Journal Entry

10/25/2005

Satyajit Ray and Indian Cinema

Dr. Mary Brodnax

Department of Humanities and Philosophy

Satyajit Ray was India's first internationally recognized film-maker which continued to be recognized for several years after his death. He remains the most well-known Indian director on the world stage. The story of Ray and what lead him to be the film maker he was. He wrote he was captivated by the cinema as a young college student, and was self-taught. His film education consisted largely of repeated viewings of film classics by de Sica, Fellini, John Ford, Orson Welles, and other eminent directors. One of his greatest influences was Vittori De Sirca, an Italian neo-realist, with film clips of the Bicycle Thief, which was a story that showed the realism he became known for.

It is considered that he brought the neo-realist movement in film to India. As Dr. Mary Brodnax pointed out, he was very much a neo-realist movement film maker. His work showed a very humanist view of life and film making. More into portraying real life and real people was a since of truth he looked and worked for in his films.

The black and white clips shown in class, strong in emotion, revealed a touch of realism in the reality of the film, being like a documentary of life experience. His work did not showcase the culture but showed the people, and through the people, you come to realize there are other cultures.

One of his outstanding characteristics, of his film making, is his love for the human race and a deep sense of the underlying human condition. This being the humanistic quality he brought to his film making that set him so far apart from others. He was very critical of Western film and films that where not following his style, but following the Western style of film making.

Though he was well read in Indian literature, he did not bring that style to his film making. Like the Marabharata, where stories are added and sub stories are added, that follow with the now famous Ballwood style of films. He did not like the piece meal work of added musical scores and the prettying up of things. He stuck to the nature of the true human experience with direction and a story that revealed as much as it shows in stories in the realism of the film. Here the camera is only the tool and the story the truth that will come out best.

Little could anyone have imagined that this first film would launch Ray on one of the most brilliant careers in the history of cinema, leading eventually not only to dozens of international awards, India’s highest honor, and a lifetime achievement Oscar from Hollywood, but the unusual accolade of being voted by members of the British Film Institute as one of the three greatest directors in world cinema.

Understand that Satyajit Ray was born 1921 into an illustrious family in Calcutta. His grandfather, Upendra Kishore Ray-Chaudhary, was a publisher, musician and the creator of children’s literature in Bengali. His father, Sukumar Ray, was a noted satirist and India's first writer of nonsense rhymes, akin to the nonsense verse of Edward Lear. Later in life, Satyajit Ray made a documentary of his father's life.

The story Pather Panchali, based on a novel by Bibhutibhusan Banerji [Bandopadhyay], is the story which documents a family's struggle for existence in the face of a famine and the growth of the boy Apu. Ray later wrote, "I chose Pather Panchali for the qualities that made it a great book; its humanism; its lyricism; and its ring of truth . . . Satyajit Ray remained a strong presence on the Bengali cultural scene all throughout his life. In 1947 he had founded the Calcutta Film Society with Chidananda Das Gupta. Though in the West he is known only as a film-maker, his reputation in his native Bengal extends to a great many other spheres. Ray was a prolific short story writer, with over a dozen volumes to his credit; and he contributed regularly to the children's journal "Sandesh", which he also edited. He wrote and scored the music for some of his films, but in the music for the Apu Trilogy was composed by Ravi Shankar, and for Jalsaghar by the incomparable Vilayat Khan. It became no surprise, that his fellow Bengalis at least thought of him as a "Renaissance Man", and he was hailed as the successor of Rabindranath Tagore. His films are and were closely studied in film schools, and watched repeatedly by hopeful film-makers coming to see the view he showed in his art.

He was truly a prolific filmmaker, during his lifetime Ray directed 36 films, comprising of features, documentaries and short stories. These include the renowned Apu trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito [1956] and Apur Sansar [1959]), Jalsaghar (1958), Postmaster (1961), Charulata (1964), Days and Nights in the Forest (1969) and Pikoo (1980) along with a host of his lesser known works which themselves stand up as fine examples of story telling. His films encompass a diversity of moods, techniques, and genres: comedy, satire, fantasy and tragedy. Usually he made films in a realist mode, but he also experimented with surrealism and fantasy.

Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye, Robinson, A. Andre Deutsch (1989). ISBN 0233984739.

Satyajit Ray, The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker, Robinson, A. I.B. Tauris (2003). ISBN 1860649653.

Satyajit Ray: A Vision of Cinema, Robinson, A. I.B. Tauris (2005). ISBN 1845110749.

Satyajit Ray, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/ray.html

Manas Cukture Indian Cinema Satyajit Ray

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/Cinema/SRay.html

Satyajit Ray Film and Study Collection

Excellent website for the non-profit educational organization dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of Ray's cinematic, literary and artistic oeuvre.

Satyajit Ray

Good overview of the filmmaker as part of Film India's website.

Maanvi Media presents. Satyajit Ray

Great resource for information on his films, awards, books, crews, biography, testimonials.

Satyajit Ray

Good (though basic) site with some enlightening articles.

Reportages - Satyajit Ray

Great French site, consisting mainly of shots of Ray at work on set.