TO BEGIN WITH AND END THERE WAS A RAY OF HOPE - SATYAJIT RAY

To Begin With and End There Was A Ray of Hope  -  Satyajit Ray

  

       

                     

The proverb there is a ray of hope at the end of the tunnel (the light) is meaningful in the case of Satyajit Ray. But in this case not only at the end but also in the beginning of his career through the end - alpha and omega - there was a ray of hope. The saying becomes meaningful as the ‘Bharat Ratna’ Award-winning filmmaker director Satyajit Ray’s life and achievements unfold for the public view. The ‘Phalke Award’ and many more eminent awards were conferred on him for writing a fairy tale about what happened in Satyajit Ray’s life. A special ‘Academy Honorary Award’ for lifetime achievement as a director was also won by him and he was the first and yet only Indian to receive that award.

The man had a magnanimous presence and stood towering tall in the arena of Indian celebrities of all time.

"Not to have seen the cinema of Satyajit Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon", said Akira Kurosawa, the great master of Japanese cinema.

 

Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries, and shorts. He was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, calligrapher, music composer, graphic designer, and film critic.

 

Satyajit Ray has won 32 National film awards, The Cannes Film Festival Awards, the Berlin Film Awards, the British International Film Awards, the Venice Film Festival Awards, Akira Kurosawa Award, and numerous international and other significant awards in his filmography. During his reign at the helm of film-making, he swept almost all the national awards. It becomes imperative to discuss his achievements throughout his illustrious career spanning more than four decades of his stay in the film industry until his death embraced him at the age of 70 years.

 

Satyajit Ray is a cultural icon in India and in Bengali communities worldwide.

“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.” - Nobel Laureate in Economics fellow Bengali Amartya Sen.

Many Bengali and other Indian and international filmmakers took inspiration from Ray’s style of filmmaking.

I would like to present here some of the movie titles of Satyajit Ray -

 

Satyajit Ray was an Indian filmmaker. Ray was born in the city of Calcutta into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature.

Satyajit Ray was born in Calcutta on May 2, 1921. His father, Sukumar Ray, was an eminent poet and writer in the history of Bengali literature. In 1940, after receiving his degree in science and economics from Calcutta University, he attended Tagore's Viswa-Bharati University. His first movie, Pather Panchali (1955), won several International Awards and established Ray as a world-class director. He died on April 23, 1992.

 

 

Sukumar Ray died when Satyajit was barely three, and the family survived on Suprabha Ray's meager income. Ray studied at Ballygunge Government High School, Calcutta, and completed his BA in economics at Presidency College, Calcutta then affiliated with the University of Calcutta, though his interest was always in fine arts. In 1940, his mother insisted that he study at the Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, founded by Rabindranath Tagore. Ray was reluctant due to his love of Calcutta, and the low opinion of the intellectual life at Santiniketan. His mother's persuasion and his respect for Tagore finally convinced him to try. In Santiniketan, Ray came to appreciate Oriental art. He later admitted that he learned much from the famous painters Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee. Later he produced a documentary film, The Inner Eye, about Mukherjee. His visits to Ajanta, Ellora, and Elephanta stimulated his admiration for Indian art.

 

In 1949, Ray married Bijoya Das, his first cousin and long-time sweetheart. The couple had a son, Sandip, who is now a film director. In the same year, French director Jean Renoir came to Calcutta to shoot his film The River. Ray helped him to find locations in the countryside. Ray told Renoir about his idea of filming Pather Panchali, which had long been on his mind, and Renoir encouraged him in the project. In 1950, D.J. Keymer sent Ray to London to work at its headquarters office. During his three months in London, Ray watched 99 films. Among these was the neorealist film Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) (1948) by Vittorio De Sica, which had a profound impact on him. Ray later said that he came out of the theater determined to become a filmmaker

 

 

I feel that there are other elements than humanism in his work. It's not just about human beings. It's also a structure, a form, a rhythm, a face, a temple, a feeling for light and shade, composition, and a way of telling a story.

 

 

 

 

22 years old Ray at Santiniketan

 

Ray decided to use Pather Panchali (1928), the classic Bildungsroman of Bengali literature, as the basis for his first film. The semi-autobiographical novel describes the maturation of Appu, a small boy in a Bengal village.

 

 

Ray gathered an inexperienced crew, although both his cameraman Subrata Mitra and art director Bansi Chandragupta went on to achieve great acclaim. The cast consisted of mostly amateur actors. He started shooting in late 1952 with his personal savings and hoped to raise more money once he had some passages shot, but did not succeed on his terms. As a result, Ray shot Pather Panchali over three years, an unusually long period, based on when he or his production manager Anil Chowdhury could raise additional funds. He refused funding from sources who wanted a change in script or supervision over production. He also ignored advice from the government to incorporate a happy ending, but he did receive funding that allowed him to complete the film. Ray showed an early film passage to the American director John Huston, who was in India scouting locations for The Man Who Would Be King. The passage was of the vision that Appu and his sister have of the train running through the countryside, the only sequence that Ray had yet filmed due to his small budget. Huston notified Monroe Wheeler at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) that a major talent was on the horizon.

 

With a loan from the West Bengal government, Ray finally completed the film. It was released in 1955 to great critical and popular success. It earned numerous prizes and had long runs in both India and abroad. In India, the reaction to the film was enthusiastic; The Times of India wrote "It is absurd to compare it with any other Indian cinema Pather Panchali is pure cinema." In the United Kingdom, Lindsay Anderson wrote a glowing review of the film. But, the reaction was not uniformly positive. After watching the movie, François Truffaut is reported to have said, "I don't want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands." Bosley Crowther, then the most influential critic of The New York Times, wrote a scathing review of the film. Its American distributor Ed Harrison was worried Crowther's review would dissuade audiences, but the film had an exceptionally long run when released in the United States.

 

 

Ray's international career started in earnest after the success of his next film, Aparajito (The Unvanquished). This film shows the eternal struggle between the ambitions of a young man, Appu, and the mother who loves him. Critics such as Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak rank it higher than Ray's first film. Aparajito won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, bringing Ray considerable acclaim. Before completing The Appu Trilogy, Ray directed and released two other films: the comic Parash Pathar (The Philosopher's Stone), and Jalsaghar (The Music Room), a film about the decadence of the Zamindars, considered one of his most important works.

 

 

While making Aparajito, Ray had not planned a trilogy, but after he was asked about the idea in Venice, it appealed to him. He finished the last of the trilogy, Apur Sansar (The World of Appu) in 1959. Critics Robin Wood and Aparna Sen found this to be the supreme achievement of the trilogy. Ray introduced two of his favorite actors, Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore, in this film. It opens with Appu living in a Calcutta house in near poverty. He becomes involved in an unusual marriage with Aparna. The scenes of their life together form "one of the cinema's classic affirmative depictions of married life. They suffer tragedy. After Apur Sansar was harshly criticized by a Bengali critic, Ray wrote an article defending it. He rarely responded to critics during his filmmaking career but later defended his film Charulata, his personal favorite.

 

 

Ray wrote his memoirs during his filming of the Appu Trilogy which has been published as My Years with Appu: A Memoir.

 

 

Ray's film successes had little influence on his personal life in the years to come. He continued to live with his wife and children in a rented house, with his mother, uncle and other members of his extended family.

 

 

During this period, Ray composed films on the British Raj period (such as Devi), a documentary on Tagore, a comic film (Mahapurush), and his first film from an original screenplay (Kanchenjungha). He also made a series of films that, taken together, are considered by critics among the most deeply felt portrayals of Indian women on screen.

 

 

Ray followed Apur Sansar with Devi (The Goddess), a film in which he examined the superstitions in Hindu society. Sharmila Tagore starred as Doyamoyee, a young wife who is deified by her father-in-law. Ray was worried that the censor board might block his film, or at least make him re-cut it, but Devi was spared. In 1961, on the insistence of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ray was commissioned to make a documentary on Rabindranath Tagore, on the occasion of the poet's birth centennial, a tribute to the person who likely most influenced Ray. Due to the limited footage of Tagore, Ray faced the challenge of making a film out of mainly static material. He said that it took as much work as three feature films.

 

 

In the same year, together with Subhas Mukhopadhyay and others, Ray was able to revive Sandesh, the children's magazine that his grandfather once published. Ray had been saving money for some years to make this possible. A duality in the name (Sandesh means both "news" in Bengali and also a sweet popular dessert) set the tone of the magazine (both educational and entertaining). Ray began to make illustrations for it, as well as to write stories and essays for children. Writing became his major source of income in the years to come.

 

 

In 1962, Ray directed Kanchenjungha. Based on his first original screenplay, it was his first film in color. The film tells of an upper-class family spending an afternoon in Darjeeling, a picturesque hill town in West Bengal. They try to arrange the engagement of their youngest daughter to a highly paid engineer educated in London. He had first conceived of shooting the film in a large mansion but later decided to film it in the famous hill town. He used the many shades of light and mist to reflect the tension in the drama. Ray noted that while his script allowed shooting to be possible under any lighting conditions, a commercial film contingent present at the same time in Darjeeling failed to shoot a single scene, as they only wanted to do so in the sunshine.

 

 

In the sixties, Ray visited Japan and took particular pleasure in meeting the filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, for whom he had very high regard. While at home, he would take an occasional break from the hectic city life by going to places such as Darjeeling or Puri to complete a script in isolation.

 

 

In 1964 Ray made Charulata (The Lonely Wife); it was the culmination of this period of work and is regarded by many critics as his most accomplished film Based on "Nastanirh", a short story of Tagore, the film tells of a lonely wife, Charu, in 19th-century Bengal, and her growing feelings for her brother-in-law Amal. Critics have referred to this as Ray's Mozartian masterpiece. He said the film contained the fewest flaws among his work, and it was his only work that, given a chance, he would make exactly the same way. Madhabi Mukherjee's performance as Charu, and the work of both Subrata Mitra and Bansi Chandragupta in the film, have been highly praised. Other films in this period include Mahanagar (The Big City), Teen Kanya (Three Daughters), Abhijan (The Expedition), and Kapurush o Mahapurush (The Coward and the Holy Man).

 

In 1967, he wrote a script for a movie entitled "The Alien". Columbia Pictures was in talks to produce it. Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando were supposed to be up for the leading roles. However, Ray was surprised to find that the script he had co-written had already been copyrighted and the fee appropriated. Brando dropped out of the project and, though an attempt was made to bring James Coburn in to replace him, Ray was disillusioned, had enough of Hollywood machinations, and returned to Calcutta. Columbia was interested in reviving the project in the 1970s and 1980s but nothing came of it. When E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) was released in 1982, many saw striking similarities in the film to Ray's earlier script. Ray himself believed that Steven Spielberg's movie "would not have been possible without my script of 'The Alien' being available throughout America in mimeographed copies." Spielberg denied this by saying, "I was a kid in high school when this script was circulating in Hollywood".

 

 

Japanese film-maker Akira Kurosawa and Ray were acquainted.


The Legion of Honor is the most prestigious award in France and is presented to those having exhibited outstanding lifetime achievement in their chosen field of work. Instead of inviting him over to France for the ceremony, then French president François Mitterrand personally went to Ray's doorstep in Calcutta to present him with the honor.

Another huge fan of Ray's work was John Huston.

 

 

The Legion of Honor is the most prestigious award in France and is presented to those having exhibited outstanding lifetime achievement in their chosen field of work. Instead of inviting him over to France for the ceremony, then French president François Mitterrand personally went to Ray's doorstep in Calcutta to present him with the honor.

 

 

Another huge fan of Ray's work was John Huston.

 

 

Satyajit Ray became the first Indian to receive an Honorary Academy Award in 1992.

 

 

In 1983, while working on Ghare Baire (Home and the World), Ray suffered a heart attack; it would severely limit his productivity in the remaining 9 years of his life. Ghare Baire was completed in 1984 with the help of Ray's son (who operated the camera from then on) because of his health condition. He had wanted to film this Tagore novel on the dangers of fervent nationalism for a long time and wrote the first draft of a script for it in the 1940s. Despite rough patches due to Ray's illness, the film did receive some critical acclaim. It had the first kiss fully portrayed in Ray's films. In 1987, he made a documentary on his father, Sukumar Ray.

 

 

Ray's last three films, made after his recovery and with medical strictures in place, were shot mostly indoors, and have a distinctive style. They have more dialogue than his earlier films and are often regarded as inferior to his earlier body of work. The first, Ganashatru (An Enemy of the People) is an adaptation of the famous Ibsen play and is considered the weakest of the three. Ray recovered some of his forms in his 1990 film Shakha Proshakha (Branches of the Tree). In it, an old man, who has lived a life of honesty, comes to learn of the corruption of three of his sons. The final scene shows the father finding solace only in the companionship of his fourth son, who is uncorrupted but mentally ill. Ray's last film, Agantuk (The Stranger), is lighter in mood but not in theme. When a long-lost uncle arrives to visit his niece in Calcutta, he arouses suspicion as to his motive. This provokes far-ranging questions in the film about civilization.

 

 

Satyajit Ray considered scriptwriting to be an integral part of direction. Initially, he refused to make a film in any language other than Bengali. In his two non-Bengali feature films, he wrote the script in English; translators interpreted it in Hindi or Urdu under Ray's supervision. Ray's eye for detail was matched by that of his art director Bansi Chandragupta. His influence on the early films was so important that Ray would always write scripts in English before creating a Bengali version so that the non-Bengali Chandragupta would be able to read it. The craft of Subrata Mitra garnered praise for the cinematography of Ray's films. A number of critics thought that his departure from Ray's crew lowered the quality of cinematography in the following films. Though Ray openly praised Mitra, his single-mindedness in taking over the operation of the camera after Charulata caused Mitra to stop working for him after 1966. Mitra developed "bounce lighting", a technique to reflect light from cloth to create a diffused, realistic light even on a set. Ray acknowledged his debts to Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut of the French New Wave for introducing new technical and cinematic innovations.

 

 

Ray's regular film editor was Dulal Datta, but the director usually dictated the editing while Datta did the actual work. Because of financial reasons and Ray's meticulous planning, his films were mostly cut "on the camera" (apart from Pather Panchali). At the beginning of his career, Ray worked with Indian classical musicians, including Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan, and Ali Akbar Khan. He found that their first loyalty was to musical traditions, and not to his film. He had a greater understanding of Western classical forms, which he wanted to use for his films set in an urban milieu. Starting with Teen Kanya, Ray began to compose his own scores.

 

 

He used actors of diverse backgrounds, from famous film stars to people who had never seen a film (as in Aparajito). Robin Wood and others have lauded him as the best director of children, pointing out memorable performances in the roles of Appu and Durga (Pather Panchali), Ratan (Postmaster), and Mukul (Sonar Kella). Depending on the talent or experience of the actor, Ray varied the intensity of his direction, from virtually nothing with actors such as Utpal Dutt to using the actor as "a puppet" (Subir Banerjee as young Appu or Sharmila Tagore as Aparna). Actors who had worked for Ray praised his customary trust but said he could also treat incompetence with "total contempt".

 

In 1992, Ray's health deteriorated due to heart complications. He was admitted to a hospital but never recovered. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him an Honorary Academy Award. Ray is the first and the only Indian, yet, to receive the honor. Twenty-four days before his death, Ray accepted the award in a gravely ill condition, calling it the "Best achievement of [his] movie-making career." He died on 23 April 1992 at the age of 70 years.

 

 

Ray's work has been described as full of humanism and universality, and of a deceptive simplicity with deep underlying complexity.  The Japanese director Akira Kurosawa said, "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon. But his detractors find his films glacially slow, moving like a "majestic snail."  Some find his humanism simple-minded, and his work anti-modern; they criticize him for lacking the new modes of expression or experimentation found in works of Ray's contemporaries, such as Jean-Luc Godard. As Stanley Kauffman wrote, some critics believe that Ray assumes that viewers "can be interested in a film that simply dwells in its characters, rather than one that imposes dramatic patterns on their lives." Ray said he could do nothing about the slow pace. Kurosawa defended him by saying that Ray's films were not slow, "His work can be described as flowing composedly, like a big river".

                                  

                        

       

Critics have often compared Ray to artists in the cinema and other media, such

 

 

 

 

as Chekhov, Renoir, De Sica, Hawks, or Mozart. The writer V. S. Naipaul compared a scene in Shatranj Ki Khiladi (The Chess Players) to a Shakespearean play; he wrote, "Only three hundred words are spoken but goodness! – terrific things happen." Even critics who did not like the aesthetics of Ray's films generally acknowledged his ability to encompass a whole culture with all its nuances. Ray's obituary in The Independent included the question, "Who else can compete?" His work was promoted in France by The Studio des Ursulines cinema.

 

 

Praising his contribution to the world of cinema, Martin Scorsese mentions: "His work is in the company of that of living contemporaries like Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa and Federico Fellini.”

 

Political ideologues took issue with Ray's work. In a public debate during the 1960s, Ray and the Marxist filmmaker Mrinal Sen engaged in an argument. Sen criticized him for casting a matinée idol such as Uttam Kumar, whom he considered a compromise. Ray said that Sen only attacked "easy targets", i.e. the Bengali middle classes. However, Ray himself has made movies on the Bengali middle class in films like Pratidwandi and Jana Aranya set during the period of the Naxalite movement in Bengal. Advocates of socialism said that Ray was not "committed" to the cause of the nation's downtrodden classes; some critics accused him of glorifying poverty in Pather Panchali and Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder) through lyricism and aesthetics. They said he provided no solution to conflicts in the stories and was unable to overcome his bourgeois background. During the Naxalite movements in the 1970s, agitators once came close to causing physical harm to his son, Sandip. Early in 1980, Ray was criticized by an Indian M.P. and former actress Nargis Dutt, who accused Ray of "exporting poverty." She wanted him to make films to represent "Modern India.

 

 

Satyajit Ray is a cultural icon in India and in Bengali communities worldwide. Following his death, the city of Calcutta came to a virtual standstill, as hundreds of thousands of people gathered around his house to pay their last respects. Satyajit Ray's influence has been widespread and deep in Bengali cinema; a number of Bengali directors, including Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh and Gautam Ghose as well as Vishal Bhardwaj, Dibakar Banerjee, Shyam Benegal and Sujoy Ghosh from Hindi cinema in India, Tareq Masud and Tanvir Mokammel in Bangladesh, and Aneel Ahmad in England, have been influenced by his film craft. Across the spectrum, filmmakers such as Budhdhadeb Dasgupta, Mrinal Sen, and Adoor Gopalakrishnan have acknowledged his seminal contribution to Indian cinema. Beyond India, filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Ivory, Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, François Truffaut, Carlos Saura, Isao Takahata, Wes Anderson, Danny Boyle and many other noted filmmakers from all over the world have been influenced by his cinematic style, with many others such as Akira Kurosawa praising his work. Gregory Nava's 1995 film My Family had a final scene that repeated that of Apur Sansar. Ira Sachs's 2005 work Forty Shades of Blue was a loose remake of Charulata. Other references to Ray films are found, for example, in recent works such as Sacred Evil, and the Elements trilogy of Deepa Mehta. According to Michael Sragow of The Atlantic Monthly, the "youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Appu trilogy". The trilogy also introduced the bounce lighting technique. Kanchenjungha (1962) introduced a narrative structure that resembles later hyperlink cinema. Pratidwandi (1972) helped pioneer photo-negative flashback and X-ray digression techniques. Together with Madhabi Mukherjee, Ray was the first Indian film figure to be featured on a foreign stamp (Dominica).

 

 

Many literary works include references to Ray or his work, including Saul Bellow's Herzog and J. M. Coetzee's Youth. Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories contains fish characters named Goopy and Bagha, a tribute to Ray's fantasy film. In 1993, UC Santa Cruz established the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Collection, and in 1995, the Government of India set up the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute for studies related to film. In 2007, the BBC declared that two Feluda stories would be made into radio programs. During the London Film Festival, a regular "Satyajit Ray Award" is given to a first-time feature director whose film best captures "the artistry, compassion, and humanity of Ray's vision". Wes Anderson has claimed Ray as an influence on his work; his 2007 film, The Darjeeling Limited, set in India, is dedicated to Ray. Ray also a graphic designer, designed most of his film posters, combining folk art and calligraphy to create themes ranging from mysterious, and surreal to comical; an exhibition of his posters was held at the British Film Institute in 2013.

 

He authored several short stories and novels, primarily aimed at children and adolescents. “Feluda, the sleuth”, and “Professor Shonku”, the scientist in his science fiction stories, are popular fictional characters created by him. He was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University.
He was an enormous man (about 6' 5" and well over two hundred pounds), having stood nearly a foot taller than the average Indian of his generation. His family of ten generations was traceable. Ray's grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury was a writer, illustrator, philosopher, publisher, amateur astronomer, and a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, a religious and social movement in nineteenth-century Bengal. He also set up a printing press by the name of U. Ray and Sons, which formed a crucial backdrop to Satyajit's life. Sukumar Ray, Upendrakishore's son, and father of Satyajit was a pioneering Bengali writer of nonsense rhyme (abol tabol) and children's literature, an illustrator, and a critic. Ray was born to Sukumar and Suprabha Ray in Calcutta.

 

 

Ray is the second film personality after Chaplin to have been awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University. He was awarded the “Dadasaheb Phalke Award” in 1985 and the “Legion of Honor” by the President of France in 1987. The Government of India awarded him the highest civilian honor, “Bharat Ratna” shortly before his death. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Ray an Honorary Oscar in 1992 for Lifetime Achievement. It was one of his favorite actresses, Audrey Hepburn, who represented the Academy on that day in Calcutta. Ray, unable to attend the ceremony due to his illness, gave his acceptance speech to the Academy via live video feed from the hospital bed. In 1992 he was posthumously awarded the Akira Kurosawa Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing at the San Francisco International Film Festival; it was accepted on his behalf by actress Sharmila Tagore.

 

 

In 1992, the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll ranked Ray at No. 7 in its list of "Top 10 Directors" of all time, making him the highest-ranking Asian filmmaker in the poll. In 2002, the Sight & Sound Critics' and Directors' Poll ranked Ray at No. 22 in its list of all-time greatest directors, thus making him the fourth highest-ranking Asian filmmaker in the poll. In 1996, Entertainment Weekly magazine ranked Ray at No. 25 in its "50 Greatest Directors" list. In 2007, Total Film magazine included Ray in its "100 Greatest Film Directors Ever" list.

 

 

Satyajit Ray regarded as India's most important film director so far, together with Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak.

                                                  

                                   Sandip Ray

Satyajit Ray’s son Sandip Ray is a noted film director and cinematographer in West Bengal today.

Ray's passion for films, chess, and Western classical music is famous.

He was a Member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1961.

 

He won a special lifetime achievement award at the 1992 Academy Awards. He's the second Indian to have won an Oscar. The first was Bhanu Athaiya in 1983.

Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1982.

Satyajit Ray is the author of several science-fiction short stories.

 

A talented graphic artist, Ray designed numerous book jackets and magazine covers. He also designed two typefaces.

He was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film culture.

 
Satyajit Ray is the grandfather of Souradip Ray.

 

 

He was very fond of actor Nana Patekar. He wanted to direct him before he died.

His niece married Bollywood legend Kishore Kumar.

 

Bollywood director Shoojit Sircar describes Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece “Pather Panchali” as his bible of life.

Satyajit Ray, the master storyteller, has left a cinematic heritage that belongs as much to India as to the world. His films demonstrate a remarkable humanism, elaborate observation, and subtle handling of characters and situations. The cinema of Satyajit Ray is a rare blend of intellect and emotions. He is controlled, precise, and meticulous, and yet evokes deep emotional responses from the audience. His films depict a fine sensitivity without using melodrama or dramatic excesses. He evolved a cinematic style that is almost invisible. He strongly believed - "The best technique is the one that's not noticeable".

 

 

Though initially inspired by the neo-realist tradition, his cinema belongs not to a specific category or style but a timeless meta-genre of a style of storytelling that touches the audience in some way. His films belong to a meta-genre that includes the works of Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Chaplin, David Lean, Federico Fellini, Fritz Lang, John Ford, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Renoir, Luis Bunuel, Yasujiro Ozu, Ritwik Ghatak, and Robert Bresson. All very different in style and content, and yet creators of cinema that is timeless and universal.

Ray directly controlled many aspects of filmmaking. He wrote all the screenplays of his films, many of which were based on his own stories.

He designed the sets and costumes, operated the camera since Charulata (1964), composed the music for all his films since 1961, and designed the publicity posters for his new releases.

Filmography 1955 Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), 115 min., B/W.    1956 Aparajito (The Unvanquished), 113 min., B/W.        1958 Parash Pathar (The Philosopher's Stone), 111 min., B/W 1958 Jalsaghar (The Music Room), 100 min., B/W 1959 Apur Sansar (The World of Apu), 106 min., B/W. 1960 Devi (The Goddess), 93 min., B/W. 1961 Teen Kanya (Three Daughters), Postmaster 56 min.; Monihara 61 min.;  Samapti 56 min. (Two Daughters, Postmaster 56 min; Samapti 56 min), B/W. 1961 Rabindranath Tagore, Documentary, 54 min, B/W 1962 Kanchenjungha, 102 min., Color 1962 Abhijan (The Expedition), 150 min., B/W 1963 Mahanagar (The Big City), 131 min., B/W 1964 Charulata (The Lonely Wife), 117 min., B/W.    1964 Two, Short, 15 min., B/W 1965 Kapurush - O - Mahapurush (The Coward and the Holy Man), 74 + 65 min., B/W 1966 Nayak (The Hero), 120 min., B/W 1967 Chiriyakhana (The Zoo), 125 min., B/W 1968 Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (Adventures of Goopy and Bagha), 132 min.,  B/W & part in color 1969 Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest), 115 min., B/W 1970 Pratidwandi (The Adversary), 110 min., B/W 1971 Seemabaddha (Company Limited), 112 min., B/W 1971 Sikkim, Documentary, 60 min., B/W 1972 The Inner Eye, Documentary, 20 min., Color 1973 Asani Sanket (Distant Thunder), 101 min., Color. 1974 Sonar Kella (The Fortress), 120 min., Color 1975 Jana Aranya (The Middleman), 131 min., B/W. 1976 Bala, Documentary, 33 min., Color 1977 Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players), 113 min., Color 1978 Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God), 112 min, Color 1980 Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds), 118 min., Color 1980 Pikoo (Pikoo's Day), Short, 26 min., Color 1981 Sadgati (The Deliverance), 52 min., Color 1984 Ghare-Baire (Home and the World), 140 min., Color. 1987 Sukumar Ray, Documentary, 30 min., Color 1989 Ganashatru (Enemy of the People), 100 min., Color 1990 Shakha Prashakha (Branches of the Tree), 121 min., Color 1991 Agantuk (The Stranger), 120 min., color.

	Films directed by Satyajit Ray  : Pather Panchali Aparajito Parash Pathar Jalsaghar Apur Sansar Devi Teen Kanya Rabindranath Tagore Kanchenjungha Abhijan Mahanagar Charulata Two Kapurush - O - Mahapurush Nayak Chiriyakhana Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne Aranyer Din Ratri Pratidwandi Seemabaddha Sikkim The Inner Eye Asani Sanket Sonar Kella Jana Aranya Bala Shantranj Ke Khilari Joi Baba Felunath Hirak Rajar Deshe Pikoo Sadgati Ghare-Baire Sukumar Ray Ganashatru Shakha Prashakha Agantuk
		Satyajit Ray introduced Sharmila Tagore in Apur Sansar, the final film of the Appu Trilogy. She played the young wife Aparna. She was just a fourteen-year-old then, with no previous acting experience. As the shooting began, Ray had to shout instructions to Sharmila during the takes. None of this, however, is reflected on the screen. Ray cast her in his next film Devi too. She went on to become a very successful actress in Bombay’s Hindi films. She returned to work in later Ray films - Nayak, Aranyer Din Ratri and Seemabaddha.   Sharmila made quite a splash in Hindi films with Kashmir Ki Kali. She was sensuous and had an oomph factor in essaying her roles in Hindi films.  She was regarded as a sex symbol.  She appeared in a swimsuit in “An Evening in Paris” and wore a two-piece bikini for a cover photo shoot of the popular film magazine “Filmfare”.  This was one of a kind in Hindi films at that time.             Sharmila recently adorned the Chair of Censor Board Chief of Indian films. I have great pleasure in writing this BLOG post about the legend  Satyajit Ray who will be remembered as one of the giants of Indian as well as an International celebrity of all time and will be immortal with future moviegoers too.