Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray Satyajit Ray (Bengali: সত뷍িজৎ রায়, listen ; 2 May Sukumar Ray died when Satyajit was barely three, and 1921 – 23 April 1992) was a Bengali Indian filmmaker. the family survived on Suprabha Ray’s meager income. He is considered as one of the greatest filmmakers of Ray studied at Ballygunge Government High School, Cal- the 20th century.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Ray was born in the city cutta, and completed his BA in economics at Presidency of Calcutta into a Bengali family prominent in the world College, Calcutta then affiliated with the University of of arts and literature. Starting his career as a commer- Calcutta, though his interest was always in fine arts. cial artist, Ray was drawn into independent filmmaking In 1940, his mother insisted that he studied at the after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and view- Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, founded by ing Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist 1948 film Bicycle Rabindranath Tagore. Ray was reluctant due to his love Thieves during a visit to London. of Calcutta, and the low opinion of the intellectual life [8] Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documen- at Santiniketan His mother’s persuasion and his respect taries and shorts. He was also a fiction writer, pub- for Tagore finally convinced him to try. In Santiniketan, lisher, illustrator, calligrapher, music composer, graphic Ray came to appreciate Oriental art. He later admitted that he learned much from the famous painters Nandalal designer and film critic. He authored several short stories [9] and novels, primarily aimed at children and adolescents. Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee. Later he pro- Feluda, the sleuth, and Professor Shonku, the scientist in duced a documentary film, The Inner Eye, about Mukher- jee. His visits to Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta stimulated his science fiction stories, are popular fictional characters [10] created by him. He was awarded an honorary degree by his admiration for Indian art. Oxford University. In 1943, Ray started work at D.J. Keymer, a British- Ray’s first film, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven in- run advertising agency, as a “junior visualiser,” earning ternational prizes, including Best Human Documentary at eighty rupees a month. Although he liked visual design (graphic design) and he was mostly treated well, there was the Cannes Film Festival. This film, Aparajito (1956), and Apur Sansar (1959) form The Apu Trilogy. Ray did tension between the British and Indian employees of the firm. The British were better paid, and Ray felt that “the the scripting, casting, scoring, and editing, and designed [11] his own credit titles and publicity material. Ray received clients were generally stupid.” Later, Ray also worked for Signet Press, a new publishing house started by D. K. many major awards in his career, including 32 Indian National Film Awards, a number of awards at interna- Gupta. Gupta asked Ray to create cover designs for books to be published by Signet Press and gave him complete tional film festivals and award ceremonies, and an honorary Academy Award in 1992. The Government of In- artistic freedom. Ray designed covers for many books, dia honoured him with the Bharat Ratna in 1992. including Jibanananda Das's Banalata Sen, and Rupasi Bangla, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's Chander Pa- har, Jim Corbett's Maneaters of Kumaon, and Jawaharlal Nehru's Discovery of India. He worked on a children’s 1 Life and career version of Pather Panchali, a classic Bengali novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, renamed as Aam An- tir Bhepu (The mango-seed whistle). Designing the cover 1.1 Early life and background and illustrating the book, Ray was deeply influenced by the work. He used it as the subject of his first film, and Satyajit Ray’s ancestry can be traced back for at least ten featured his illustrations as shots in his ground-breaking generations.[7] Ray’s grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray film.[12] Chowdhury was a writer, illustrator, philosopher, pub- Along with Chidananda Dasgupta and others, Ray lisher, amateur astronomer and a leader of the Brahmo founded the Calcutta Film Society in 1947. They Samaj, a religious and social movement in nineteenth screened many foreign films, many of which Ray watched century Bengal. He also set up a printing press by the and seriously studied. He befriended the American GIs name of U. Ray and Sons, which formed a crucial back- stationed in Calcutta during World War II, who kept him drop to Satyajit’s life. Sukumar Ray, Upendrakishore’s informed about the latest American films showing in the son and father of Satyajit, was a pioneering Bengali writer city. He came to know a RAF employee, Norman Clare, of nonsense rhyme and children’s literature, an illustrator who shared Ray’s passion for films, chess and western and a critic. Ray was born to Sukumar and Suprabha Ray classical music.[13] in Calcutta. 1 2 1 LIFE AND CAREER In 1949, Ray married Bijoya Das, his first cousin and ants eating with their hands.”[20] Bosley Crowther, then long-time sweetheart.[14] The couple had a son, Sandip, the most influential critic of The New York Times, wrote who is now a film director. In the same year, French di- a scathing review of the film. Its American distributor rector Jean Renoir came to Calcutta to shoot his film The Ed Harrison was worried Crowther’s review would dis- River. Ray helped him to find locations in the countryside. suade audiences, but the film had an exceptionally long Ray told Renoir about his idea of filming Pather Panchali, run when released in the United States. which had long been on his mind, and Renoir encouraged [15] Ray’s international career started in earnest after the suc- him in the project. In 1950, D.J. Keymer sent Ray to cess of his next film, Aparajito (The Unvanquished).[21] London to work at its headquarters office. During his This film shows the eternal struggle between the ambi- three months in London, Ray watched 99 films. Among tions of a young man, Apu, and the mother who loves these was the neorealist film Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle him.[21] Critics such as Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak Thief) (1948) by Vittorio De Sica, which had a profound rank it higher than Ray’s first film.[21] Aparajito won impact on him. Ray later said that he came out of the [16] the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, bring- theatre determined to become a film-maker. ing Ray considerable acclaim. Before completing The Apu Trilogy, Ray directed and released two other films: the comic Parash Pathar (The Philosopher’s Stone), and 1.2 The Apu years (1950–59) Jalsaghar (The Music Room), a film about the decadence of the Zamindars, considered one of his most important See also: The Apu Trilogy and Satyajit Ray filmography works.[22] While making Aparajito, Ray had not planned a trilogy, Ray decided to use Pather Panchali (1928), the classic but after he was asked about the idea in Venice, it ap- Bildungsroman of Bengali literature, as the basis for his pealed to him.[23] He finished the last of the trilogy, Apur first film. The semi-autobiographical novel describes the Sansar (The World of Apu) in 1959. Critics Robin Wood maturation of Apu, a small boy in a Bengal village. and Aparna Sen found this to be the supreme achieve- Ray gathered an inexperienced crew, although both his ment of the trilogy. Ray introduced two of his favourite cameraman Subrata Mitra and art director Bansi Chan- actors, Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore, in this dragupta went on to achieve great acclaim. The cast con- film. It opens with Apu living in a Calcutta house in near- sisted of mostly amateur actors. He started shooting in poverty. He becomes involved in an unusual marriage late 1952 with his personal savings and hoped to raise with Aparna. The scenes of their life together form “one more money once he had some passages shot, but did not of the cinema’s classic affirmative depictions of married [24] succeed on his terms.[17] As a result, Ray shot Pather Pan- life.” They suffer tragedy. After Apur Sansar was chali over three years, an unusually long period, based harshly criticised by a Bengali critic, Ray wrote an ar- on when he or his production manager Anil Chowdhury ticle defending it. He rarely responded to critics during could raise additional funds.[17] He refused funding from his filmmaking career, but also later defended his film [25] sources who wanted a change in script or supervision over Charulata, his personal favourite. production. He also ignored advice from the government Ray’s film successes had little influence on his personal to incorporate a happy ending, but he did receive funding life in the years to come. He continued to live with his that allowed him to complete the film.[18] Ray showed an wife and children in a rented house, with his mother, un- early film passage to the American director John Huston, cle and other members of his extended family.[26] who was in India scouting locations for The Man Who Would Be King. The passage was of the vision which Apu and his sister have of the train running through the coun- 1.3 From Devi to Charulata (1959–64) tryside, 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 See also: Satyajit Ray filmography major talent was on the horizon. With a loan from the West Bengal government, Ray fi- During this period, Ray composed films on the British nally completed the film.

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