March 13, 2018 (XXXVI:7) Satyajit Ray THE BIG CITY (1962), 122 min.

The online version of this Goldenrod handout has color images.

Directed by Satyajit Ray Writing Credits Narendranath Mitra (from a story by), Satyajit Ray (scenario & screenplay) Produced by R.D. Bansal Music Satyajit Ray Cinematography Subrata Mitra Film Editing Dulal Dutta Production Design Bansi Chandragupta Art Direction Bansi Chandragupta

CAST Anil Chatterjee…Subrata Mazumdar Madhabi Mukherjee…Arati Mazumder Jaya Bhaduri…Bani Haren Chatterjee…Priyogopal (Subrata's father) Sefalika Devi…Sarojini (Subrata's Mother) (as Shephalika Devi) Prasenjit Sarkar…Pintu Haradhan Bannerjee…Himangshu Mukherjee Vicky Redwood…Edith

SATYAJIT RAY (b. May 2, 1921 in Calcutta, India—d. April 23, 1992, age 70, in Calcutta, India) is the son of Sukumar Ray, Gandhi in 1983. Ray has been both the writer director for 33 an eminent poet and writer of Bengali literature. The younger films including, The Stranger (1991), An Enemy of the People Ray worked as an advertising artist before shifting his focus to (1989), The Home and the World (1984), Pikoor Diary (1981, film. He was first drawn to independent filmmaking after TVShort), Deliverance (1981, TV Movie), Heerak Rajar Deshe meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De (1980), Joi Baba Felunath: The Elephant God (1979), The Chess Sica’s Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948). Ray's first Players (1977), The Middleman (1976), The Golden Fortress film, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven international prizes, (1974), Ashani Sanket (1973), The Inner Eye (1972, documentary including the inaugural Best Human Document award at the short), Sikkim (1971, Documentary), Company Limited (1971), 1956 Cannes Film Festival. The large director who stood at about The Adversary (1970), Days and Nights in the Forest (1970), The 6' 5"— nearly a foot taller than the average Indian of his Adventures of Goopy and Bagha (1969), The Zoo (1967), Nayak: generation—was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, The Hero (1966), Two (1965, TV Short), The Coward (1965), calligrapher, music composer, graphic designer and film critic. The Holy Man (1965), Charulata (1964), Abhijaan (1962), He authored several short stories and novels, primarily aimed at Kanchenjungha (1962), Rabindranath Tagore (1961, children and adolescents. At the 1992 Academy Awards he won Documentary), Teen Kanya (1961), The Goddess (1960), The a special lifetime achievement award. He’s only the second World of Apu (1959), Paras-Pathar (1958), The Music Room Indian to have won an Oscar, the first being Bhanu Athaiya for (1958), Aparajito (1956) and Pather Panchali (1955). He has Ray—THE BIG CITY—2 also written for the films Goopy Bagha Phire Elo (1991, story), to meet her. Madhabi wasn’t sure if he was serious about giving Branches of the Tree (1990, screenplay/story), Kissa Kathmandu her a role. Ray cast her in Mahanagar, then again in Charulata Kaa (1986, TV Mini-Series, novel by), Phatik Chand (1983, (1964) and Kapurush (1965). Ray never worked with her after novel/ screenplay), Baksa Badal (1970, screenplay). Also, many that. She once recalled how Ray’s sense of beauty was more of his stories have been made into films, some of which are about the flutter of a searching mind. Ray’s daughter speculates Badshahi Angti (2014, novel by), Chaar (2014, story), Feluda that her father was looking for this type of ‘beauty’ while casting (2013, Short, original novel), Jekhane Bhooter Bhoy (2012, the female lead for Mahanagar, arguably one of the best woman- story), Some Maana (2011, Short, adaptation), Royal Bengal centric movies made in India. Of the role, Mukherjee said, “For Rahasya (2011, novel), Gorosthane Sabdhan (2010, novel), Aarthy, her home was her world before she ventured out. But the Tintorettor Jishu (2008 novel), Kailashey Kelenkari (2007, process transforms her into someone for whom the world outside novel), Bombaiyer Bombete (2003, novel), Dr. Munshir Diary becomes her home. It wasn’t tough to understand Aarthy for a (2000, TV Movie based on a story by), Golapi Mukta Rahasya woman of my generation, whose views were sure home-bound (1999, TV Movie/ story), Baksha Rahasya (1996, story) and yet, strong with streaks of empathy. In fact, it was not tough to Uttoran (1994, screenplay/story). understand any of the characters I played because they reflected the ethos of the period.” For a time there were rumors about the NARENDRANATH MITRA (b. 1916—d. 1975) was born in relationship between Mukherjee and Ray. When questioned the district of Faridpur now in Bangladesh, graduated from about her relationship with the then-married director, she was Bangabasi college, Calcutta. Initially, he worked in a bank before quick to point out, “Let me say one thing. I acted with Satyajit- becoming a writer. By the 1950s, he shifted his career toward babu in three films, and Soumitra (Chatterjee) acted in 14 films journalism, early on working for Krishok, Swaraj, Satyajug. In directed by him. I am surprised that nobody ever said anything 1951 he joined the daily Anandabazar Patrika, an association he about that.”Always known as a Bengali film actress, “I never stayed with until his death in 1975. He also tried his hand first in accepted films from any other languages because Bengali gave poetry publishing a book of poems, Janaki (Firefly), with me so much. That culture is dying, and so is the cinema here,” Bishnupada Bhattacharya and Narayan Gangopadhyay. An she says. Always devoted to the cinema, when the Star Theatre in author of about fifty short collections, a few of his short stories Calcutta caught on fire, Madhabi led a campaign to rehabilitate were made into film by Satyajit Ray, Rajen Tarafdar, among those affected by the fire. She asked Marxist leaders Jyoti Basu others. His story Abataranika was adapted into Mahanagar (The and Bhattacharya for help — but it was Calcutta mayor Subrata Big City) by Ray in 1964 and his story Ras was adapted into Mukherjee who finally came to the aid of the artistes. “I had then Hindi film, Saudagar (1973), by Shubendu Roy. The 1988 told Subrata Mukherjee that I would do anything in return.” The Bengali film, Phera by Buddhadeb Dasgupta, was also adapted mayor demanded his pound of flesh three months before the from his story. West Bengal election when he asked the actress to contest against the chief minister. “I counted till three under my breath SUBRATA MITRA (b. October 12, 1930 in Calcutta, India—d. — and said, Yes!” She lost the election by 30,000-odd votes but December 7, 2001, age she has no regrets about not making her mark in politics. 71, in Calcutta, India) is often considered one of the greatest of However, there is one area she has spoken about remorsefully— Indian cinematographers. At the age of 21, Mitra, who had never her decision to never act in Hindi films. “In our days, we were operated a motion picture camera, began his career as a rather uppity about Bengali cinema, which was so much more cinematographer with Satyajit Ray for Pather Panchali (1955). superior to Hindi films. But there has been a change, and one He continued to work on many of Ray’s later films, pioneering failed to grasp that Bengali cinema had long been overtaken by the technique of “bounce lighting” while filming The Apu Hindi films.” Trilogy. In 1999 Mitra won the Award for Technical Excellence at the Bombay International Film Festival and a Silver Lotus Award for Best Cinematography for New Delhi Times (1986) at India’s National Film Awards. He worked on 18 films: New Delhi Times (1986), Mahatma and the Mad Boy (1974, Short), Bombay Talkie (1970), The Guru (1969), Nayak: The Hero (1966), Teesri Kasam (1966), Shakespeare-Wallah (1965), Charulata (1964), The Householder (1963), Kanchenjungha (1962), The Goddess (1960), The World of Apu (1959), Paras- Pathar (1958), The Music Room (1958) and Aparajito (1956)

MADHABI MUKHERJEE (b. February 10, 1942 in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India) began her acting career at the age of eight. Madhabi—then known as Madhuri—lived with her mother, after her parents separated.. “Our financial situation was such that I had to work. So, I started acting in plays,” she says. Her first roles were in Dui Beyaai and Kankantala Light Railway in 1950. She was given the name Madhabi when she was ANIL CHATTERJEE/ CHATTOPADHYAY (b. October 25, introduced as a lead actress in Mrinal Sen’s Baishey Shravan 1929 in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India—d. March 17, (1960). Then one day Ray sent her a message saying he wanted 1996, age 66, in Calcutta, West Bengal, India) began his career Ray—THE BIG CITY—3 in the Bengali cinema during the early ‘50s and continued acting financial acumen. When he himself died in 1923 of blackwater until his death in the ‘90s. Initially, Chatterjee wanted to be a fever, the company was near collapse. It was liquidated three radio artist, however, his film career geared up when he became years later, and Suprabha Ray took Satyajit, her only child, to an assistant director to Ardhendu Mukhopadhyay, a reputed live in the house of her younger brother, P. K. Das. The Das filmmaker of that time. Though he planned on becoming a film household was comfortably off, not particularly literary but director, he made several cameo appearances in films made by highly musical. Ray developed an abiding love of classical his friends. His first substantial role was in Jog Biyog (1953) music, both Indian and western. He also became a keen directed by Pinaki Mukherjee, a close friend. By the time Ray cinemagoer. “I was a regular film fan. But I don’t know when it approached Chatterjee about being in one of his movies, both became serious. At some point, I began to take notes in the dark men admired the other’s work. The two first worked together on on cutting.” The movies he watched were almost exclusively Ray’s Devi in 1960 before the director decided to give Chatterjee western. “The cinemas showing Indian films. . .were dank and a larger part in tonight’s film. Of Ray’s directorial style, seedy. . . . The films they showed us, we were told by our elders, Chatterjee once told an interviewer: “I acted in his films under were not suitable for us.” his scrutiny but never felt I was being guided in acting. This is a Ray grew up in Calcutta, where he was educated at great contribution [Ray] offered to each actor and actress.” Ballygunj Government School and then from 1936 to 1940 at Chatterjee’s performance as Subrata Mazumdar, a character, torn Presidency College, majoring in science and economics. After between male ego and domestic necessity earned him awards at graduating, he attended the “world university” founded by both the Berlin Film Festival and the Acapulco Film Festival in Rabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan, some 130 miles from Mexico in 1964. Chatterjee was also a favorite of Tapan Sinha Calcutta. Tagore, the dominant figure of the Indian cultural and he had significant roles especially in Sinha’s early films. renaissance, prolifically gifted as writer, painter and composer, Known mostly as a character actor, in Nirjan Saikate (1963) had been a close friend of Ray’s father and grandfather, “though Chatterjee played sensitive writer Shankar, who develops a bond by 1940 (the year before his death) he had become a venerable with a young woman (Sharmila Tagore). This is one of the few figure whom Ray was too diffident to approach. His influence, lead roles he portrayed on screen. He has over 160 acting credits, though, was all-pervasive, especially in the teaching of all the some of the most famous of which are Nagarik/ The Citizen arts as closely interrelated.” (1952), Nirjan Saikate /The Desolate Beach (1963), Meghe Dhaka Tara /The Cloud-Capped Star (1960) and Faraar (1965).

JAYA BHADURI (b. April 9, 1948 in Jabalpur, Central Provinces and Berar, India) started her acting career in tonight’s film at the age of 15. She became an actress in her own right in Bollywood after the release of Guddi (1971). She went on to star in many Hindi language films, including blockbusters like Jawani Diwani (1972), Uphaar (1971), Anamika (1973), Abhimaan (1973), just to name a few. She was pregnant with her daughter Shweta while shooting the movie Sholay (1975). Bhaduri quit acting in 1981 to focus on her family, though she did write the script of Shahenshah in 1988. One of the roles she turned down, was Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala (1991), stating that she didn’t want to play a “mother” role. Bhaduri is married famous Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan. The couple has two children and their son, Abhishek Bachchan, is also an actor.

Satyajit Ray.From World Film Directors V.II, ed. John Wakeman. The H.W.Wilson Co. NY 1988, entry by Philip Kemp `Indian director, scenarist, composer, was born in At first, Ray “wasn’t particularly keen to leave Calcutta. Calcutta into an exceptionally talented family prominent in I was too much of a city person, and Santiniketan was…miles Bengali arts and letters. from nowhere. But…the professors I studied under were great The ground floor of the large family house was artists. Not just painters, but people with vision, with occupied by the printing firm founded by Ray’s grandfather, understanding, with deep insight. Upendrakishore Ray, a writer, artist, musician, and publisher. His I think everything [they taught me] has gone into my work. . . . I eldest son, Sukumar, Ray’s father, was also famous as a writer read a tremendous lot, novels, Indian literature, western and artist; the nonsense verses that he wrote for children, with his literature, everything.” own illustrations, have become much-loved classics. Ray’s After two and a half years at Santiniketan, “my most mother, Suprabha Das, was a noted amateur singer. Both parents important formative years,” Ray left abruptly in 1942 to return to were members of the Brahmo sect, a liberal and reformist version Calcutta, when news came the Japanese had bombed the city. He of Hinduism which rejected the caste system. found work as a layout artist with a British-run advertising On his father’s death in 1915 Sukumar, Ray’s father agency, D. J. Keymer & Co. He stayed with the firm for ten inherited the printing and publishing business, but he lacked years, rising to senior art director. Increasingly, though, cinema Ray—THE BIG CITY—4 overrode his other interests. “While I sat at my office desk director, or even a single film, of unequivocal world stature. Ray sketching out campaigns for tea and biscuits, my mind buzzed ascribed this failure to two major factors. First, that Indian with thoughts of the films I had been seeing.…By the time the filmmakers had never grasped the essential nature of cinema: “It war ended, I had taken out subscriptions to most of the film would seem that the fundamental concept of a coherent dramatic magazines in the English language and snapped up every film pattern existing in time was generally misunderstood.” Secondly, book I could lay my hands on.” misguided attempts to emulate foreign movies, especially those As an exercise, he began writing scenarios based on of Hollywood: “What our cinema needs above everything else,” books that were about to be filmed, so as to compare his ideas Ray proclaimed, “is a style, an idiom. . .which would be uniquely with the treatment that later appeared on the screen. He also and recognizably Indian.” prepared an adaptation of one of his favorite novels, Tagore’s His ambition was to create, singlehandedly if necessary, Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World), this uniquely Indian style and idiom. In which he offered to a film producer. It was 1947, the year of independence, Ray and liked and plans for production were his friend Chidananda Das Gupta had initiated. They soon foundered, however, founded Calcultta’s first film society, for Ray adamantly rejected all the “thereby shackling ourselves willingly to producer’s suggestions for changes aimed at the task of disseminating film culture increasing the film’s popular appeal. “I felt among the intelligentsia.” He also began like a pricked balloon at the time, but I can writing articles in an iconoclastic vein: “I now say…that I consider it the greatest had thought my explosive piece would good fortune that the film was not made. shake the Bengali cinema to its Reading the screenplay now I can see how foundation and lead to a massive heart- pitifully superficial and Hollywoodish it searching among our filmmakers. was.” He never abandoned his plan to film Nothing of the sort happened. The piece the Tagore novel, though it would be nearly was simply shrugged off…as yet another forty years in reaching the screen. piece of tomfoolery by some arrogant In terms of quantity, India had for upstart who …knew nothing of local years ranked as one of the world’s major needs and local conditions.” filmmaking countries, along with the United States and Japan. By 1948 Ray’s increasing salary at Keymer’s enabled The studios in Bombay (center of Hindi-language cinema), him to provide an independent home for himself and his mother. Calcutta (Bengali), and Madras (the Dravidian languages of the In March of the next year he married his cousin, Bijoya Das. South) churned out several hundred movies a year for a huge and They had grown up together and shared many of the same appreciative audience. Quality, though, was another matter. To interests, including a love of cinema. Their son Sandip was born most cultured Indians, their country’s films were a joke or a in 1953. In addition to his advertising work, Ray, by now source of embarrassment. Few Indian films were shown abroad, considered one of Calcutta’s leading graphic artists, was often except to expatriate communities; on the rare occasions they commissioned to illustrate books. One such commission, in were, as Ray wrote in a 1948 article, “even our best films have to 1946, was for an abridged edition of a modern classic, Bibbhuti be accepted with the gently apologetic proviso that it is ‘after all Bhusan Banerjee’s novel Pather Panchali (Song of the Little an Indian film.’” Road). Ever since, he had been considering turning this story into The typical Indian movie, whether comedy, romantic a film that he would both script and direct. Two events helped melodrama, or “mythological,” was constructed to a rigid push his ideas into reality. formula, often summed up as “a star, six songs, three dances.” In 1949 Jean Renoir arrived in Calcutta to make The Heroes, heroines, and villains were stereotyped and River. Overcoming his shyness, Ray called on him and found unambiguous; plots were crude, and acting cruder; settings were him “not only approachable, but so embarrassingly polite and stiflingly studio-bound; and the action, with blithe disregard of modest that I felt if I were not too careful I would probably find dramatic logic, would be regularly halted for lavish musical myself discoursing on the Future of Cinema for his benefit.” Ray interludes, sung or danced. Eroticism featured heavily, but could helped Renoir scout locations, watched him filming whenever be expressed only by languishing looks and voluptuous possible, and eventually mentioned his own plans. Renoir was movements, since censorship (and popular morality) forbade any full of encouragement. If only, he said, Indian filmmakers “could depiction of sexual contact more torrid than a handclasp. shake Hollywood out of your system and evolve your own style, Dramatic conflict, as Ashoke Memmen noted, was “organized you would be making great films here.” around a fairly elementary dualism and resolved…by means of a In April 1950 Keymer’s sent Ray and his wife on a six- happy ending in which wealth, physical and moral beauty, and month trip to London, where the company had its head office. political power are fused into one exemplary state of being.” “Doubtless the management hoped that I would come back a full- A few directors, such as Mehboob Khan, Bimal Roy, fledged advertising man….What the trip did in fact was to set the and R.V. Shantaram, had from time to time tried to make more seal of doom on my advertising career. Within three days of ambitious films, either by breaking away from the standard arriving in London I saw Bicycle Thieves. I knew immediately formula or by subverting it from within, and some of their work that if I ever made Pather Panchali. . . I would make it in the had been shown at international festivals. But in the forty years same way, using natural locations and unknown actors.” of its existence Indian cinema had yet to produce a single Ray—THE BIG CITY—5

Back in Calcutta, Ray began trying to set up his project. and mischievous old woman known as “Auntie” complete the Scenario in hand he visited every producer in the city. Not all of family. them laughed at him. A few expressed genuine interest: given a “The cinematic material,” Ray wrote later, “dictated a reputable director, some well-known stars….Ray realized that to style to me, a very slow, rhythm determined by nature, the make the film he wanted , he would have to finance it himself. landscape , the country. . . . The script had to retain some of the He scraped together all his savings, borrowed from his relatives, rambling quality of the novel because that in itself contained a raised a loan on his life insurance, and hired some equipment, clue to the feeling of authenticity: life in a poor Bengali village including “an old, much-used Wall camera does ramble.” Affectionately, and never which happened to be the only one available condescendingly, Pather Panchali for hire that day.” With this, and a group of offers us a series of events, not seen friends as crew, he began shooting. through Apu’s eyes but rather reflected Ray’s lack of experience was shared by most in his wide-eyed, responsive gaze. of his collaborators. All but a few of the “Instead of simply identifying with the actors were non-professionals, and those few child’s view. “Robin Wood observed, had rarely worked in films. The “Ray makes us increasingly sensitive to cinematographer, Subrata Mitra, had never the child’s reactions to what he sees.” shot a film before; Bansi Chandragupta, the There are two deaths. Auntie, art director, had worked only on The River, finally throw out by the exasperated the editor, Dulal Dutta, was a veteran of two Sarboyjara, dies huddled resignedly films’ experience. None of them owned a car beside a forest path where Apu and and they could rarely afford taxis; the equipment was transported Durga come upon her body. And later Durga dies of fever, by bus or train to the locations, some of which were sixty miles during a night of furious monsoon storm. But the events of from Calcutta. Since all of them had regular jobs, filming village life are mostly undramatic: a traveling theatre company proceeded on weekends and over vacations. visits the village; Apu is taught by a pompous schoolmaster, a The plan was to shoot enough footage to have something to show band plays (“Tipperary” excruciatingly off-key) at a wedding; potential backers. Some 4,000 feet of film was edited, assembled waterflies dance over the surface of a pond; a wealthy neighbor and shown around but there were still no takers. Ray sold off his accuses Durga of stealing a necklace; a peddlar comes selling precious books and classical records, and Bijoya pawned her sweetmeats; kittens play in the dusty yard. “However wayward jewelry but to no avail. Some eighteen months after filming had the detail may seem, it is controlled by a strict criterion of started, Ray sadly disbanded his team. There seemed little hope relevance,” wrote John Russell Taylor, noting that in all three that the picture would ever be completed. Apu films “to counteract the danger of shapelessness Ray Around this time Monroe Wheeler curator of the devised a whole network of subtle pictorial and aural reference to Museum of Modern Art visited Calcutta seeking material for an articulate his clear understanding of what each film is about.” exhibition of Indian art. He heard about Ray’s project, saw some One classic moment, central to the overall narrative scheme, is stills and suggested that the film, if finished in time, might form Apu’s first sight of a train—glimpsed distantly, as he and Durga part of his exhibition. Ray was highly gratified but Wheeler run toward the approaching plume of smoke through a field of could offer no financial support. Six months later John Huston fluffy white kaash flowers; then in thundering proximity. Instead turned up, scouting locations for his Kipling movie, The Man of crosscutting conventionally between the train and a close-up Who Would be King, and was shown the edited footage. He was of Apu’s wondering face, Ray pulls back beyond the tracks, favorably impressed and reported as much to Wheeler. showing the diminutive figure intermittently visible behind the Meanwhile, through a contact of his mother’s, Ray had speeding wheels, unifying the whole overwhelming experience gained access to the Chief Minister of the West Bengal within the frame. government, Dr. Roy. News of foreign interest in this eccentric From the first Ray proved an outstanding director of project had filtered through. Roy viewed the footage and agreed actors, eliciting astonishingly relaxed, natural performances from that the state government would purchase the film outright, his largely amateur cast. One of the few professionals was taking in return any profit accruing from domestic exhibition. Chunibala Devi, who played Auntie. Eighty years old, a former (According to some accounts, the funds came from the stage actress, she had not performed for thirty years when Ray Department of Roads, who believed, taking the title literally, that found her, an opium addict living in a squalid red-light district in Ray was making a documentary about road-building.) With this Calcutta. She died not long afterwards, but not before enjoying backing and a six-month leave of absence from Keymer’s, Ray the acclaim that greeted her first and last screen role. was able to resume shooting, now on a full-time basis. Working The Bengal government found itself somewhat against time—Ravi Shankar’s evocative score was composed in embarrassed by its purchase. Many officials disliked the film, eleven hours—Ray and his team completed the film in time for taking particular exception to the ending, in which Harihar, Wheeler’s exhibition in April 1955. devastated by his daughter’s death, decides to move to Benares. Pather Panchali (1955) is the story of a boy, Apu, Rather than giving up, it was suggested the family should have growing up in a poor Brahmin family in a Bengali village early stayed and joined a Community Development Project. Pather in the century. The father, Harihar, an underpaid priest, dreams Panchali was finally released with minimal publicity, but word of fame as a playwright, while his wife, Sarboyjaya, struggles to of mouth soon spread; within two weeks it was playing to packed keep the family alive. Apu’s older sister, Durga, and a wizened houses.As Adib, film critic of The Times of India, recognized, something revolutionary had appeared in Indian cinema: “it is Ray—THE BIG CITY—6 banal to compare it with any other Indian picture–for even the back him a second time, arguing that “a director whose first film best pictures produced so far have been cluttered with clichés. is a success is bound to be a failure in his second film.” Pather Panchali is pure cinema. There is no trace of the theatre By then, Ray had resigned from Keymer’s (rather to his in it....The countryside lives in the quiver of every leaf, in every mother’s alarm) to devote himself full-time to filmmaking. ripple on the surface of the pond, in the daily glory of its Fortunately, he had earned so much prestige that, as he says, mornings and evenings. The people live in every nerve and we “I’ve had my freedom to do just what I liked.” Indeed, he has live with them. . . . If sequence after sequence fixes itself in the been able to choose his own subjects, cast them as he pleased, mind of the audience, it is because every scene has been and film them, free from outside interference, with his own team intensely conceived.” of trusted collaborators, most of whom have worked with him for With some reluctance, since it was felt to give an years. All Ray’s films, though, have to be considered in the adverse impression of India, Pather Panchali was chosen as context of their prime audience, and the conditions in which they official Indian entry for the 1956 Cannes Festival. Many critics were made—both of which have imposed their limitations.” At stayed away, convinced by past experience that no Indian film the beginning, this [Bengali] audience was extremely could be worth watching, but almost all who attended the unsophisticated….You had to take them along slowly. screening hailed the debut of a major new director, and the Sometimes you took a leap as in Kanchanjungha or Days and revelation of an unprecedented maturity in the Indian cinema. (A Nights in the Forest, and lost touch with them…. I am forced to dissenting voice came from François Truffaut, who walked out keep my stories on an innocuous level. What I can do, however, after two reels, announcing that the film was “insipid and is to pack my films with meaning and psychological inflection Europeanized,” and that in any case he was not interested in and shades, and make a whole which will communicate a lot of Indian peasants.) things to many people.” Pather Panchali was awarded As for “the preposterous the prize as Best Human Document and balancing act” of filmmaking in Bengal, went on to win a fistful of other awards and particularly at Calcutta’s antiquated including the Selznick Golden Laurel at Tollygunge studios: “Here when a shot Berlin, and received wide international is being taken, one holds one’s breath release. In Sight and Sound Lindsay for fear the lights might dim in the Anderson described it as “a beautiful middle of the shot, either of their own picture, completely fresh and personal,” accord or through a drop in the voltage; in which Ray’s camera “reaches forward one holds one’s breath while the camera into life, exploring and exposing, with rolls on the trolley, lest the wheels reverence and wonder.” Time’s reviewer encounter a pothole on the studio found in it “a radiant beauty [that] floor….;one holds one’s breath on continually lifts the spirit.” Not quite location for fear of a crowd emerging everyone was so enthusiastic; in the New York Times Bosley out of the blue, come to watch the fun; one holds one’s breath, Crowther damned the film as so amateurish “it would barely pass too, while the film is being edited because one never knows for a rough cut in Hollywood.” Howls of protest from readers when the ravaged Moviola might turn back on the editor in and fellow reviewers induced him to recant, although Ray later revenge and rip the precious film to ribbons. No wonder conceded that Crowther’s view was not wholly unjustified. filmmakers are prone to heart disease.” “Judged on the level of craftsmanship , there was much that was Originally Ray had planned only one film about Apu. wrong with my film….The early part clearly shows we were Now, however, he decided to draw on Banerjee’s work for a groping with the medium. Shots are held for too long, cuts come sequel (to which a third film was eventually added, making up a at the wrong points, the pace falters, the camera is not always trilogy…. placed in the right position.” Seeing the film again after an interval of fifteen years, Many critics found Aparajito a disappointment after Raphael Bassan (Revue du Cinéma, May 1982) admitted to some Pather Panchali. “The film is neither realistic nor symbolic: it is disappointment, but suggested that Pather Panchali might be merely awkward,” wrote Eric Rhode....Stanley Kaufmann, on the best regarded as “the matrix of Ray’s subsequent work….Not in other hand, who had dismissed Pather Panchali as “rewarding if itself a masterpiece…(it) can be seen as the crucible from which taken as a dramatized documentary,” now realized that Ray was emerged many of the themes that the director later developed. “in process of creating a national film epic unlike anything—in Had he achieved nothing else, Ray would have deserved size and soul—since [Donskoi’s] Maxim trilogy.” In Film the gratitude of other Indian filmmakers for having established (March-April 1960), Douglas McVay considered it “the most with Pather Panchali not only an artistic but a financial profoundly sensitive panel of the triptych,” singling out the precedent. The West Bengal government recouped its investment moving scene of Sarojaya’s lonely death: “Through the gathering in the film fifteen or twenty times over—an outcome that led in dusk, the sick woman glimpses the approach of one more due course to the setting up of a national Film Finance locomotive on the skyline....She stumbles to her feet and gazes Corporation. Not that any of this profit reached Ray. A verbal eagerly out into the darkness....Only the light of the fireflies agreement, promising him a lot of the foreign revenue, was twinkles back at her.” conveniently omitted from the final contract. (“They got the Aparajito was awarded numerous prizes, including the money—I got the fame,” Ray dryly recalled.) Nor would they Golden Lion at the 1957 Venice Festival.... Ray—THE BIG CITY—7

The theme of change, of the countervailing gains and With the completion of the Apu trilogy, Ray was widely losses attendant on the forces of progress, has often been acclaimed as one of the great masters of humanist cinema, identified as the central preoccupation of Ray’s films. This comparable with Renoir, Flaherty and de Sica. As far as the rest theme, underlying much of the Apu trilogy, finds its most overt of the world was concerned he stood as the dominant figure in expression in Jalsaghar (The Music Room, 1958) The hero, an Indian cinema, sole representative of his country’s vast movie aging zamindar (feudal landlord), lives amid the crumbling industry. Within India his status was more ambiguous. Although grandeur of his vast palace, idly puffing his hookah and watching he enjoyed huge prestige as the only Indian director to have the last of his ancestral wealth trickle away. achieved international respect, he was also Out in the fields a solitary elephant, the object of considerable resentment, survivor of a once extensive herd, pads especially in Bombay; and his work–then as morosely about, intermittently obscured by now–was limited to a relatively restricted dust raised by the trucks of the upstart audience: the intellectual middle classes of village money lender, whose star has risen the Bengali-speaking minority. (Ray always as the zamindar’s has sunk. Further off, an refused to have his films dubbed into Hindi estuarial river flows sluggishly past mud or other languages)…. flats; the very landscape seems gripped by terminal lethargy. Some critics, following Truffaut, The zamindar’s only passion are have accused Ray of tailoring his films to the jalsas (recitals of classical music) held European tastes, of making–as one of them in his music room. When the money lender put it–UNESCO cinema, Ray has builds a music room of his own, the old consistently rebutted such attacks (“All my man’s pride is aroused. The palace’s faded films are made with my own Bengali splendors are dusted off, the most expensive dancer is hired, the audience in view”), pointing out that even the most sympathetic money lender is invited and, when he attempts to offer financial western viewer, unless extraordinarily well-versed in Bengali tribute, publicly snubbed. “That is the host’s privilege,” the language and culture, will find much in his films alien and zamindar reminds him as, with a fatuous but splendid gesture, he incomprehensible. tosses his last few gold coins to the dancer. Next morning he …One film which Ray thought so esoteric that it would meticulously dons his riding costume, mounts his sole remaining scarcely be worth releasing abroad was Devi ªThe Goddess, stallion, rides madly towards the river, and is thrown to his death. 1960), a study of religious fanaticism in nineteenth-century rural John Coleman, writing in the New Statesman compared Bengal.… “Villains bore me,” Ray has remarked….To Ray’s The Music Room to the best of Renoir: “It doesn’t so much duck surprise, foreign audiences were in general highly appreciative of taking sides, as animate both of them with an indigenous Devi, although for a time it seemed they might never have the sympathy.” The zamindar—played with magisterial torpor by the chance to see it. The film caused widespread controversy in eminent stage and screen actor Chhabu Biswas—is effete, Bengal, being taken in some quarters as an impious attack on indolent, patently absurd and yet, in his genuine devotion to Hinduism, and was initially refused an export license on the music, in the doomed extravagance of his final gesture— grounds that it portrayed India as sunk in primitive superstition. perversely magnificent. Ustad Vilyat Khan, whose own family The order for its release is said to have come from Nehru in had been generously supported by a zamindari household, tended person…. in his score to emphasize the nobler aspects of the protagonist: In all Ray’s films, even Pather Panchali, interiors are had Ray composed his own score, as he was later to do, “I would shot in the studio, although so subtly are the sets constructed and have given an ironic edge to it….but for him it was all sweetness lit that we are rarely aware of artifice. and greatness.” Marie Seton maintained that, far from pandering to “Calm without, fire within,” was the title of Ray’s essay popular taste by incorporating long musical episodes, Ray on the Japanese cinema. “challenged the whole convention of songs and dances in Indian cinema. Audiences…conditioned to the introduction of songs and Outside the avant-garde, there is perhaps no filmmaker dances as entertainment interludes and [as] dramatic and who exercises such control over his work as Satyajit Ray. romantic stresses, had never before been confronted Scripting, casting, directing, scoring, operating the camera, with…classical singing and dancing as integral focal points of working closely on art direction and editing, even designing his realistic sequences.” At all events, both critical and public own credit titles and publicity material–his films come as close to response was puzzled and lukewarm, though the film gained a wholly personal expression as may be possible in mainstream Presidential Award at New Delhi. (Very few of Ray’ s films have cinema. Not that his working methods are in the least dictatorial; won an award of some kind; he must rank among the world’s those who have worked with him pay tribute to his patience, most honored directors.) Internationally The Music Room was courtesy, and unfailing good temper in the face of al the setbacks more warmly received. John Russell Taylor described it as “one and disasters inherent in moviemaking. “I make films for the of Ray’s most masterly films, exquisitely photographed and love of it,” he once wrote. “I enjoy every moment of the directed with a complete, unquestioning mastery of mood….For filmmaking process,” from the first draft of the scenario to final those willing to place themselves under its hypnotic spell it offers cut. This enthusiasm is evidently communicated to his pleasures of unique delicacy.”… collaborators; Ray’s direction, Soumitra Chatterjee told an interviewer, “is inspired, and it’s an inspiration that is contagious Ray—THE BIG CITY—8 and spreads to the entire crew.” Actors have been known to pass though, would more likely concur with Penelope Houston’s up three lavishly-paid Bombay spectaculars to work on one of his assessment of him as “obviously a highly sophisticated artist. low-budget productions. Like Renoir he looks, and looks, and looks again; builds his films …Hitherto, all Ray’s films had been based on novels or through painstaking observation; assists his players…to act with stories by others, although he had often altered the originals that suggestion of unforced naturalism which looks spontaneous considerably in his scripts–and, and means hours of the most concentrated especially with Teen Kanya, been patience. Ray is no peasant, and the limpid censured for doing so by literary purists. clarity of his style is not achieved by luck or As he explained, “I don’t have enough chance.” experience of life to write about peasants Allegations of the “un-Indianness” or even nawabs,,,,My experience is all of Ray’s films often seem to stem mainly middle-class and that’s rather a limited from their wide appeal to foreign audiences- field. So I turn to others.” His first an argument rarely used to adduce a lack of original script was for Kanchanjungha national character in the films if, say, Fellini (1962), which was also his first picture in or Bergman.… color….”Chekhovian,” an epithet often applied to Ray’s work, was used with He succeeded in making Indian particular frequency about cinema, for the first time in its history, Kanchanjungha, within whose quiet microcosm the social something to be taken seriously, and he presented his fellow conflicts of a nation are clearly mirrored…. Indian filmmakers with an unprecedented opportunity to make Kanchanjungha was also the first film for which Ray composed worthwhile pictures. He has also created a body of work which, his own score. Though he had received no formal musical for richness and range, will stand comparison with that of any training, he had grown up in an intensely musical household., other director. At their finest—in Charulata, Days and Nights in acquiring an extensive knowledge of Indian and western classical the Forest, The Middleman—Ray’s films move to their own music….Finding it increasingly frustrating to work with inner rhythm, individual and wholly satisfying, full of warmth, professional composers, whose ideas often ran contrary to his humor and a constant sense of discovery. own, he has since Kanchanjungha composed all his own film scores, as well as those for James Ivory’s first two features, The from Conversations with The Great Moviemakers of Householder and Shakespeare Wallah. Hollywood’s Golden Age. Ed. George Stevens Jr. Alfred A From [Mahanager/The Big City 1963] on Ray took personal Knopf NY 2006 control of yet another filmmaking function, operating the camera himself. “I realized that, working with new actors, they are more Satyajit Ray confident if they don’t see me, they are less tense. I remain “First it’s finding a story which excites you. Second, it’s behind the camera. And I see better and can get the exact frame.” converting it into the terms of a screenplay. Third, it’s casting, “Ray’s admirers,” Richard Roud observed, “often which I do myself. People just come to my house. There’s a quarrel as to which are his best films.” Few of them, though, knock on the door, and there’s somebody waiting outside with would disagree in placing Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964) acting ambitions.” among the very finest. Ray himself rates it his favorite: “It’s the one with the fewest flaws.” The script is taken from a novel by “I try to pack my films with meaning and psychological Tagore…. inflections and shades,” he said, “and make a whole which will communicate a lot of things to many people.” Ray’s cinema …Outside the avant-garde, there is perhaps no flows with the serenity and nobility of a big river,” said Akira filmmaker who exercises such total control over his work as Kurosawa. “People are born, live out their lives and then accept Sayyajit Ray. Scripting, casting, directing, scoring, operating the their deaths. There is nothing irrelevant or haphazard in his camera, working closely on art direction and editing, even cinematographic technique.” designing his own credit titles and publicity material—his films come as close to wholly personal expression as may be possible You have been making films for more than twenty years. The in mainstream cinema. Not that his working methods are in the subjects have varied widely—the rural poor, commercial urban least dictatorial; those who have worked with him pay tribute to life, the British presence—but all the films have been set in India. his patience, courtesy, and unfailing good temper in the face of Do you have any interest in directing outside your country? all the setbacks and disasters inherent in moviemaking. “I make Not really. I have turned down many offers from here, films for the love of it,” he once wrote. “I enjoy every minute of though wouldn’t mind working with American actors. In fact, I the filmmaking process,” from the first draft of the scenario to came to Hollywood about ten years ago for a project that would the final cut…. have been filmed in Bengal and that needed an American actor. “I have not often been praised or blamed for the right But I wouldn’t want to work outside of India. I feel very deeply reasons,” Ray has remarked. One surprisingly persistent view of rooted there. I know my people better than any other. I would him, apparently based on Pather Panchali and not much else, is like to narrow it down even further and say, things Bengali, as the gifted natural, an untutored primitive of the cinema, adept because I think of India as a continent, and every state has its at semidocumentary studies of simple peasant life but sadly out own topography, language and culture. There is an underlying of his depth with more sophisticated subjects. …Most critics, Ray—THE BIG CITY—9 link of Hinduism perhaps, but on the surface the states are very Kurosawa which looks exactly like mine. I know of some other different. You can move from the Himalayas to a desert. directors who use a visual form.

You’ve acknowledged Jean Renoir as one of your earliest influences. How did that come about? Music seems to have a special importance in your films. What do In the forties, I saw the American films of Jean Renoir. you see as its use? The first one was The Southerner. I’ve been using less and less Eventually I saw The Diary of a music in my films of late because I’ve Chambermaid and a few others. I also always had the feeling that background read about his French work, and I was music was one element that was not part familiar with his father’s paintings. of pure cinema. It was an admission of Then, in 1949, Renoir came to Calcutta inadequacy on the part of the screenplay to look for locations for The River. ...I writer—or the director, perhaps—to just went and presented myself as a have to use music to underline certain student of the cinema. I got to know him things. Perhaps it was out of a lack of quite well. He was comparatively free in confidence in the audience. Of course, I the evenings and I would often just drop was quite surprised to see some of the in. Later I accompanied him on his American films of the thirties, for location hunts because I knew the example, Scarface, which had no music countryside quite well..... at all. It’s later—late thirties and early He talked about the difficulties he had had in forties—that music really came into its own. Then you had big Hollywood trying to convince people that the film ought to be composers like Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold and shot on location and not in the studio. He dropped occasional Alfred Newman writing symphonic scores which run right remarks which I found very illuminating. For instance, he said through the film almost. I find that those are the films which that a film does not have to show many things, but the few that it have dated most now. shows have to have the right kind of details. He kept insisting on I personally prefer a slightly drier approach, but I realize details and the value of details in films. We would drive through that one cannot do without music. In the trilogy I did not write the countryside, and he would say, “Look at that!” and point to a my own music. I used Ravi Shankar, as you probably know. The clump of bananas or plantains. “That is Bengal. That little palm, film without the music would have seemed slower, I’m afraid. I that is quintessential Bengal for me.” He was always trying to think what music does is to provide the audience with something find in the landscape details that he felt were characteristic of the to react to so that they are kept occupied. At least their ears are place and that he was eventually hoping to use in the film. That kept occupied. With that, there is something happening. left an impression, because I myself was very interested in details. ... What do you think about using music as counterpoint? Yes, fine. That’s one of the recommended uses, Has censorship affected your films? certainly. Kubrick has done that in his films, using “The Blue Not to a very serious extent, because I have always been Danube” for 2001: A Space Odyssey. I think it’s better to do it oblique in my statements, even on human relationships. In any that way, because the other way would be totally logical. It case, we can’t afford to be too permissive. And I’m not would be saying the same thing in terms of music as is being particularly anxious to be too permissive, because I think there expressed in rhetorical terms. In any case, I don’t like the Mickey has to be some room left for suggestion and obliqueness. In the Mousing of music by providing songs with every action. That’s cinema there is, I believe, a strong political censorship of very bad. violence. There’s a lot of fighting in the new commercial cinema, I watch my films with the audiences. Certainly on the but there’s no blood shown. Apparently you are free to show a opening night, but I also go just to see how the audience is lot of bashing about. But if you show catsup, then you are in for reacting. I’ve often found that the audience’s reaction in a way it.... changes the film for me. Often, during the passages which have very little dialogue, or just subtle things on the soundtrack, and What form do your scripts take? no music, I felt terrified. I wanted to walk out of the theater. I My scripts are in visual form. They are not written would think, now why didn’t I use music here, which would documents which can be duplicated and passed out to the pacify the public who are being restive and fidgety? It remains a members of the crew. They’re just little framed sketches with very acute problem, I think, whether to use music or not. I would directions down the right-hand side, and little notes on dialogue ideally not like to use music at all. I certainly do not approve of and camera movements. I don’t think it’s a literary medium well-known pieces of classical music used in the background. anyway, so why waste work? It’s only when the question of What happens is that the film is rarely able to come up to the publication comes that you have to devise a part-novel, part- level of the music. What really happens is that the music is drama form. But I’ve never wasted time in being literary. brought down to the level of the film, which is upsetting.

What led to your approach? How did you work with Ravi Shankar on the Apu trilogy? Well, I was trained as a painter; I did illustrations. But Shankar was then already a very famous concert I’m not the only one who works this way. I once saw a script by virtuoso who was constantly touring, if not outside of India, then Ray—THE BIG CITY—10 inside India. For Pather Panchali he was available for just a day. which instantly turned into the worst logistical nightmare I have I was able to show him half the film in rough cut. The music I ever endured in over two decades of making compilation films. wouldn’t say was composed, because there was nothing written As far as I could determine, no American company held down. He just hummed and whistled, and the musicians just television rights (and therefore a viable print or tape) of any of performed. All the music was done in a single session. This is not Ray’s films. For that matter, I could turn up no one who held the best way of doing it, mind you. I got worried, and I had him American theatrical rights in any of his pictures. There were a play three-minute and four-minute pieces and various ragas in few scattered, battered 16mm prints of his films available in the various tempos. Either a solo sitar or a combination with the audiovisual market, but most of them were near- flute, with drums, whatever. But a lot of the work was done in unwatchable....To put the point simply, there was simply no the cutting room. There was considerable wrestling with the market for Ray’s films in the United States, therefore no impetus music and the images. to keep good copies of his work available for public exhibition...... Music has always been my first love..... Advised not to bother with Indian sources because in a poor nation film preservation is not a high priority and the state You operate your own camera? film bureaucracy is mysterious and impenetrable, I finally turned I’ve been doing so for the last fifteen years. Not that I to Britain. There, at last, I was able to obtain air-worthy prints. have no trust in my cameraman’s operational abilities, but the The reason for that, I believe, is simple and exemplary: it is best position to judge the acting from is through the lens. Also, because the National Film Theatre and the British Film Institute I’ve noticed working with nonprofessionals,, that they are created and continue to sustain a small but commercially viable happier if they don’t see my face while I’m directing.... audience for movies that are not made in America and are not comedies or action films aimed at the only audience that seems Do you have a philosophy that you care to articulate? to count these days—young, brain-damaged males. It’s there in my films. I’m afraid I can’t be articulate The previous year Channel 4 in Britain had presented— about it. I’m very bad at verbalizations. That’s why I’m not a in prime time, mind you—a retrospective that included almost all writer; I’m a filmmaker. I’m afraid you will have to draw your of Ray’s best work.... own conclusions. As I learned a few years ago, when I taught a criticism course at the USC film school, young people today, even when they would like to, cannot replicate the experience [of seeing many foreign films] the fifties generation enjoyed....Today’s young people cannot gain convenient (or even inconvenient) access to their film heritage or to cinematic cosmopolitanism. ...Working with Ray’s work in some measure reanimated something like my youthful idealism about the movies and about the utility of the critical gesture, not as a way of passing ultimate judgments but as a way of stirring interest in, discussion of, yes, even passion for the movies in their infinite, and in this case, marvelously exotic variety. I said earlier that coming upon the Apu trilogy anew I was struck by the lasting power of its quite simple imagery. But there were other things I could see about it now that were hidden from me thirty-five years ago. Viewing the three films back to back I was struck by their cumulative power. In everything but physical scale they constitute an epic. They range over two Matinee Idylls: Reflections on the Movies. Richard Schickel. decades and embrace both village and city life in modern India Ivan R. Dee. Chicago, 1999. “Satyajit Ray: Days and Nights and all of the most basic human emotions in the most tender and in the Art Houses” patient way. More important, I was now able to see that the films—especially the final one, The World of Apu—hinted at I had been assigned to produce the film tribute to the what I can now see as Satyajit Ray’s great if always indirectly greatest of “Indian Chappies,” Satyajit Ray, for the 1992 spoken theme. Academy Award broadcast, on which he was to receive an That is the ineffectuality of the male in a colonial and honorary Oscar....When I began telling people what I was postcolonial society....This is a major body of work, embracing working on, I discovered that it was only among my more than thirty gracefully executed films, the overriding theme contemporaries—and, of course, the critics and film historians— of which—the psychological and cultural devastation of a society that Ray was a recognizable name. And then only as a figure only recently released from colonialism—is not without interest from our past. They, no more than I, had any sense of the size even to those people who are uninterested in the cinema as such. and strength of his body of work as it has developed in the last What matters even more to me is that its felicities—there are no two decades or so. As for younger people, they had quite simply crude villains in Ray’s work, no caricatured exploiters of the never heard of him. people (or heroes of the people either)—and its subtle wisdom This was a shock to me. But not as great as the dismay are unavailable to us in our present, devastated cultural climate. I that came over me as I tried to get to work on my little montage, wish I knew what to do about this situation, beyond protesting it.

Ray—THE BIG CITY—11

James Blue: Interview with Satyajit Ray (Film Comment): important, you see. Whereas in certain shots maybe it’s not the This interview with Satyajit Ray was tape-recorded by Blue as operation that is all-important but it is something else that is preparation for his book on the directing of the non-actor in film. really vital. So even if the panning is a little this way [making a This special research has been sponsored by the Ford jerky movement], it doesn’t matter. And the question of re-takes Foundation. Blue, at the time of the interview, was visiting India comes up also when you are working with very limited raw while directing A Few Notes on Our Food Problem, a color, stock, you see. It’s mainly because of that that I have started 35mm, 40-minute U.S. Information Agency film on the world operating the camera myself. food and population problem, shot by Stevan Larner. Sailen Dutt, assistant to Ray on most of his films, assisted with the recording. The Big City Ray was at work then on a film that he described as a Then you operate the camera during the rehearsals also? commercial “adventure story with big name stars.” Blue Yes, otherwise it’s pointless. Except there is a first rehearsal describes Ray as “a tall man, over six-feet-one, enormous for an where I’m not behind the camera, where I’m just watching the Indian, whose deep and resonant voice whole thing for all the details of acting, you surprises more than his height, because of see. And just before the take, if it’s his ability to manage—as a patrician complicated, I have at least two rehearsals might—the niceties of English speech.” when I’m on the camera, to see whether I can actually do it, whether my limbs will permit it, Pather Panchali you see. Because sometimes you’re in the SATYAJIT RAY: I have the whole thing most terrible position, lying down or half- in my head at all times. The whole sweep of reclining, and I take off the panning handle, I the film. I know what it’s going to look like grab hold of the other sort of thing that sticks when cut. I’m absolutely sure of that, and so out and I grab hold of the whole camera and I don’t cover the scene from every possible turn it like that, on its pivot. angle—close, medium, long. There’s hardly Personally, I think that Subrata anything left on the cutting-room floor after Mitra’s camera work is better than Raoul the cutting. It’s all cut in the camera. Coutard’s, but Gianni Di Venanzo I admire For example, the mother-daughter tremendously. 8½ is something extraordinary, fight scene in Pather Panchali—that was all I mean the daring things that Di Venanzo does in my head and I merely told my editor to there and pulls off. Largely, of course, it’s the join this strip, now that, now this…. And the director, too; it can’t be just the cameraman strong scene where Durga dies—lots of who is devising all that, all those over- shots there and the editor just didn’t know exposed shots and everything that comes off. what he was doing. I had all the strips in my Sometimes cameramen do this kind hand and then I popped them one after the other, now a bit of of thing for no reason at all, and that I don’t like. I mean, just this, a bit of that. The editor just came in to help, you see, tricks for tricks sake, which quite a number of these New Wave because we had to catch a deadline. directors do. I mean Godard does it all the time, hand-held for no But I have an editor who’s very good indeed; he has reason and you can see it going all the time. A long scene with often very creative suggestions. In small things, you see— Belmondo in Une Femme Est Une Femme, sitting in a bar or particularly in long dialogue scenes involving three or four somewhere, talking, talking, and you have the camera hand-held, characters, where you can make small changes all the time, make and you watch the edge of the screen and can see it wobbling all improvements, he has very good suggestions. the time [Laughs]. And you tend to watch that not the action I understand that in many of your films you have been at the within the frame. You become interested in how well the chap camera yourself. was able to steady his camera. Ever since The Big City, which I shot in 1962, 1963, I have been Well, Godard’s is another style altogether, you see, operating the camera. All the shots, everything. It’s wonderful to where you use all kinds of things completely amateurish, direct through the Arriflex because that’s the only position to tell completely improvised, and it all sort of hangs together as a kind you where the actors are, in exact relations to each other. Sitting of collage. Good, bad, indifferent. But that’s another category of by or standing by is no good for a director. films, I think. I find that I am not able to both direct and shoot. I haven’t seen any cinéma vérité except for Jean I find it easier, because the actors are not conscious of me Rouch’s Les Maîtres Fous, which he shot in Africa, a rather watching, because I’m behind the lens. I’m behind the viewer horrifying film but very impressive, very strong, I must say. And and with a black cloth over my head, so I’m almost not there, all a single man’s effort. It’s just one man, Rouch, doing you see. I find it easier because they’re freer, and particularly if everything. I met Richard Leacock at the Flaherty Seminar in you’re using a zoom. I am doing things with the zoom 1958, but I don’t know his cinéma vérité work, nor do I know constantly, improvising constantly. Chris Marker in France. When you work with a cameraman, however, he is Although I don’t know cinéma vérité, I can see that it always saying—“Let’s have one more take.” I generally say— can be very interesting, and valid, in a way. But again, a different “Why? Tell me why?” He’s never able to specify exactly category, you see. I think that Frances Flaherty was slightly “why”—he is not sure, you see. Whereas, I am sure. Only the disappointed in my method of work, because she had thought director can know when the technical operation needs to be all- that in Pather Panchali they were all actual villagers. But it Ray—THE BIG CITY—12 doesn’t really matter whom you use, because it’s the ultimate Yes, absolutely, because it would be impossible to dub with a effect that counts, you see. In all art it is like that. non-actor. Absolute disaster. I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work. I use the Arriflex. Because you can do very small zooms How do you dub? Do you use the French system? that are not noticeable, you can get your emphasis all the time No system. We devise our own system. I don’t even know what with a zoom, and it’s lovely with that. the French system is. Look, I don’t like And sometimes you don’t even notice dubbing because it’s too mechanical. I that. You are not supposed to, most of have devised a system of notation—I the time. It’s not zoom-zoom, like that, mean, you have to have a kind of guide- it’s just a little bit. Sometimes track . . . Sailen Dutt, my assistant, and combining with a tracking shot you several others, take notes or a code on the can zoom in. I love the zoom. I think exact scanning of each word. Even if we it’s wonderful, particularly now. For do have a tape recorder, even if there is a example, for a certain insert . . . what guide-track, you need to do that. I play you can do is a little zoom. back and then make my own special notations for it, and then I work it from The World of Apu my notes, you see. Because you have got to have control yourself How do you direct dialogue? of how the lines are spoken. So that it sounds right, it conforms All actors are afraid of pauses because they can’t judge their to the original speech. You have got to memorize it; you must weight. So with Sharmila Tagore in The World of Apu, I would know your lines. say—“Well, you stop at this point and then resume when I tell you to resume.” So she would just stop and look at a certain point Pather Panchali that had been previously indicated, and then I’d say—“Yes, now When you go into the sound studio to dub the final cut, do go on,” and she would resume. So the pauses would be there as I you try to reproduce exactly what the actor has said in the would need them. Otherwise, actors are terribly afraid of pauses, picture? and it’s only the greatest professionals who know the real Absolutely. But sometimes I try to improve. Most of my dubbing strength, the power, of pauses. For all non-actors and for inferior so far has involved, fortunately, professionals who have been professionals, they just can’t judge pauses at all. For me, pauses able to do it with me. But somehow with Pather Panchali we had are very important: something happening, waiting for the words, usable sound all the way through, more or less. Not much and when the words come you have that weight. So the pauses dialogue, and no crowds watching, because even whispering have to be worked out constantly. would create an enormous noise that ruins your track. Once he has memorized the line, it’s the hardest thing Yesterday we shot a scene in the village where you made for an actor to make it sound as if he is thinking and talking Pather Panchali. rather than just mouthing lines. Sometimes there are certain Did you? It’s unrecognizable now. It’s no longer pure. It’s words that don’t come easily. You must have the pause before a spoiled. It was once very nice, indeed, with long areas of no huts, certain word. Not everybody is a linguist with a great command no refugee huts . . . [Note: the Pather Panchali village, like many of vocabulary, so you have to vary it with actors, and those others in Bengal, now contains refugees from East Pakistan as a pauses are very significant. Sometimes you just can’t think of a result of Partition.] word so you just hesitate, you see, and somebody else supplies it Were people of that village cooperative when you began that for you. So my dialogue is written like that, with a very plastic first film of the Apu Trilogy? quality, which has its own filmic character, which is not stage Not in the early stage. No, they were fairly hostile people there. dialogue, not literary dialogue. But it’s as lifelike as possible, But we got to be friendly, and finally—because we were there for with all the hems and haws and stuttering and stammering. two years off and on—we got to be very friendly with them. But you would not call it natural speech? They really missed us when we left. You can manage only by No, it’s not naturalistic but let’s call it “realistic.” It’s not as if being polite with them, you see, sitting down and talking. it’s off a tape recorder, because then you would be wasting They’re essentially nice people, but suspicious. To them all precious footage. You have to strike a mean between naturalism business has certain rather unpleasant associations. We were and a certain thing which is artistic, which is selective, you see. completely newcomers, nobody knew us, and today we wouldn’t If you get the right balance, then you have this strange feeling of have any trouble, except from people coming to watch. being lifelike, everything looking very lifelike and natural. But if For example, we have begun shooting our new film in you were to photograph candidly a domestic scene it wouldn’t be Baraset, and the crowd has been increasing, and for the last two art at all. I mean, it could be interesting for certain revelations, or three days we have had something like two thousand women but it wouldn’t itself be a work of art—a scene, whatever scene, and children watching. A wall was constructed around the unless you cut it. That’s being creative, you see. By being compound, and outside the wall they would stand, looking over. selective in your framing, in your cutting, in your choice of And all the trees were full of people. And some of the branches words, you are creating something artistic. gave way and a dozen people fell and collapsed, and one was I think the cinema is the only medium that challenges seriously injured. Fortunately, we had a doctor in the cast, among you to be naturalistic, be realistic and yet be artistic at the same the actors, and he gave first aid and sent them all to the hospital. time. Because in the cutting is the creation, you see. We found yesterday on location in your Pather Panchali You shot Pather Panchali in sync sound? village that we had almost 150 people around us—everybody excited and . . . Ray—THE BIG CITY—13

Yes, but at the time we made Pather Panchali, there was almost immediately felt that something was wrong. So I sat down and nobody watching. There were some during the first few days, of thought it out and did it. course, but then they lost interest in the actual work, so we could I hardly ever do more than three takes. It’s generally continue uninterrupted, absolutely. And nobody knew us, two. If the second one is not better than the first, then there’s a everyone was new, we had no stars. But this new film we are third take. I’ve never taken more than five or six, except for one making has a big star, and he is the main draw of crowds, I think. shot in Pather Panchali involving synchronization with a dog. But apart from that, nowadays shooting in a city street is You see, when the confectioner comes the children run and almost impossible unless you do it with follow him, and in the same shot you have concealed cameras or dummy cameras a dog who is also supposed to run at a or things like that. If you don’t use these certain point. But this is not a trained dog, means, then the shooting becomes too you see! The dog would be called, but it expensive. I shoot on a four-to-one would just sit there and look up and not do ratio, you see. anything. So that took eleven takes. I remember that very well because I had Pather Panchali never had eleven takes to a shot. Did you make Pather Panchali on a One professional actor who let us four-to-one ratio? down several times was the man who No, that’s the only film where I had played the father in Pather Panchali. He scenes that eventually didn’t go into the was a professional of long standing, and he film. Some scenes were not finished. was muffing lines constantly because he And then I wasn’t sure of my cutting, so some of the stuff had was asked to do certain things along with speaking—combining just to be thrown away. The first two or three days work action with speech—which I use very frequently, which I think is wouldn’t cut at all. Then later I sort of disciplined myself. You very important, which gives it that relaxed thing, you see. It’s learn while you work. You learn quite quickly, in fact. We were both in work and talking. forced to be economical, as you must when you have a ceiling to everything. Aparajito Of course, you have said that during Pather Panchali you did You find actions to accompany speech constantly? not have crowds disturbing the shooting and causing your Yes, unless it is a scene that demands absolutely no action at all. actors to freeze up—but still, with so few takes, how did you In the second film of the Apu Trilogy, Aparajito, there is a scene manage to get relaxed behavior from non-professionals? towards the end where the mother is dead and the boy sits and Sometimes it’s easier with non-professionals. I have no definite cries on the little verandah, and there’s the old uncle smoking the system. I use different methods with different actors. You have to hookah, and he sort of consoles Apu by saying—“You know, modify your technique all the time. But you have to get to know man is not immortal. Everybody has to die sooner or later, so the person you are working with, know his moods and his don’t cry.” Now, that old man was a complete amateur. (He died abilities and his intelligence. Sometimes I use them as puppets the other day.) We found him in Benares on the grass. He had complete, and I do not tell them anything about motivation at all. never seen a film, because he was living a retired life in Benares I just try to get particular effects. for thirty years with his wife, you know. I mean you find people For example, the boy who played Apu in Pather like that. He seemed to be the right type, so we went up to him— Panchali—he was treated all along as a puppet. Completely. He we hadn’t cast that particular part yet—and I asked him whether didn’t know the story, only the vaguest outline. And it is really he would be willing to act in the film. Immediately he said yes, not a children’s story. It’s an adult thing with all the subtleties, why not? And then in this scene, the only scene where he needed really emotional. to speak for a certain length of time, I couldn’t possibly cut Does this mean that you dictated his gestures? because it needed to be a single set-up all the way through, to Absolutely, down to the head movement—“Do this and that.” suggest that kind of gloom and, you know, hopelessness. I split The first day I had some trouble. up the dialogue into parts; between sentences he was asked to It was a very simple shot of him walking, looking for smoke, just take a pull at the hookah. Then stop for a certain Durga, his sister, in that field of flowers. Remember that? And length of time, then I would say go on. Well, he knew where to that walk was so difficult to get right. So I put little obstacles in smoke, where to take a pull at the hookah, but he didn’t know his way, which he had to cross, and it became natural where to resume speaking, and that I would dictate. immediately. Otherwise, he just walks like that [stiffening his I understand De Sica uses quite a bit this method of body]. I had to put objects in his path and say—“you cross this handling actors as puppets, you see, telling them exactly what to piece of straw and then the next one”—not really large obstacles do at every point. I felt that in Bicycle Thief; not with the boy so but things he had to be conscious of, to give him a purpose. much as with the father. The boy was amazing, absolutely That’s the most difficult thing to do—just walking, looking for incredibly good. Particularly the last scene where he walks down somebody. Every turn of his head was dictated—“Now look this and holds the father’s hand, where he’s crying. way!” I put three assistants at certain points, and A would call I asked De Sica how he got that scene. He replied that he the boy and then B would call and then C. So the boy would poked fun at the poverty of the boy’s family and made him walk, look, then hear a call, then walk again. It was like that. It’s cry. De Sica said—“I was so ashamed of myself when I got the only thing to do. At first I didn’t work this way, but I that scene . . . it was so shameful of me.” He said—“My little boy was so very proud and he lived in such poor conditions in Ray—THE BIG CITY—14 the same room with his mother and father and his other But even on location, what we’ve been doing, instead of brothers and sisters, and they all slept in the same bed, and using those tinfoils and silver-paper reflectors—of course, you yet he was terribly proud. And he didn’t want anyone to have to use those—but for all our close shots we have this make fun of that, and so I made fun of it. And it made him enormous white cloth stretched so that you get that soft bounce. mad and he cried and he cried and he cried,” said De Sica, In Kanchenjungha, a color film, we had interior shots in the “and then I got my picture.” And De Sica ended by saying— hotel, but we had no lights for color, so what we did was to use “Afterward I grabbed him and kissed him.” two or three large mirrors, about four feet square. We reflected It’s typical, yes. You use such methods, you always have to. the sunlight into the room onto stretched cloth, and that was just Otherwise you can’t expect a child of five or six to be so brilliant wonderful. You have to have sunlight, of course, to be able to do in faking emotions, you see. that; if it’s a cloudy day you’re finished. But if you have sun and De Sica and his writer, Zavattini, both told me that their you have mirrors, you reflect the sunlight into the room through problems were to develop concrete actions within a scene so the window. It’s worth it for the quality you get. You don’t feel that, in the final analysis, the people were doing relatively the presence of lights around at all. They are not reflected in all simple things—picking up a coffee pot, closing a door, and so sorts of little glistening props and things. forth. The attempt to juxtapose all of these elements in the film made the person seem to be performing. Is there something of this approach in the way you construct scenes? Very similar, yes indeed. In the domestic scenes of The Big City it’s all like that. Everyone is doing something and speaking at the same time, and the story is advancing and the drama developing and the relationships. It’s like that all the way through. Every scene has some sort of domestic action being performed all the time, and the time of day is being very strongly established in the lighting.

Aparajito How did you handle the gradual changes of daylight in that film? With Subrata Mitra and his assistant—who is now doing my camera work—we have devised a system of lighting whereby in a studio we can simulate daylight to a fantastic degree. It fools everybody, the best professionals. It’s a boost sort of light we use. If it’s a day-scene, we try to imitate available light by not Chandak Sengoopta: “The Big City: A Woman’s Place” using any direct lights; instead, we use bounce lights all the way (Criterion Notes) through. Particularly if you saw Charulata—it’s my best film The Big City (1963) was Satyajit Ray’s first attempt to depict the from many points of view. And in The World of Apu, his little realities of contemporary life in his home city, Kolkata. His tenth room, that had a very convincing actual location atmosphere due feature film, it actually came close to being his second, which to our lighting. Yet it’s a studio set. The lighting we use through would have provided a stark contrast with the rural, early the windows and also from the side of the camera is all bounce twentieth-century setting of his remarkable debut, Pather light, you see, and it’s very carefully graded for various times of panchali (1955). Difficulties of casting and finance, however, the days. We may use a white card at various positions—here, delayed it until he had made the others—the majority of them set there, like blackboards. Different greys, so that it’s one kind of in the past (including Aparajito, The Music Room, and The World lighting for a cloudy day, one for sun, one for mid-day, one for of Apu) or in rural or suburban milieus (Three Daughters, early morning—it’s all varied. In The World of Apu the matching The Expedition), suggesting to many critics that Ray was of light is exceptional, and of course matching is not just a matter reluctant to confront topical, urban issues. Had The Big of lighting but it’s also the soundtrack, which is being matched City (Mahanagar) followed Pather panchali, its meticulously all the time, because you’re carrying over sound from shot to detailed portrayal of lower-middle-class urban life would have shot, you see. forestalled such criticism. But there was much more to the film I read in American Cinematographer an article by Sven than mere contemporaneity. It was a major work incorporating Nykvist, Bergman’s cameraman—they had just finished shooting Ray’s long-standing interest in women’s lives, while Through a Glass Darkly—and Nykvist goes to great lengths foreshadowing the grand themes of his later films on describing the wonderful system that they have devised with contemporary Kolkata: the impact of work—and its absence—on bounce lights. Which we had been using for the last twelve years. people, the agony and ecstasy of metropolitan life, and the place As I said, the Benares house where Apu lives is a studio set. We of individual morality in modern capitalist society. had a cloth stretched overhead, you see, for the light from above. Our lighting gives you a kind of dark eye-socket effect, but it Like many of Ray’s greatest films, The Big City is ultimately a doesn’t matter really, because it’s not a question of beautifying study of individuals negotiating social change, in this case the everybody. Ultimately it pays off, because you are sticking to a major shift that occurred in Bengal in the 1950s when increasing realistic mood. numbers of middle-class housewives began to take up jobs. Based on “Abataranika” (Descent, 1949) and, to a lesser extent, Ray—THE BIG CITY—15

“Akinchan” (Desire, 1954), two short stories by Narendranath capitalism, while a lipstick, a present from Edith that she uses at Mitra (1916–75), it tells the tale of the bank clerk Subrata work but must conceal at home (because Bengalis of that time Mazumdar, his wife, Arati, and their five-year-old son, Pintu, considered it immoral to paint one’s lips), establishes the vast who live in a tiny, dank apartment in Kolkata with Subrata’s cultural distance between the two worlds of (traditional) fourteen-year-old sister, Bani; his father, Priyagopal, a retired housewife and (modern) worker that Arati has to negotiate every schoolteacher; and his mother, Sarojini. The old prejudice against day. women working outside the home is starting to crumble but is The social and racial diversity of midcentury Kolkata is still powerful, in the city and their household. When Arati also deftly established. The cramped apartment where Arati lives proposes to take a job, Subrata reminds his wife—in English and with her family (Ray described Bansi Chandragupta’s only half in jest—that “a woman’s place is in the home,” but magnificent set as “the smallest rooms ever built”), the sheer economic necessity compels him to back her. prosperous neighborhoods where Arati visits her customers Subrata’s father, immured in tradition, is appalled, but (where an occasional British resident is still to be found), the being retired and economically dependent, he lacks the authority elegant office of a successful student of Priyagopal’s, the to countermand his daughter-in-law’s choice. Indeed, there is no cavernous apartment where Edith lives with her mother (as place in the new world for the lower-middle-class as Arati’s own but elderly, used-up Priyagopal, who decorated with pictures of Hollywood turns to his former students for stars, not calendars with pictures of financial and other kinds of Hindu gods)—all of them build up a support. One of them sneers that panoramic, near-ethnographic portrait the man who once quoted Samuel of metropolitan life. Sounds, too, are Smiles—the British author used to great effect. It is a newscast, of Self-Help (1859) and other audible from a neighbor’s apartment, best-selling guides to worldly that locates the narrative in May 1954, success for ambitious and assorted radio broadcasts are used Victorians—has now been throughout the film to establish the reduced to beggary. This kind of urban soundscape of the time. elderly male character, unable to The social typage attempted understand the changing world in The Big City is helped greatly by the around him but portrayed with cast. Anil Chatterjee as Subrata is the profound sympathy and genteel but economically challenged understanding, would recur in Ray’s later work—The Bengali clerk par excellence, while the singer and amateur actor Middleman (1975), Pikoo (1980)—but never with such Haren Chatterjee embodies the rigidity and emotional poignancy. vulnerability of Priyagopal to perfection. Jaya Bhaduri, who later The Big City was also pioneering in its treatment of race became a popular Bollywood heroine, began her career here, and racial discrimination, themes rarely featured in Indian films with an endearing depiction of Subrata’s teenage sister, and and almost never, according to critic Dipendu Chakrabarty, in Vicky Redwood, actually a Bengali woman appearing under an association with gender issues. One of Arati’s colleagues, Edith, appropriate-sounding pseudonym, reproduces the characteristic belongs to the Anglo-Indian community, which originated from appearance, mannerisms, and accents of Kolkata’s Anglo-Indians eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liaisons between British with uncanny verisimilitude. But it is Madhabi Mukherjee who is colonials and Indian women. Denied equality by the British and the true revelation. Bringing Arati to life with an extraordinary not accepted by Indians, they occupied a liminal position in combination of intelligence, moral strength, and emotional society and were generally regarded as immoral, dishonest, and sensitivity, she walks away with the film and, after her culturally degenerate. Arati, transcending these racial outstanding performance in the title role of stereotypes, draws close to Edith on an individual level and does Ray’s Charulata (1964), was enshrined for all time as the not hesitate to resign when her boss (who has always been nice to quintessential “Ray woman.” Arati) impugns Edith’s moral character and dismisses her. This leads to a crisis for Arati’s family, as Subrata has just lost his The Big City’s approach to female emancipation and capitalist own job. But in the end, he agrees that she has done the right modernity united Ray with his ancestors. From the nineteenth thing, and they face the future together as equals. century on, the Rays and their collateral connections had participated in countless progressive initiatives, many of them Ray’s style in The Big City, remarked critic Eric Rhode in 1976, under the auspices of the Brahmo Samaj, a primarily religious recalls the realism of nineteenth-century European novelists. movement seeking to reform not only the Hindu faith but also Characters are “both individuals and social types”; the city’s Hindu society and morals. The emancipation of India’s women economic and class structure is more important to the narrative was central to this project. Dwarakanath Ganguli, the father-in- than its scenic qualities; and even “the most trivial of objects are law of Ray’s grandfather Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, was a made dynamically essential to the plot.” The title sequence, for tireless fighter for the unrestricted entry of women into higher instance, establishes the metropolitan locale by focusing education and risked his life combating the oppression of exclusively on the bobbing progress of the pole connecting a indigenous laborers on British-owned tea plantations. Ganguli’s tramcar to the overhead electric cable. The crisp banknotes in second wife, Kadambini, the first Bengali woman to train in Arati’s first pay packet symbolize her integration into modern Ray—THE BIG CITY—16

Western medicine, was the obstetrician who delivered the baby Jawaharlal Nehru’s prime ministership (1947–64), that a glorious Satyajit in 1921. future awaited the fledgling nation if its citizens worked hard, Ray’s mother, Suprabha, left virtually destitute with her rejected outdated dogmas, and acted with complete moral two-year-old son after her husband Sukumar’s sudden death and integrity. It was only after India’s descent into the difficulties of the ensuing bankruptcy of the Ray family’s printing business, the post-Nehruvian age that Ray’s films darkened in tone and was compelled to earn her living by teaching sewing at an increasingly questioned the individual’s moral significance. institution for widows. She also sculpted and did leatherwork (often selling her creations for good money), taught the young The Big City received much praise in India, despite an early, Satyajit at home (he didn’t go to school until he was nearly nine), misinformed controversy about its alleged maligning of Anglo- and, simultaneously, cooked and kept house with an efficiency Indians. (Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, then the minister that few could match. Being the only son of a widow, Ray often responsible for cinema, had to intervene before the film could be acknowledged, helped him in Aparajito (1956) to portray with sent for international exhibition.) The Kolkata press was sensitivity Apu’s relationship with his mother; although he never unanimous in praising the sheer poetry that Ray had conjured out spoke about it, his depiction of Arati must have been similarly of “three wretched rooms stuffed with decaying furniture.” In assisted by the experience—most unusual for a Bengali of his Britain, Richard Roud thought that the film approached “absolute time and class—of growing up with a working mother. realism,” while in the U.S., Time’s reviewer gushed that Ray had The issue of female autonomy is interwoven in The Big almost managed to “take the lens off his camera and allow life City with Ray’s lifelong concern with the social, psychological, itself to touch the raw film.” and moral dimensions of work. The invigorating effects of paid The Big City was awarded the Silver Bear for best labor on Arati’s soul are celebrated unequivocally, but the unfair direction at the Berlin Film Festival in 1964, but it was at a dismissal of Edith reveals the arbitrary nature of capitalistic festival nearer home that it had its greatest impact. When power. Above all, the film indicts the brutality with which screened during a 1964 international film season in Dhaka (the modern capitalism excludes unproductive individuals like capital of Bengali-speaking East Pakistan, now Bangladesh), Priyagopal, a character who was almost an original creation of enormous crowds, including thousands of women, queued for Ray’s. He is named after the near-silent representative of tickets for the three scheduled shows. The lack of seats tradition in “Abataranika” and remodeled from the schoolmaster precipitated a mini riot, and after more than a hundred people protagonist of “Akinchan,” but all the situations the old man is were beaten up by the police, the festival organizers were forced involved in in The Big City were conceived by Ray himself, and to schedule ten extra shows, running consecutively over twenty- some of them were even taken up by Narendranath Mitra when four hours. he reworked “Abataranika” into the novella Mahanagar (1963). Not everybody, of course, was as overwhelmed by The Ray’s social critique, however, was milder than Mitra’s. Big City; many critics, including Penelope Houston, the editor In “Abataranika,” Arati’s resignation is not supported by her of Sight & Sound, found the conclusion to be clichéd and husband or her family; indeed, her mother-in-law grumbles that sentimental. Whatever people felt about the ending, though, very an employer’s bark has to be tolerated, especially when he is not few seem to have appreciated that its optimism had stemmed not barking at you. There was no place for such harshness in Ray’s from any penchant for melodrama but from Ray’s liberal vision. An individual’s moral courage had to be rewarded by ideology, his conviction that the individual conscience was some triumph, even if it was only the emotional reward of Arati powerful enough to challenge, if not vanquish, the amoral and Subrata rediscovering their love in adversity. Ray would Goliath of capitalism. That faith would be undermined over time, later pay more attention to the cost of moral gestures—notably and The Big City, apart from being an important film in its own in The Adversary (1970), which ends with a comparably quixotic right, was a significant way station on Satyajit Ray’s complex— protest—but in 1963, it was the gesture itself that mattered most and as yet little-analyzed—journey from a relatively sanguine to him. As Suranjan Ganguly and other critics have argued, this liberalism to the edgier, far more conflicted worldview that one attitude may have been influenced by Ray’s—and the Indian detects in his later works. progressive bourgeoisie’s—conviction, during the years of

COMING UP IN IN THE SPRING 2018 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXXVI March 27 Ingmar Bergman, Persona 1966 April 3 Ousman Sembène, Black Girl 1966 April 10 Sidney Lumet, Dog Day Afternoon 1975 April 17 Robert Bresson, L’Argent 1983 April 24 David Lynch, Mulholland Drive 2001 May 1 Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 2017 May 8 Jacques Demy, The Young Girls of Rochefort 1967

CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News