The iconic sleuth of his creation was as much a part of my growing up years as were Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Growing up as a Bengali, it was hard not to be influenced by Satyajit Ray’s work and art. After a less than enthusiastic initial reaction, the film went on to garner immense critical acclaim and still finds mention among the best films ever made. Pather Pancahli was the first Indian film made in independent India which was taken seriously internationally. This scene finds mention among the most iconic moments of world cinema. One of the best examples of Ray’s sheer genius is the memorable scene of Apu and Durga running through kash fields to catch a sight of a train, which was to them a magical, elusive wondrous creation. The West Bengal government misunderstood the subject and the loan was eventually granted for “roads improvement”, a misconstrued interpretation of the name of the film. Ray was faced with some very real fears like the possibility of the child-actors shooting up and ageing actress Chunibala Devi suddenly dying.īenefactors like the then chief minister of West Bengal, Bidhan Chandra Roy, stepped in, although not for reasons one would imagine.
Lack of funds meant that the shooting of the film was spread out over a period of five years. It is a wonder that the film got made at all, going by the enormous odds that were stacked against it.Īrmed with an inexperienced crew, meagre personal savings, and unknown actors, Ray got off to a rocky start. Ray started filming for Pather Panchali in late 1952. Vittoria De Sica and his pièce de résistance Ladri di biciclette ( Bicycle Thieves) also had a deep impact on Ray, which is visible in how Ray’s cinema is often hued with the same neo-realism that De Sicca is so acclaimed for. The exposure to the best of world cinema and his meeting with the iconic filmmakers such as Jean Renior, influenced Ray deeply. He partnered with Chidananda Dasgupta, a famous filmmaker of that time, to set up the Calcutta film society in 1947. Ray befriended a number of them and was exposed to a lot of Hollywood and foreign films. The famed Bengali bildungsroman would go on to form the basis of his feature film.Īs an aftermath of World War II, Calcutta of the 1940s was filled with American soldiers. Perhaps fortuitously, as a part of his first job as a visual designer, Ray illustrated a children’s version of Pather Panchali. His initial reluctance soon gave away and he trained under stalwarts like Nandalal Bose and Binod Behari Mukherjee.
Satyajit Ray studied Economics at Presidency College and later enrolled himself in Vishwa Bharti University on his mother’s insistence to study fine arts. Ray’s grandfather was Upendrakishore Roy Chaudhury, a well-known writer and leader with Brahmo Samaj and his father was Sukumar Roy, a beloved writer of Bengali limericks and nonsensical poems. Born into an illustrious and artistically inclined family on May 2 1921, Satyajit Ray was preceded by generations of authors, philosophers, artists and poets.
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