelled at the last moment after her family discovers that
the suitor is mentally retarded. A new groom must be found immediately or,
according to tradition, Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) will be cursed for the
rest of her life. Apu is asked to be the groom and agrees, despite some
initial resistance. The newly married young couple fall in love and move
back to Calcutta. Aparna falls pregnant but tragedy strikes when she dies
giving birth to the child—a baby boy.
Angry and confused, Apu blames the baby for his wife’s death and
refuses to take any responsibility for the child and wanders the
countryside in a state of deep despair. Five years later he decides to
visit his son. Although his in-laws are bitter and the child rejects him
at first, father and son form a bond and Apu resolves to take full care
and responsibility of the young boy.
It is difficult to exaggerate the artistic beauty of the Apu Trilogy,
which has some astonishingly poetic and haunting imagery that resonates
long after specific details of the films’ plots have faded from the one’s
more immediate memory. Apu and Durga’s discovery of the train outside
their village or Durga’s joyous dance in the first monsoon rains in
Pather Panchali; Sarbajaya’s emotional pain as she tries to come to
terms with her son’s longer absences from home in Aparajito; and
the extraordinary intimacy of the newly-married Apu and Aparna in Apu
Sansar.
Another one of the many indelible moments in Apu Sansar is Apu’s
interview with the manager of a small factory. The job? Handwriting labels
for food jars. The interview concludes and Apu is taken to the workroom
and looks into the dark and dirty hellhole. Nothing is said and the camera
barely moves. The blank gaze of a worker says more than a thousand words
of dialogue, not just about this soul-destroying job, but the system that
produces this misery.
The greatness of these films, however, lie not just in the lyrical
cinematography, honesty of the actors’ performances and the intense music
of Ravi Shankar, but in the universal themes Ray deals with and his
underlying optimism. Despite the extraordinarily tragic moments in the
trilogy, and there are many, Ray always provides a sense of hope that no
matter how great the difficulties confronting his characters the struggle
for genuinely caring human relations can overcome all adversity.
Commenting on the initial success of Pather Panchali and
Aparajito, Ray declared in 1958: “Personally I have been lucky with
my first two films, but what is really important and exciting is not the
immediate gain, but the ultimate vindication of the belief that I hold
dearest as an artist: art wedded to truth must, in the end, have its
rewards.”
Ray’s artistic legacy under attack
It is not possible here to provide a detailed overview of this
director’s cinematic work—the Apu Trilogy was, in fact, the first of a
number of truly great films by Ray on a diverse range of subjects. Suffice
to say, this thoroughly independent director, who refused to be swayed by
commercial considerations, was a multi-talented artist. He wrote his own
scripts, composed most of the musical soundtracks and was the
cinematographer in a number of his films. He also wrote and illustrated
scores of children’s books, novels, detective stories and science fiction
works and was writing up until his death.
Before he died in 1992, soon after receiving a Lifetime Achievement
Oscar, he had made 29 features and several documentaries chronicling
different phases of Bengali social life and history—stories about the
rural poor, the urban middle classes and the wealthy. These include:
The Goddess (1960), Three Daughters (1961), The Lonely
Wife (1964), The Hero (1966), Days and Nights in the Forest
(1969), Distant Thunder (1973), The Chess Players
(1977), The Home and the World (1984), An Enemy of the
People (1989), Branches of the Tree (1991) and The Stranger
(1991).
Rightly regarded as one of the century’s leading film directors by
international critics, Ray encountered many detractors in his own country.
In 1980, former film star and MP Nargis Dutt denounced him in the Indian
parliament for “exporting images of India’s poverty for foreign
audiences”. Ray earned the wrath of Hindu chauvinists who claimed he was
an “Orientalist,” or Westernised Indian, who had renounced Indian
culture.
These crude criticisms coincided with the rise of Hindu fundamentalists
who blame all of India’s social ills on foreign influences and other
religions, and insist that India must become an exclusivist Hindu state.
Today these extremists hold power through the ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), which has repeatedly sought to suppress the works of artists,
film directors and historians that in any way cut across or are critical
of their right-wing, communalist view of Indian society.
Such “critics” did not sway Satyajit Ray in the slightest. Educated by
a family who were leading figures in what has been described as the
Bengali renaissance and who campaigned for an end to the caste system,
child marriages, Sati (widow burning) and other backward practices, Ray
had no time for those calling for a Hindu or nationalist approach to
artistic creation.
Ray drew on the highest achievements in human science and culture for
artistic inspiration—from the European enlightenment, Asian calligraphy,
western classical music and the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. This
progressive and thoroughly inclusive outlook infused all his work and gave
it an unmatched honesty and integrity. He once commented that great cinema
had the ability to “leave its regional moorings and rise to a plane of
universal gestures and universal emotions”. This is the essential
achievement of the Apu Trilogy and indicates why it is anathema to the
Hindu fundamentalists today.