Director: Satyajit Ray
Starring: Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Uma Das Gupta, Subir Bannerjee
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This month sees the UK re-release of one of the true classics of World Cinema, Pather Panchali (1955) by Satyajit Ray. The film was the first in a long line of exceptional works that have earned Ray a deserved place amongst the greatest film-makers of the twentieth century, and represents the beginning of an alternative tradition within Indian cinema that focuses on critical and responsible interrogations of Indian history and society as it actually is, rather than the dominant mode of fantasy and melodrama manifested by the song and dance epics of Bollywood.
Although Ray was a co-founder of the Calcutta Film Society in 1947, which exhibited American, European and Soviet films, it was during the Indian Film Festival in Calcutta in 1951 that Indian audiences first saw Bicycle Thieves (1948) and other landmark neo-realist films. De Sica's film, which Ray actually saw in London, was to be an enormous influence upon him, and along with his love of Kurosawa's Rashomon (1951), effectively ensured he become a film-maker.
He chose for his first major project Pather Panchali, an adaptation of a renowned work of early twentieth-century Bengali fiction, and infused the well-known story of the boy Apu and his elder sister Durga, surviving through poverty and insecurity in an unnamed yet generic Bengali village, with a neo-realist commitment to location shooting and natural light. The introduction of an entirely new aesthetic to Indian cinema, dominated, then as now, with heightened performance and historical myth, brought a lyricism, deliberation of pace, composition of shot, and development of character to a telling of contemporary stories of real India.
In the film, the father's good intentions but ultimate impracticability are juxtaposed with the mother's increasing worry about the famine that develops around the vulnerable family and her frustrations with the elderly aunt that shares their compound. The fragility of their situation is depicted through simple depictions of affection, playfulness, and despair. With the final admission of failure in trying to live off the land, however, mother and father and Apu, after Durga's fever and subsequent death, leave for Benares to search for work and a better life in the city. This episode is very much included in Banerjee's original novel but Ray incorporated this section into Pather Panchali's sequel, Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1957), the second of what would become his 'Apu trilogy'.
The film never had a proper script, and the cast included professionals as well as non-actors; much was improvised using the novel's source material as the core, but then developing from that in situ, making necessary variations to meet the new medium. It therefore eschews any central 'plot' leaving the imagery and effectiveness of characterisation to present its primordial story of aspiration for freedom and dignity, without any sentimentality or over-manipulation of narrative formula. The success of the film belies the notorious difficulties that Ray encountered during the shoot, including the reported pawning of his wife's jewellery to pay for shooting debts, and the entire enterprise being bailed out by the West Bengal government.
Pather Panchali is of great importance not only as a neo-realist text that illuminates a hitherto undiscovered world of a more authentic India, but also as a historical and political project that offered a new sense of the past against which post-war/post-Independence reconstruction could be attempted, presenting itself as an explicitly 'independent' cinema but nevertheless one that located Indian nationalism as itself a kind of Third World counterpart of western modernism. It was this modernism that was echoed in Ray's opposition to mainstream commercial cinema and his lifelong dedication to articulate the plurality of Indian reality through the art of film.
Reviewed by Yoram Allon
Reader comments about Pather Panchali
manjula venugopal (manju1822@hotmail.com) writes:
The film is overwhelmingly real and the key element in the movie is the maintainance of this realism.The characters are so true to the ethnic rural-sixties Indian existance that one is compelled to wonder if the film was captured through survellance cameras. The simple story of the Bengali family will definitely stay in our hearts for a long time to come.
Anirudh (anirudhgarg@hotmail.com) writes:
Words can never describe the meaning of the little yet so important things one had come across the period when MR. Ray stood out and had courage to elucidate the bengali culture fused with the characters in his film.
The film is certainly a masterpiece and is a treasure that the bengali families will always look foreward to. The camera itself spoke every act that was penned down in the hearts of many..
Its been an honour for all of us being an indians that Mr. Ray has portrayed the sublime society to its very best.
Hats Off To Mr. Ray.
Palash R. Ghosh (Palash7@hotmail.com) writes:
As a Bengali native, "Pather Panchali" moved me tremendously as my own grandparents lived in a village like this family did, and probably encountered many of the same hardships and joys. But this film is much bigger than that, it speaks of universal themes like family bonds, despair, happiness, love and God. It doesn't even seem like a movie to me -- it's more of a living document of the real world. Absolutely stunning.
Rajababu (rb031280@gmail.com) writes:
Pather Panchali, released in 1955, is the first film of director Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy. The film is a serene and beautiful depiction of a little boy's childhood in the Indian countryside in the 1950s.
The film was made on a shoestring budget by a hitherto unknown director. Apart from a seventy-year-old woman who made her name in the 1930s on the stage, none of the cast had ever acted before and many had been plucked from the Indian rurality. In contrast Satyajit Ray completed the trilogy on the behest of the Indian Prime Minister, pointing to the film's cultural impact.
He chose for his first major project Pather Panchali, an adaptation of a renowned work of early twentieth-century Bengali fiction, and infused the well-known story of the boy Apu and his elder sister Durga, surviving through poverty and insecurity in an unnamed yet generic Bengali village, with a neo-realist commitment to location shooting and natural light. The introduction of an entirely new aesthetic to Indian cinema, dominated, then as now, with heightened performance and historical myth, brought a lyricism, deliberation of pace, composition of shot, and development of character to a telling of contemporary stories of real India.
Pather Panchali, Ray's first foray into the film making world, was completed in 1955, and proceeded to win the top prize at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. It's a quiet, simple tale, centering on the life of a small family living in a rural village in Bengal. The father, Harihar (Kanu Bannerjee), is a priest and poet who cares more about his writing and spiritual welfare than obtaining wages he is owed. The mother, Sarbojaya (Karuna Bannerjee), worries that her husband's financial laxity will leave her without enough food for her two children, daughter Durga (Uma Das Gupta) and son Apu (Chunibala Devi). Harihar's family often lives on the edge of poverty, coping with the unkind taunts of their neighbors, the burden of caring for an aging aunt (Chunibala Devi), and the terrible aftermath of a natural catastrophe.
Pather Panchali starts slowly, but builds inexorably towards a powerful climax as we come to know, and empathize with, the characters. Ray takes the time to create a meticulously believable world that draws the viewer in. There isn't a false note in the entire film -- not in the characterization, the dialogue, or the storyline. The emotions evoked by the events of Pather Panchali are honest and true, not the contrived byproducts of manipulative formulas. Ray makes us feel with the characters, not just for them.
Most of what transpires is shown through the eyes of either Sarbojaya or Durga, and, as a result, we identify most closely with these two. Harihar is absent for more than half of the movie, and, before the penultimate scene, Apu is a mere witness to events, rather than a participant. Until the closing moments, we don't get a sense of the young boy as a fully formed individual, since he's always in someone else's shadow.
With its often-poetic black-and-white images and heartfelt method of storytelling, Pather Panchali speaks intimately to each member of the audience. This tale, as crafted by Ray, touches the souls and minds of viewers, transcending cultural and linguistic barriers. The languorous pace, which initially seems detrimental, proves to be an asset -- Pather Panchali would not have been the same experience had material been cut. Each scene builds upon what has come before. This is the kind of motion picture that will stay with you for hours, or perhaps even days, after you've left the theater, and that's a rare characteristic for any movie.
Pather Panchali is of great importance not only as a neo-realist text that illuminates a hitherto undiscovered world of a more authentic India, but also as a historical and political project that offered a new sense of the past against which post-war/post-Independence reconstruction could be attempted, presenting itself as an explicitly 'independent' cinema but nevertheless one that located Indian nationalism as itself a kind of Third World counterpart of western modernism. It was this modernism that was echoed in Ray's opposition to mainstream commercial cinema and his lifelong dedication to articulate the plurality of Indian reality through the art of film.
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