Ray of greatness

By Arup K De Kolkata  (Hard News)

The story of the making of Pather Panchali, the all-time masterpiece that established Satyajit Ray's reputation for being "one of the greatest and most sublime filmmakers to emerge in the 1950s" at one stroke, is well-documented. Ray was toying with the idea of quitting his lucrative advertising job for a career in the cinema when he met the French-born American director, Jean Renoir, who came to Kolkata in 1949 to look for locations to shoot The River. Ray met Renoir at the Great Eastern Hotel, spoke to him at length and also accompanied him to various locations. Meeting Renoir was an immediate experience that encouraged Ray to take the plunge in filmmaking.

It was not until his 1967 tour of the US that Ray got a chance to watch The River, shot entirely in Bengal with a partly Indian cast. The screening over, both Renoir and Ray were invited on to the stage. "Ray owes a lot to Renoir," said the introducer. But, Renoir hardly thought as much. "I don't think Ray owes anything to me. I think he had it in his blood. Though he is very young still, he is the father of Indian cinema," he said.

Ray met John Huston, yet another Hollywood great, in Kolkata in the early 1950s. Ray showed some silent rough cut of Pather Panchali to Huston who called it "a fine, sincere piece of filmmaking". Years later, in 1987, while looking back on his Kolkata trip, Huston said that he had "recognised the footage as the work of a great filmmaker. I liked Ray enormously on first encounter. Everything he did and said supported my feelings on viewing the film."

The idea of filming Pather Panchali, in particular, began to take shape while Ray did the illustrations for Aam Antir Bhepu, a children's edition of Bibhuti Bhusan Bandyopadhyay's epic novel chronicling the growing up of a wonderstruck child in the back of beyond in the Bengal countryside. In 1950, Ray went to London with wife Bijoya for a five-month stay. On his way back, he did the visual scenario of Pather Panchali on ship.

"I produced a book of wash drawings describing the scenario of the film," said Ray in an interview with the London-based Bengali author, Sasthi Brata. "But none of the producers from top down wanted to know. They all said, you cannot work on location, you cannot shoot in the rain, you cannot do this, you cannot do that." Finally, he started to shoot on his own.

The shooting for Pather Panchali, which continued fitfully over a period of nearly two years, started in October 1953, on the day of Jagaddhatri Puja (worship of the goddess Jagaddhatri), in a field filled with autumnal Kaash flowers, near Shaktigarh in West Bengal's Burdwan district. "I remember the first day's shooting of Pather Panchali very well. ...It was an episode in the screenplay where the two children of the story, brother (Apu) and sister (Durga), stray from their village and chance upon a field of Kaash flowers," Ray wrote in 1957.

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