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 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 unfolds for the public view.
The ‘Phalke Award’ and many more eminent awards conferred on him to
write a fairy tale of happenings with 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 had won 32 National film awards, The
Cannes Film Festival Awards, Berlin Film Awards, British International Film
Awards, Venice Film Festival Awards, Akira
Kurasowa Award and numerous
international and other significant awards in his filmography. During his reign at the the helm of film-making,
he swept almost all the national awards.
It becomes imperative to discuss
about his achievements throughout his illustrious career that spanning into
more than four decades of his stay in the film industry until the 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.
There
were many Bengali and other Indian and international filmmakers who took
inspiration from the Ray’s style of film making.
I would like to present here some of the movie titles of Satyajit Ray -
I would like to present here some of the movie titles of Satyajit Ray -
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 set Ray as a world-class director. He died on April 23, 1992.
Satyajit Ray was an
Indian film-maker. Ray was born in the city of Calcutta into a Bengali family
prominent in the world of arts and literature.
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 studied 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 theatre determined to become a film-maker.
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.
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 which Appu and his sister have of the train
running through the countryside, the only sequence which 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 that "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 favourite 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 also 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 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 which
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 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 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
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 which,
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".
The Legion of Honor is
the most prestigious award in France and 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.
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 a
first draft of a script for it in the 1940s. In spite of 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 considered the weakest of
the three. Ray recovered some of his form 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 script-writing 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 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 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, 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 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, surreal to comical; an exhibition his posters was held at 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
were 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 honour, “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.
Ray's passion for
films, chess and western classical music is famous.
He was the Member of
the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1961.
He won a special
life-time 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.
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, meticulous, and yet, evokes deep emotional response 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.
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 costume, operated the camera since Charulata (1964), he composed the music for all his films since 1961 and designed the publicity posters for his new releases.
He designed the sets and costume, operated the camera since Charulata (1964), he composed the music for all his films since 1961 and designed the publicity posters for his new releases.
Filmography
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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 worn 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 adorn the Chair of Censor Board Chief of Indian films.
I have great pleasure
in writing this BLOG post about the legend of Satyajit Ray who will be
remembered as one of the giant of Indian as well as International celebrity of all time and will be
immortal with the future moviegoers too.
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