Satyajit Ray

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[Satyajit Ray] ([Media helphelp]·[info]) (Bengali: সত্যজিৎ রায় Shottojit Rae) (May 2 1921 - April 23 1992) was an Indian film director, regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of twentieth century cinema.

Ray was born in a prominent Bengali family of arts and letters. After graduating from Presidency College, Kolkata, he studied arts at the Visva-Bharati University, Shantiniketan. Ray then started his career as a commercial artist, but became increasingly interested in filmmaking. After meeting Jean Renoir in Calcutta and viewing the Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves during a visit to London, Ray decided that he would pursue a career of a filmmaker.

Pather Panchali, Ray's cinematic debut, won eleven international prizes including Best Human Document at Cannes. Compeleted in 1955, Pather Panchali is considered a milestone of humanist filmmaking and deeply influenced Bengali cinema. Along with Aparajito and Apur Sansar, Pather Panchali forms the Apu trilogy -- Ray's magnum opus.

A prolific filmmaker, Ray directed thirty seven films during his lifetime, including features, documentaries and shorts. Ray's was involved in many levels of the filmmaking process. He was responsible for scripting, casting, directing, scoring, operating the camera, working closely on art direction and editing, even designing his own credit titles and publicity material. Apart from being a film-maker, he was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, graphic designer and film critic. Ray received many major film and movie awards in his illustrious career, including an Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1991 shortly before his death in Kolkata.

Early life

Though Satyajit Ray's ancestry can be traced back at least ten generations, the family history took a decisive turn with his grandfather, Upendrakishore Raychowdhury. A writer, illustrator, philosopher, publisher and amateur astronomer, Raychowdhury was a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, a religious and social movement in 19th century Bengal. Sukumar Ray, his son, was among the greatest Bengali writers of "nonsense rhyme" and children's literature, an able illustrator and a critic.

Satyajit Ray was born to Sukumar and Suprabha Ray on May 2, 1921 in Kolkata. Sukumar Ray died when Satyajit was hardly three, his mother had to work hard to bring him up. Ray studied Economics at Presidency College, Kolkata, though his interest was always in fine arts. In 1940, after the completion of his education in Kolkata, his mother insisted that he go and study at Rabindranath Tagore's university, the Visva Bharati University at Santiniketan, away from the bustle of the city. Ray was reluctant, due to his love of Calcutta, and general low impression about the intellectual life at Santiniketan. Some persuasion on his mother's part and his respect for Tagore finally convinced him to give it a try. In Santiniketan, Ray came to appreciate oriental art. He would later admit that he learnt a lot from both Nandalal Bose and specially Benode Behari Mukherjee (for whom Ray had great admiration and on whom he would later make a documentary.) His visits to Ajanta, Elora and Elephanta during this period were also eye-openers; he would start admiring Indian art perhaps for the first time.

Without completing the five-year course, Ray left Santiniketan in 1943 and returned to Kolkata where he took a job with a British advertising agency named D.J. Keymer. He joined as a "junior visualiser", earning eighty rupees a month. This was a mixed experience. On one hand, visual design was something close to his heart and he was treated well for the most part; on the other, there was palpable tension between the British and Indian employees of the firm (the former were much better paid), and Ray's complaint that "the clients were generally stupid". Around 1943, Ray became involved with Signet Press, a new publishing house started up by D. K. Gupta. Gupta asked Ray to cover designs for books published from Signet Press and gave him complete artistic freedom. Ray designed covers for many books, including Jim Corbett's Maneaters of Kumaon, Nehru's Discovery of India and poetry books by many contemporary poets. Most important of these was his work on a children's version of Pather Panchali, a classic Bengali novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, renamed as Am Antir Bhepu (The mango-seed whistle). Ray immensely appreciated the work which would later furnish the subject matter of his first film. In addition to designing the cover, he also illustrated the book, and many of his illustrations ultimately found their place as shots in his groundbreaking film. In 1947, along with Chidananda Dasgupta and others, Ray founded the Calcutta film society, through which he was exposed to a number of good foreign films.

Throughout this time, Ray continued to watch and study films seriously. He befriended the American GIs stationed in Kolkata during World War II, who would inform him of latest American films showing in the city. He also became friends with Norman Clare, who worked with RAF and shared Ray's passion of films, chess and western classical music. In 1949, Ray married Bijoya Das, his distant cousin and longtime sweetheart. The couple would have a son, Sandip, who is now a prominent film director in his own right. In the same year, Jean Renoir came to Calcutta to shoot his film The River. Ray met him, and also helped him find locations in the country side. Subrata Mitra, Ray's friend and a young photographer, spent even more time with the unit. Mitra would later become Ray's cinematographer. Ray also told Renoir about his idea to film Pather Panchali, which had been on his mind for some time now, and Renoir encouraged him to go ahead.

In 1950, Ray was sent to London by D.J. Keymer to work at its head office. In his three months at London, he watched exactly 99 films. Among this was the neorealist film Bicycle Thieves. This film had a profound impact on him. Ray would later say that came out of the theatre determined to become a filmmaker.

Career and later life

At this point, Ray was convinced that he should become a filmmaker, and also convinced that Pather Panchali would be his first film. Bandopadhyay was deceased at that point, but his widow was generous enough to allow a complete novice to shoot her husband's masterpiece. The film never had a complete script, it was made from Ray's drawings and notes. Shooting started in early 1953. In retrospect, the technical team was immensely talented, even apart from Ray; both Subrata Mitra (cinematographer) and Bansi Chandragupta (art director) would later be considered undisputed masters of their craft. However, at that point, Ray had never directed anything and Mitra had never operated a movie camera, though Chandragupta was a young professional.

The father, Harihar, was played by a professional film actor, but Sarbajoya, the mother, was interpreted by Karuna Banerjee, an amateur theatre actress and wife of a friend of Ray's. Apu was spotted on a neighbour's terrace by Bijoya Ray, while Durga was chosen from an interview. The hardest to cast was the character of the Aunt, as Bibhutibhusan described an 80-year-old with features to go with. Both the existence of such an actress and her ability to act was suspect, but Ray ultimately spotted his most inspired casting of the film in Chunibala Devi, an old, retired stage actress, who was then living in a brothel. Funding was a problem from the beginning, as no producer agreed to produce the film. Ray kept working in Keymer, exhausted his last penny, and sold the LP records close to his heart. His production manager Anil Chowdhury was reduced to sleeping in a taxi at one point, and he (Chowdhury) convinced Bijoya to pawn her jewels as well (Ray's life insurance policy had already been pawned). Still, partway through filming Ray ran out of funds and the Government of West Bengal loaned him the rest, allowing him to finish the film. The money was loaned on record for 'roads improvement' (Pather Panchali translates as 'song of the road').

The making of Pather Panchali provide example of certain charateristics of Ray that would sustain throughout his creative career and personal life. In fact, self-admittedly a "very private man", Ray took part in far few interviews, public speeches or political activities normal for a public figure of his stature during a tumultous period of Bengal. This has lead his biographers and critics to often analyze the person through his films and the making of them. The making of Pather Panchali was marked by great belief in himself and people around him, and his absolute refusal to make any compromises with his artistic integrity. Ray was swindled repeatedly by middlemen promising to find him a producer, but left the would-be filmmaker undaunted. He also refused funding that carried strings attached (change in script, or agreement of supervision by the producer), and in fact ignored advice from the government who finally funded the film to incorporate a happy ending having the family join a "development project". This would happen many times in his career, for example, he denied funding of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne as it came with the condition that we would have to cast a certain well known Bollywood actor as the main character, though this meant he failed to shoot the film in color.

Throughout his filmmaking career, Ray would make decisions that tend to bring together his personal and cinematic convictions. After a crane he used in Jalshaghar caused the death of a worker while moving it, Ray denied to ever use a crane shot in a film of his. Though never avidly political, he carefully avoided government funding, and denied making a film during the India-China war claiming he was a bad propagandist. He would do the same during the 1971 Bangladesh war, though profoundly moved by the misery of his fellow Bengalis, he commented that a filmmaker he was interested in how the refugees quickly made established a rythm of life under such dire conditions, not the politics of it. Similarly, his rather puritan ethics about sex (which Dasgupta describes as "St. Augustinian horror") would surface in a film like Pikoo.

Ray proclaimed to be an atheist all his life, though he later said that he was becoming an agnostic. It is quite evident that he had a dislike of organized religion (even of his own Brahma Samaj), exemplified by films such as Devi or Ganashatru, and his writings.

Western influnece was apparent in Satyajit Ray's works. He was deeply inspired by Western classical music. Among directors, Jean Renoir was a major influence on Ray. From Renoir, Ray learnt that there was nothing more important to a film than the emotional integrity of human relationship in the film. Italian Neo Realists were the other major influence on Ray. Ray's admiration of The Bicycle Thief by Vittorio De Sica is well known. In Pather Panchali, Ray introduced the neo-realist tradition of using non-actors and actually shooting on location while using an unadorned style of photography. The details of speech, behavior, habits, customs, rituals, substantiated the very simple structure and the narrative line.

On the other hand, though his formal education has been almost solely from western heritage, his deep Bengali and Indian roots are also unmistakable. Rabindranath Tagore was undoubtedly his great master, as is very clear from Ray's multiple films based on Tagore's work. He also was increasingly influence by Indian music (though he maintained the western music was more "filmic"), and recognized in the works of Benode Behari Mukherjee the essence of occidental art. Later in his life he expressed his affinity to the "rasa" theory of Indian drama, and Darius Cooper later analyzed this quintissentally Indian asepct of his work in his book.

Works

The Apu Trilogy

While it was in making, a number of westerners, like Monroe Wheeler from the Museum of Modern Art, saw the rushes and immediately saw that a film of invigorating originality was being produced. However, when it went to Cannes, it was screened towards the end of the festival and at the same time as a party thrown by the Japanese delegation. The few critics gathered to watch the film (most were bored by the propect of yet another Indian melodrama) found "the magic horse of poetry" slowly invading the screen. The film was awarded the Best Human Document prize at the 1955 Cannes film festival.

In general Pather Panchali was reviewed worldwide with great praise. Akira Kurosawa said, "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."[Critics on Ray] URL accessed on 3 April, 2006. A Newsweek critic reviewed the film as , "One of the most stunning first films in movie history. Ray is a welcome jolt of flesh, blood and spirit." L.A. Weekly wrote that the film was "As deeply beautiful and plainly poetic as any movie ever made. Rare and exquisite".[Critics on Pather Panchali] URL accessed on 3 April, 2006 "This tale, as crafted by Ray, touches the souls and minds of viewers, transcending cultural and linguistic barriers." was to write James Berardinelli.

The reaction was not uniformly positive, though. After a Cannes screening, François Truffaut is reported to have said: "I don’t want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands." In fact Ray movies started being appreciated in France only starting in 1980's after Music Room was released there. Bosley Crowther, then the most influential critic of New York Times, also wrote a review of Panchali that some thought would kill off the film when it was released for a year (it had an exceptionally long run).

In 1957, Ray completed Aparajito, the second installment of the Apu films. This films follows the family in Benaras, where the ailing Harihar dies. This prompts Sarbojoya to return to Bengal with Apu, back to a village life (though not the same village as in Pather Panchali). Apu starts going to school, turns out to be a rather good student, and finally the opportunity comes for him to go Calcutta. From this point, the film becomes increasingly poignant as Ray films an eternal struggle between the young man's ambitions and the mother who loves him. He finds himself increasingly alienated from her. The film is strikingly modern, which probably explains its lack of box office success, but many critics, notably Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak rank it even higher than the first film. Aparajito won the Golden Lion in Venice, removing any doubt that Ray's first film was a fluke.

Apur Sansar was made in 1959. Just like the two previous films, numerous critics find this to be the supreme achievement of the Trilogy (Robin Wood, Aparna Sen). One critic went as far as saying, "The World of Apu ... probably the most important single film made since the introduction of sound". Ray introduces two of his favorite actors Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore in this film. The film finds Apu (Soumitra) living in a non-descript Calcutta house in near-poverty. He gets involved in a unusual marriage with Aparna, the scenes of the their life together forming "one of the cinema's classic affirmative depiction of married life". But Aparna's death devastates Apu, causing him to reject his newborn son, but five years later, he finally comes back. Life has again truimphed over death.

The rest of the first decade

The rest of the next decade (1956-1965) saw Ray complete the Apu Trilogy. But this period also showcases his range as a filmmaker, and his control on the medium of his choice. Ray composed films on the Raj period (such as Devi, Music Room), a documentary on Tagore, two comic films (Parash Pathar, Mahapurush) and his first film from an original screenplay (Kanchenjungha). He also made a number of films (some based on stories of Tagore), that are among the most deeply felt portrayal of Indian women on screen, moving Pauline Kael to comment that she could not believe that Ray was a man, and not a woman.

Before the completion of the Trilogy, Ray completed two other films. The first is the comic Parash Pathar, which was followed by Jalsaghar (The Music Room), a film about the decadence of the Zamindars. Ray followed Apur Sansar by Devi, a film in which studies the deep superstitions in the Hindu society. Sharmila Tagore gives an outstanding performance as Doyamoyee, a young wife who is deified by her father-in-law. She commented later, "Devi was what a genius got out of me, not something I did myself".

In 1961, Ray made a documentary on Rabindranath Tagore, on the occasion of the poet's birth centennial, a tribute to the person who probably influenced him most. In 1962, Ray directed Kanchenjungha, which was his first original screenplay and colour film. Kanchenjungha tells a story of an upper-class Bengali family spending an afternoon in Darjeeling, a mountain resort. Complex and musically composed, the film tells the story of the family members revolt against the dominating family-head Indranath Roy, and his final humbling.

In 1964 Satyajit Ray made Charulata, regarded by many critics as his best. Based on Nastanirh, a short story of Tagore, the film tells the tale of a lonely wife, Charu, in 19th century Bengal, and her growing feelings for her brother in law, Amal. This Mozartian film is often called "perfect" to the minutest detail, Ray himself famously said the film contained "least flaws" among his work, and his only work, that given a chance, he would make exactly the same way. Madhabi Mukherjee, as the lead actress, gives a stunning performance in the film. The film also showcases the craft of both Subrata Mitra and Bansi Chandragupta at their best, the cinematography has influenced many films since. Almost all passages of the film have entered Bengali movie lore, but two scenes have received special crtical attention: The first seven wordless minutes of the film, depicting Charu's ennui, and the "Garden-swing sequence", where Charu confronts her love for Amal. Othe films in this period inlcude Teen Kanya, Abhijan, Mahanagar and Kapurush o Mahapurush.

Later work

In 1969, Ray made what would be commercially the most successful of his films. Based on a children's story written by his grandfather, Goopy Gaine Bagha Byne is a musical fantasy. Goopy the singer and Bagha the drummer meet each other in a forest after being outcast from the villages for terrible performances. Here they meet the King of Ghosts, who, pleased with them allows them three boons. Equipped with the power of magically getting food, shoes that carry them instantly to any place they wish, and most importantly marvelous singing and drumming skills, the duo set out to a fantastic journey in which they finally stop an impending war between two neighboring states, Shundi and Halla. Ray made a sequel to this film in 1980, a somewhat overtly political Hirak Rajar Deshe (where the kingdom of the evil Diamond King or Hirok Raj is an allusion to India during Indira Gandhi's emergency period).

After this fantasy film, Ray made a film from a novella by the yound poet and writer, Sunil Gangopadhyay. Featuring a musical structure arguably even more complex than Charulata, Aranyer Din Ratri traces four Calcuttan young men going to the forests for a vacation, trying to leave their petty urban existence behind. All but one of them get engaged into revealing encounters with women, which becomes a deep study of the Indian middleclass, but done with virtuouso humor and wit. According to Robin Wood, "a single sequence [of the film] ... would offer material for a short essay", but the "memory game sequence" where the four men and two women play a game of memory where they have to name famous people (revealing much about themselves in the process) has been the most acclaimed one.

Often accused, at least in Bengal of ignoring the contemporary realities of the Indian urban experience, Ray finally made his emphatic statement on the topic in 1970's. He completed the so-called Calcutta trilogy: Pratidwandi (The Adversary), Seemabaddha (Company Limited), and Jana Aranya (The Middleman), three films which were conceived separately, but whose thematic connections form a loose trilogy. Pratidwandi is about an idealist young graduate; if dillusioned, still uncorrupted at the end of film, Jana Aranya about how a young man gives in to the culture of corruption to make a living, and Seemabaddha about an already successful man giving up morals for further gains. Of this, the first, Pratidwandi uses an elliptical narrative style previously unseen in Ray films, such as scenes in negative, dream sequences and abrupt flashbacks. The other two have a more simple narrative style. This difference reflects the superior imagination and sensitibility of the protagonist of Pratidwandi, Siddhartha, a character Ray deeply identified with.

In 1973, Ray returned to rural India after more than a decade with his Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder). Here the filmmaker studies one of the great tragedies of recent Bengali history, the famine in 1943 that caused at least 3 million deaths. It was caused by a combination of ruthless speculation, apathy of the British rulers and disrupted communication due to the second world war. The film continues to confirm Ray's unique artistic perspective, he decides to look at the famine from the viewpoint of the village dwellers affected by it, caught unaware in the vortex of events they have no idea about. Ray cast Babita, a Bangladeshi actress, as Ananga (the main female role), which launched her career as the leading actress of Bangladesh.

In 1977, Ray completed Shatranj Ke Khiladi (The Chess Players), an Urdu movie about chess players of Lucknow. This was Ray's first feature film in a language other than Bengali. This is also his most expensive and star-studded film, featuring likes of Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Amjad Khan, Shabana Azmi, Victor Bannerjee and Richard Attenborough. It was based on a story by Munshi Premchand, an important writer of Hindi literature. The film studies the decadence of the Lucknow gentry and the helpless surrender of its Nawab to the British in 1859. Ray infuses humanism and warmth in to these decadent characters, contrasting that of the acrid sarcasm of Premchand. Ray, who was "bored by villains", thought at some point about giving up the project as he was completely repulsed by the Nawab, but only finally went through it when he found his saving grace (after a long period of research), his love for music and arts. Ray would later make another hour-long Hindi film from a Premchand story, Sadgati, that studies the cruel reality of untouchability in India. A short film also made around this time, Pikoo enjoys something of a cult status among its admirers. According to Ray, it was "a poetic statement that cannot be reduced to concrete terms". Based on an earlier short story written by himself, The film explores a days of a small boy Pikoo and his uncomplicated approach to life while his mother seduces a friend of his father, and his grandfather lies dying.

During making Ghare Baire in early eighties, Ray sufferred a heart attack that would severely restrict his creative output in the years to come. Neverthless with the help of his son (who would operate the camera from then on), he completed this film in 1984. He wanted to film this Tagore novel on the dangers of fervent nationalism for a long time, and even wrote a (weak, by his own admission) script for it in the 1940s. In spite of ineveitable rough patches due to his illness, the film did receive some critical acclaim, and it contained the first full-blown kiss in Ray's films.

Ray's last three films, made after his recovery, have a very distinctive style, largely due to the strictures put on him by doctors. Shot mostly indoors, they are much more verbose than his earlier films. Ganashatru, the first of the trio, is regarded by some as a weak film by Ray standards, and seen as an exercise to get beack into filming after prolonged illness. In Shakha Proshakha, made from an original screenplay, Ray is back to form. In this film of "distressing beauty", three sons come to see their ailing father, who lives with a fourth son, who has mental problems. The father, who has lived a life of utmost honesty, comes to learn the corruption of his sons, and the final scene shows him finding solace only in the companionship of the fourth, uncorrupted but mentally ill son.

Unfilmed

In 1967, Ray wrote a script for a movie to be entitled "The Alien," with Columbia Pictures as producer for this planned US/India co-production, and Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando as the leading actors. However Ray was surprised to find that the script he had co-written had already been copyrighted and the fee appropriated. Marlon Brando dropped out of the project and though an attempt was made to bring James Coburn in his place, Ray became disillusioned and returned to Calcutta. Columbia expressed interest in reviving the project several times in the 70s and 80s but nothing came of it. When E.T. was released in 1982, many saw striking similarities in the movie to Ray's earlier script - Ray discussed the collapse of the project in a 1980 Sight & Sound feature, with further details revealed by Ray's biographer Andrew Robinson (in The Inner Eye, 1989). Ray believed that Spielberg's movie "would not have been possible without my script of The Alien being available throughout America in mimeographed copies."

Other films Ray expressed interest to make but never did for various reasons include a short documentary on Ravi Shankar, a film based on Mahabharata, the great Indian epic and E. M. Forster's A Passage to India.

Reception

Critical reaction and legacy

Both individual films and the cinematic vision and style of Ray as a whole have received great critical acclaim. Critics have noted the reverberant humanism, deceptive simplicty with deep underlying complexity, the lyrical qualities of his work and flawless characterization of his films, among other qualities. Superlatives have often been heaped on his work, the most striking perhaps is the praise by Akira Kurosawa, "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon." His detractors, on the other hand, often find his films glacially slow, moving like a "magestic snail." Some find his humanism simpleminded, and much of his work anti-modern, or claim that his work lacks new modes of expression or experiementation found in works of directors like Jean-Luc Godard. In fact it can be said that the same traits are found by different critics as his strength or weakness, depending on their disposition -- his contemplative attitude, classical values, straightforward narrative structure, avoidance of experiments in style, lack of overt moral messages, thematic diversity etc.

In trying to understand his genius, critics have often tried to compare him to artists in other medium. Chekhov is an oft seen point of reference. Ray himself compared Eisenstein to Bach and Pudovkin to Beethoven, in turn, his craft has often been compared to that of Mozart's. Shakespeare has also been invoked in many critical and popular studies of his film, perhaps most memorably by VS Naipaul, when he compared a scene in Shatranj Ki Khilari to a Shakespeare scene ("Only three hundred words are spoken but goodness! - teriffic things happen"). In the cinema, naturally he has been often associated with the great humanists like Renoir or De Sicca, but also to other directors like Howard Hawks.

Satyajit Ray's influence has naturally been greatest on Bengali film. Though the commercial films remain as oblivious to his aesthetics as ever, an increasing number of Bengali directors have been profoundly influenced by him -- Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh, Gautam Ghose or Tareq Masud in Bangladesh. Even filmmakers with quite different sensibility like Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Mrinal Sen or Adoor Gopalakrishnan have acknowledged his seminal contribution to Indian film. Abroad, filmmakers as diverse as Martin Scorsese, James Ivory, Abbas Kiarostami or Elia Kazan have reportedely been influenced by his cinematic style. The recent Forty Shades of Blue was a loose remake of Charulata, and My family's (1995) final scene is duplicated shot-for-shot from the final scene of Apur Sansar (1959). Similar references to Ray films are found, for example, in the recent Sacred Evil, the elemental Trilogy of Deepa Mehta, or even in films of Godard.

Media, arts and public life

The character Apu (Apu Nahasapeemapetilon) of the Simpsons is said to be named as a homage to the Apu trilogy. Ray, along with Madhabi Mukherjee, was the first Indian film personality to feature in a foreign stamp (Dominica). Many literary works include references to Ray or his work. Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories contains to fish characters named Goopy and Bagha, a clear tribute to Ray's fantasy film. In Amitav Ghosh's science fiction Calcutta Chromosome, a film fan, on meeting his favorite actress, compares her to a number of great actresses, and then after hesistating a bit, goes on to exclaim that in fact she is as great as Madhabi Mukherjee in Charulata.

In early 1980, Ray was openly criticized by an Indian M.P., Nargis Dutt. A former film heorine in mainstream Hindi films, Nargis accused Ray of exporting poverty, and demanded he make films to represent "Modern India". On the other hand, a common acquisition leveled against him in West Bengal was that he was not "committed" to the cause of the downtrodden. The marxist commentators thought he glorified poverty in Pather Panchali and Asani Sanket through, respectively, its lyricism and beautiful colors. They also accused him of providing no solution (marxist or otherwise), and being unable to overcome his bourgeoisie background. During the naxalite movements on 1970s, this came close to causing physical harm to his son, Sandip, though not himself. In a related public debate during the 60's, Ray and the overtly political Mrinal Sen got mired in a brawl. Mrinal Sen accused him for casting a matinee idol like Uttam Kumar (which he considered a compromise), while Ray shot back by saying that Sen only attacks "easy targets" (the Bengali middleclass).

Ray was the subject of two biographies in English, one by Marie Seton in 1971, and a later one by Andrew Robinson. Ray, for a director of his stature, was accessible to a degree that has astonished many visitors and both of his biographers. In fact weekends would see totally unacquainted people coming and chatting with him and expressing their admiration. Ray however was averse to public speeches and interviews and took part in very few of those. His private life was also uncomplicated and never under media scrutiny. In his last version of his biography of Ray, however, Robinson has made a reference to his alleged affair with Madhabi Mukherjee in 1960s (Robinson refers to Mukherjee as Ray's "unrequited love"). Overall, he remained a cultural icon for the Bengalis, the release of each of his films widely expected and extensively discussed. When he died in 1992, the city of Calcutta came to a virtual standstill, as hundreds of thousands of people gathered around his house to pay him their last respect.

Awards

Ray's debut film Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) won several awards worldwide, including Best Human Document, Cannes (1956). This was followed by Golden Lion in Venice for Aparijito. He won two Silver Bears in Berlin for best direction, for Mahanagar and Charulata. He won the Golden Bear with Asani Sanket. Most of his films received multitude of awards in film festivals worldwide. Ray was given an honorary D.Lit by Oxford, the second film personality to be thus honored (the first being Chaplin). Many other universities awarded him with honorary D.Lit. He was given the Legion of Honor by France in 1987 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1985. India finally awarded him the highest civilian honor Bharat Ratna, shortly before his death. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Ray with Oscar in 1992 for Lifetime Achievement.

Literary career

In 1961, together with Subhash Mukhopadhyay and others, Ray revived Sandesh, the children's magazine his grandfather once published. A curious duality in the name (Sandesh means both "news" and a particular kind of sweet) set the tone of the magazine (both educational and entertaining), and soon saw Ray illustrate the magazine, and write stories and essays for children. Amazingly enough, writing became his major source income in the years to come.

Ray created two of the most popular characters in Bengali literature, namely Feluda, a sleuth, and Professor Shonku, a scientist. He also wrote quite a number of short stories which were published as volumes of 12 stories, always with imaginative names reflecting Ray's interest in word puzzles (For example: "Abaro baro" or "Twelve again" is a play on the word "baro", which means twelve). This interest is also reflected in his stories, and Feluda often has to solve a puzzle to get to the bottom of a case. Even Feluda's friend Jotayu, the novel writer, shares this interest, he insists on naming one of his novels "Vancouver-er Vampire" (The Vampire in Vancouver), regardless of Felu's objection that a city as modern as Vancouver is not a good setting for a horror story. The Feluda stories are narrated by Topse, his cousin, something of a Watson to Feluda's Sherlock. The science fictions of Shonku are presented as a diary discovered after the scientist himself had misteriously disappeared. Ray's short stories give full reign to his interest in the macabre, in suspense and other aspects that he avoided in film, making for an interesting phsychological study. Most of his writings have now been translated into English, and are finding an eager second generation of readers.

Most of Ray's novels and stories in Bengali have been published by Ananda Publishers, Calcutta; and most of his screenplays have been published in Bengali in the literary journal Eksan. Ray wrote his autobiography encompassing his childhood years, Jakhan Choto Chilam (1982) and essays on film: Our Films, Their Films (1976), along with Bishoy Chalachchitra (1976), Ekei Bole Shooting (1979). During the mid-1990s, Ray's film essays and an anthology of short stories were also published in the West. Our Films, Their Films is an anthology of film criticism by Ray. The book contains articles and personal journal excerpts. The book is presented in two sections — Ray first discusses Indian film, before turning his attention towards Hollywood and specific international filmmakers (Charlie Chaplin, Akira Kurosawa) and movements like Italian neorealism. His book Bishay Challacchitro has been recently translated as "Speaking of Films", and contains a compact description of his philosophy of different aspects of the cinema. Ray also wrote a collection of nonsense verse named Today Bandha Ghorar Dim, which included a translation of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. He also authored a collection of humorous stories of Mullah Nasiruddin in Bengali.

Satyajit Ray designed two typefaces named Ray Roman and Ray Bizarre. Ray Roman won an international competition in 1970. In fact, in certain circles of Kolkata, Ray was continued to be known as an eminent graphic designer, well into his film career. Ray illustrated all his books and designed covers for them. He also continued to illustrate books and magazines well after his Signet days, most notably the children's magazine Sandesh and the literary magazine Ekshan, which often printed his screenplays.

Filmcraft

Satyajit Ray considered script-writing to be an integral part of direction. This is one reason why he initially refused to make a movie in any language other than Bengali. In his two non-Bengali feature films, he wrote the script in English, which under his supervision translators then interpreted in Hindi or Urdu. In fact, as he and his art director Chandragupta considered that a "set exists only in relation to the script", he would always write scripts in English first, so that the non-Bengali Chandragupta would be able to read it.

Camerawork in Ray's early films are a tribute to the craft of Subrata Mitra, whose (bitter) departure from Ray's crew, according to a number of critics, lowered the quality of cinematography in his films (though still very high). Though Ray openly praised Mitra, his "single minded vision" of film caused him to take over operation of the camera since Charulata, a reason why Mitra stopped working for Ray after 1966. One of the pioneering works of Subrata Mitra while working on Aparajito was to develop "bounce lighting", a technique of bouncing light off cloth to create a diffused realistic light even on a set.

Ray also pretty much did the editing himself. Though he had a regular editor in Dulal Datta, Ray was always present and usually dictated the editing while Datta did the actual work. In fact due to financial reasons, Ray's meticulous planning and complete control, most of the film was cut "on the camera" (apart from Pather Panchali). The only place Datta usually had an opportunity of creative expression was the dialogue scenes. At the beginning of his career, Ray worked with very talented Indian classical musicians, including Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan and Ali Akbar Khan. However, the experience was painful for him as he found that their first loyalty was to musical traditions, and not to his film. Another reason was his greater grasp of western classical forms, which he regarded essential, specially for his films set in an urban milleu. This caused him to compose his own scores starting from Teen Kanya.

Acting in Ray's film are uniformly high, though he used actors of every possible background, famous film stars to people who have never seen a film (such as in Postmaster). Robin Wood and others have lauded him as the best director of children, and indeed his films contain memorable performances including Apu and Durga (Pather Panchali), Ratan (Postmaster) and Mukul (Sonar Kella). Depending on the talent or experience of the actor Ray's direction would vary from virtually nothing (Utpal Datta on Middleman) to using the actor as "a doll" (Subir Banerjee as Apu or Sharmila Tagore as Aparna). The excellence of acting in his films seems to have generated from a crystal clear script and his enormous confidence in his actors. Almost all actors working with him (including very talented ones) have had their best performances in a film of his.

In chosing material for his films, Ray was surprisingly ecclectic. Ray himself said in 1975, "Critics have often accused me of a grasshopperish tendency to jump from theme to theme, from genre to genre... rather than pursue one dominant subject in an easily recognizable style that would help them to pigeonhole me, affix me with a label...All I can say in self-defense, if one is needed, is that this diversity faithfully reflects my own personality and that behind every film lies a cool decision."

Regarding cinema techniques and cinematography, Ray acknowledged debt to Godard and François Truffaut of the French New Wave for introducing Western technical and cinematic innovations. Western cultural behavior and mannerisms surface in quite a few of Ray's films. His depiction of city life in his urban films, his avoidance of overly melodramatisation and sentimental approaches when dealing with issues like religion, superstition and death all indicate a Western rationalist in Ray. In addition to the humanists and the new wave filmmakers, Ray also learnt from the great filmmakers of Hollywood, and had high regard for Orson Welles, Hitchcock and John Ford, among others. Ray also revisited the notebooks of Da Vinci once a year. Satyajit Ray was a Tintin fan, and had shots of Tintin comics in some of his movies.

Filmography

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Notes

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Timeline

Timeline of Satyajit Ray's life (1921-1992)

ImageSize = width:390 height:1200 PlotArea = left:40 right:10 top:10 bottom:10 DateFormat = yyyy TimeAxis = orientation:vertical order:reverse format:yyyy Period = from:1920 till:1993 AlignBars = early ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:1920 ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:2 start:1920

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from:start till:end color:lightsteelblue

mark:(line,white)
at:1921 text:"1921: Born in Calcutta"
at:1943 text:"1943: Leaves Shantiniketan, starts working"
at:1947 text:"1947: With friends, establishes Calcutta film society"
at:1949 text:"1949: Marries Bijoya, meets Renoir in Calcutta"
at:1950 text:"1950: Visits UK, watches The Bicycle Thieves"
at:1953 text:"1953: Starts shooting Pather Panchali"
at:1955 text:"1955: Pather Panchali, Best human document in Cannes"
at:1957 text:"1957: Aparajito, Golden Lion at Venice"
at:1959 text:"1959: Apur Sansar, the Trilogy completed"
at:1963 text:"1963: Mahanagar, Silver Bear at Berlin"
at:1964 text:"1964: Charulata, Silver Bear at Berlin"
at:1966 text:"1966: Nayak, last film with Subrata Mitra"
at:1969 text:"1969: Pratidwandi, first of the Calcutta films"
at:1971 text:"1971: Asani Sanket, Golden Bear at Berlin"
at:1975 text:"1975: Jana Aranya, Calcutta trilogy completed"
at:1977 text:"1977: Satranj ki Khilari, first Non-Bengali feature"
at:1983 text:"1983: Suffers from a heart attack"
at:1984 text:"1984: Ghore Baire released"
at:1987 text:"1987: Legion of Honor by France"
at:1991 text:"1991: Agantuk, last film"
at:1992 text:"1992: Academy Award, Dies in Calcutta"

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pos:(100,710)
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text:" "

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References

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External links

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