Our Films Their Films Satyajit Ray Pdf 27
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Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries, and shorts. Ray's first film, Pather Panchali (1955) won eleven international prizes, including the inaugural Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. This film, along with Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959), form The Apu Trilogy. Ray did the scripting, casting, scoring, and editing, and designed his own credit titles and publicity material. He also authored several short stories and novels, primarily for young children and teenagers. Popular characters created by Ray include Feluda the sleuth, Professor Shonku the scientist, Tarini Khuro the storyteller, and Lalmohan Ganguly the novelist.
In 1950, D.J. Keymer sent Ray to London to work at the headquarters. During his six months in London, Ray watched 99 films, including Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth (1930) and Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (1939).[31] However, the film that had the most profound effect on him was the neorealist film Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) (1948) by Vittorio De Sica.[32] Ray later said that he walked out of the theatre determined to become a filmmaker.[32]
Ray directed and released two other films in 1958: the comic Parash Pathar (The Philosopher's Stone), and Jalsaghar (The Music Room), a film about the decadence of the Zamindars, considered one of his most important works.[50] Timeout magazine gave Jalsaghar a positive review, describing it as "slow, rapt and hypnotic".[51]
During this period, Ray made films about the British Raj period, a documentary on Tagore, a comic film (Mahapurush) and his first film from an original screenplay ('Kanchenjungha'). He also made a series of films that, taken together, are considered by critics among the most deeply felt portrayals of Indian women on screen.[57]
In 1961, on the insistence of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ray was commissioned to make Rabindranath Tagore, based on the poet of the same name, on the occasion of his birth centennial, a tribute to the person who likely most influenced Ray. Due to limited footage of Tagore, Ray was challenged by the necessity of making the film mainly with static material. He said that it took as much work as three feature films.[60]
In 1964, Ray directed Charulata (The Lonely Wife). One of Ray's favourite films, it was regarded by many critics as his most accomplished.[64] Based on Tagore's short story, Nastanirh (Broken Nest), the film tells of a lonely wife, Charu, in 19th-century Bengal, and her growing feelings for her brother-in-law Amal. In retrospective reviews, The Guardian called it "extraordinarily vivid and fresh",[65] while The Sydney Morning Herald praised Madhabi Mukherjee's casting, the film's visual style, and its camera movements.[66] Ray said the film contained the fewest flaws among his work and it was his only work which, given a chance, he would make exactly the same way.[67] At the 15th Berlin International Film Festival, Charulata earned him a Silver Bear for Best Director.[68] Other films in this period include Mahanagar (The Big City), Teen Kanya (Three Daughters), Abhijan (The Expedition), Kapurush (The Coward) and Mahapurush (Holy Man). The first of these, Mahanagar drew praise from British critics; Philip French opined that it was one of Ray's best.[69][70]
In the post-Charulata period, Ray took on various projects, from fantasy, science fiction, and detective stories to historical dramas. Ray also experimented during this period, exploring contemporary issues of Indian life in response to the perceived lack of these issues in his films.
In 1969, Ray directed one of his most commercially successful films; a musical fantasy based on a children's story written by his grandfather, Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha).[74] It is about the journey of Goopy the singer, and Bagha the drummer, endowed with three gifts by the King of Ghosts, to stop an impending war between two neighbouring kingdoms. One of his most expensive projects, the film was also difficult to finance. Ray abandoned his desire to shoot it in colour, as he turned down an offer that would have forced him to cast a certain Hindi film actor as the lead.[75] He also composed the songs and music for the film.[76]
After Aranyer Din Ratri, Ray addressed contemporary Bengali life. He completed what became known as the Calcutta trilogy: Pratidwandi (1970), Seemabaddha (1971), and Jana Aranya (1975), three films that were conceived separately but had similar themes.[81] The trilogy focuses on repression, with male protagonists encountering the forbidden.[82] Pratidwandi (The Adversary) is about an idealist young graduate; while disillusioned by the end of film, he is still uncorrupted. Seemabaddha (Company Limited) portrayed a successful man giving up his morality for further gains. Jana Aranya (The Middleman) depicted a young man giving in to the culture of corruption to earn a living. In the first film, Pratidwandi, Ray introduces new narrative techniques, such as scenes in negative, dream sequences, and abrupt flashbacks.[81]
Also in the 1970s, Ray adapted two of his popular stories as detective films. Although mainly aimed at children and young adults, both Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress) and Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God) became cult favorites.[83] In a 2019 review of Sonar Kella, critic Rouven Linnarz was impressed with its use of Indian classical instruments to generate "mysterious progression".[84]
In 1983, while working on Ghare Baire (Home and the World), Ray suffered a heart attack; it would severely limit his productivity in the remaining nine years of his life. Ghare Baire, an adaptation of the novel of the same name, was completed in 1984 with the help of Ray's son, who served as a camera operator from then onward. It is about the dangers of fervent nationalism; he wrote the first draft of a script for it in the 1940s.[92] Despite rough patches due to Ray's illness, the film did receive some acclaim; critic Vincent Canby gave the film a maximum rating of five stars and praised the performances of the three lead actors.[93] It also featured the first kiss scene portrayed in Ray's films.
In certain circles of Calcutta, Ray continued to be known as an eminent graphic designer, well into his film career. Ray illustrated all his books and designed covers for them, as well as creating all publicity material for his films, for example, Ray's artistic playing with the Bengali graphemes was also revealed in the cine posters and cine promo-brochures' covers. He also designed covers of several books by other authors.[108] His calligraphic technique reflects the deep impact of (a) the artistic pattern of European musical staff notation in the graphemic syntagms and (b) alpana ("ritual painting" mainly practised by Bengali women at the time of religious festivals (the term denotes 'to coat with'). Generally categorised as "Folk"-Art cf. in Ray's graphemes representations.[citation needed]
Ray had been subconsciously paying a tribute to Jean Renoir throughout his career, who influenced him the most. He also acknowledged Vittorio De Sica, whom he thought represented Italian Neorealism best, and taught him the cramming of cinematic details into a single shot, and using amateur actors and actresses.[112] Ray has admitted to have learnt the craft of cinema from Old Hollywood directors such as John Ford, Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch. He had deep respect and admiration for his contemporaries Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, whom he considered giants.[112] Among others, he learnt the use of freeze frame shots from François Truffaut, and jump cuts, fades and dissolves from Jean-Luc Godard. Although he admired Godard's "revolutionary" early phase, he thought his later phase was "alien".[78] Ray adored his peer Michelangelo Antonioni, but hated Blowup, which he considered having "very little inner movement". He was also impressed with Stanley Kubrick's work.[113] Although Ray stated to have had very little influence from Sergei Eisenstein, films such as Pather Panchali, Aparajito, Charulata and Sadgati contains scenes which show striking uses of montage. He also had sketches of Eisenstein.[111]
Ray considered script-writing to be an integral part of direction. Initially he refused to make a film in any language other than Bengali. In his two non-Bengali feature films, he wrote the script in English; translators adapted it into Hindustani under Ray's supervision.
Ray's eye for detail was matched by that of his art director Bansi Chandragupta. His influence on the early films was so important that Ray would always write scripts in English before creating a Bengali version, so that the non-Bengali Chandragupta would be able to read it. Subrata Mitra's cinematography garnered praise in Ray's films, although some critics thought that Mitra's eventual departure from Ray lowered its quality. Mitra stopped working for him after Nayak. Mitra developed "bounce lighting", a technique to reflect light from cloth to create a diffused, realistic light even on a set.[114][115]
Ray's regular film editor was Dulal Datta, but the director usually dictated the editing while Datta did the actual work. Due to finances and Ray's meticulous planning, his films (apart from Pather Panchali) were mostly cut in-camera.
At the beginning of his career, Ray worked with Indian classical musicians, including Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan, and Ali Akbar Khan. He found that their first loyalty was to musical traditions, and not to his film. He obtained a greater understanding of Western classical forms, which he wanted to use for his films set in an urban milieu.[116] Starting with Teen Kanya, Ray began to compose his own scores.[117] Beethoven was Ray's favourite composer; Ray also went on to become a distinguished connoisseur of Western classical music in India.[118] The narrative structure of Ray's films are represented by musical forms such as sonata, fugue and rondo. Kanchenjunga, Nayak and Aranyer Din Ratri are examples of this structure.[118] 2b1af7f3a8