Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. One of the greatest auteurs of film-making, Ray is celebrated for works including ''The Apu Trilogy'' (1955–1959), ''The Music Room'' (1958), ''The Big City'' (1963) and ''Charulata'' (1964).

Ray was born in Calcutta to nonsense rhyme author Sukumar Ray. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into independent film-making after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist film ''Bicycle Thieves'' (1948) during a visit to London.

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.

Ray received many major awards in his career, including thirty six Indian National Film Awards, a Golden Lion, a Golden Bear, two Silver Bears, many additional awards at international film festivals and ceremonies, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1992. In 1978, he was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University. The Government of India honored him with the Bharat Ratna, its highest civilian award, in 1992.

On the occasion of the birth centenary of Ray, the International Film Festival of India in recognition of the auteur’s legacy, rechristened in 2021 its annual Lifetime Achievement award to " Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award".

Background

Lineage

Satyajit Ray's ancestry can be traced back for at least ten generations. His family had acquired the name ' Ray' (originally 'Rai') from the Mughals. Although they were Bengali Kayasthas, the Rays were 'Vaishnavas' (worshippers of Vishnu), as opposed to the majority of Bengali Kayasthas who were ' Shaktos' (worshippers of the Shakti or Shiva).

The earliest-recorded ancestor of Ray family was Ramsunder Deo (Deb), born in the middle of the sixteenth century. He was a native of Chakdah village in Nadia district of present-day West Bengal, India and migrated to Sherpur in East Bengal. He became son-in-law of the ruler of Jashodal and was granted a '' jagir'' (a feudal land grant) at Jashodal (in present day Kishoreganj District of Bangladesh). His descendants migrated to the village Masua in Katiadi Upazila of Kishoreganj district in the first half of eighteenth century.''Sukumar Samagra Rachanabali'' 1, 1960, Asia Publishing Company, p 1 Satyajit Ray's grandfather Upendrakishore Ray was born in Masua village in 1863.

Upendrakishore Ray was a writer, illustrator, philosopher, publisher, amateur astronomer, and a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, a religious and social movement in 19th-century Bengal. He set up a printing press named U. Ray and Sons.

Sukumar Ray, Upendrakishore's son and father of Satyajit, was an illustrator, critic, and a pioneering Bengali writer of nonsense rhyme ('' Abol Tabol'') and children's literature. Social worker and children's book author Shukhalata Rao was his aunt.

Early life and education

Satyajit Ray was born to Sukumar Ray and Suprabha Ray (nee Das Gupta) in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Sukumar Ray died when Satyajit was two years old. Ray grew up in the house in which his grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury's printing press was located. He was attracted by the machines and process of printing from an early age, and took particular interest in the production process of ''Sandesh'', a children's magazine started by Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury. Ray studied at Ballygunge Government High School in Calcutta, and completed his BA in economics at Presidency College, Calcutta (then affiliated with the University of Calcutta). During his school days, he saw several Hollywood productions in cinema. The works of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Ernst Lubitsch and movies such as '' The Thief of Baghdad'' and ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' made lasting impression on his mind. He developed keen interest in Western classical music.

In 1940, his mother insisted him to study at Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, founded by Rabindranath Tagore. Ray was reluctant to go, due to his fondness for Calcutta and the low regard for the intellectual life at Santiniketan. His mother's persuasiveness and his respect for Tagore finally convinced him to get admitted there for higher studies in Fine Art. In Santiniketan, Ray came to appreciate Oriental art. He later admitted that he learned much from the famous painters Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee. He later produced a documentary, '' The Inner Eye,'' about Mukherjee. His visits to Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta stimulated his admiration for Indian art. Three books that he read in the university influenced him to become a serious student of film-making: Paul Rotha's ''The Film Till Now'', and two books on theory by Rudolf Arnheim and Raymond Spottiswoode. Ray dropped out of the art course in 1942 as he could not feel inspired to become a painter.

Visual artist

In 1943, Ray started working at D.J. Keymer, a British advertising agency, as a junior visualiser. Here he was trained the Indian commercial art under artist Annada Munshi, the then Art Director of D.J. Keymer. Although he liked visual design (graphic design) and he was mostly treated well, there was tension between the British and Indian employees of the firm. The British were better paid, and Ray felt that "the clients were generally stupid." In 1943, Ray started a second job for the Signet Press, a new publisher started by D. K. Gupta. Gupta asked Ray to create book cover designs for the company and gave him complete artistic freedom. Ray established himself as a commercial illustrator, becoming a leading Indian typographer and book-jacket designer.

Ray designed covers for many books, including Jibanananda Das's '' Banalata Sen'' and '' Rupasi Bangla'', Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's ''Chander Pahar'', Jim Corbett's ''Maneaters of Kumaon,'' and Jawaharlal Nehru's '' Discovery of India''. He worked on a children's version of ''Pather Panchali,'' a classic Bengali novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, renamed ''Aam Antir Bhepu'' (''The mango-seed whistle''). Ray designed the cover and illustrated the book, and was deeply influenced by the work. He used it as the subject of his first film and featured his illustrations as shots in his ground-breaking film.

Ray befriended the American soldiers stationed in Calcutta during World War II, who kept him informed about the latest American films showing in the city. He came to know a RAF employee, Norman Clare, who shared Ray's passion for films, chess and western classical music. Ray was a regular in the '' addas'' (freestyle casual conversations) at Coffee House where several intellectuals frequented. He formed lasting association with some of the compatriots, such as Bansi Chandragupta (who late became a celebrated art director), Kamal Kumar Majumdar (a polymath and author of stylish prose), Radha Prasad Gupta, Chidananda Das Gupta (film critic). Along with Chidananda Dasgupta and others, Ray founded the Calcutta Film Society in 1947. They screened many foreign films, many of which Ray watched and seriously studied, including several American and Russian films. The use of Indian music and dancing in the 1948 Indian film '' Kalpana'' (), directed by the celebrated dancer Uday Shankar, had impact on Ray.

In 1949, Ray married Bijoya Das, his first cousin and long-time sweetheart. The couple had a son, Sandip Ray, a film director. In the same year, French director Jean Renoir came to Calcutta to shoot his film '' The River''. Ray helped him to find locations in the countryside. Ray told Renoir about his idea of filming ''Pather Panchali'', which had long been on his mind, and Renoir encouraged him in the project.

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). 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. Ray later said that he walked out of the theatre determined to become a filmmaker.

Film career

The Apu years (1950–1959)

After being "deeply moved" by ''Pather Panchali'', the 1928 classic ''Bildungsroman'' of Bengali literature, Ray decided to adapt it for his first film. ''Pather Panchali'' is a semi-autobiographical novel describing the maturation of Apu, a small boy in a Bengal village. ''Pather Panchali'' did not have a script; it was made from Ray's drawings and notes. Before principal photography began, he created a storyboard dealing with details and continuity. Years later, he donated those drawings and notes to Cinémathèque Française.

Ray gathered an inexperienced crew, although both his cameraman Subrata Mitra and art director Bansi Chandragupta would go on to achieve great acclaim. The cast consisted of mostly amateur actors. After unsuccessful attempts to persuade many producers to finance the project, Ray started shooting in late 1952 with his personal savings and hoped to raise more money once he had some footage shot, but did not succeed on his terms. As a result, Ray shot ''Pather Panchali'' over two and a half years, an unusually long period. He refused funding from sources who wanted to change the script or exercise supervision over production. He also ignored advice from the Indian government to incorporate a happy ending, but he did receive funding that allowed him to complete the film.

Monroe Wheeler, head of the department of exhibitions and publications at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), heard about the project when he visited Calcutta in 1954. He considered the incomplete footage to be of high quality and encouraged Ray to finish the film so that it could be shown at a MoMA exhibition the following year. Six months later, American director John Huston, on a visit to India for some early location scouting for ''The Man Who Would Be King'', saw excerpts of the unfinished film and recognised "the work of a great film-maker".

With a loan from the West Bengal government, Ray finally completed the film; it was released in 1955 to critical acclaim. It earned numerous awards and had long theatrical runs in India and abroad. ''The Times of India'' wrote "It is absurd to compare it with any other Indian cinema ..''Pather Panchali'' is pure cinema." In the United Kingdom, Lindsay Anderson wrote a positive review of the film. However, the film also gained negative reactions; François Truffaut was reported to have said, "I don't want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands." Bosley Crowther, then the most influential critic of ''The New York Times'', criticised the film's loose structure and conceded that it "takes patience to be enjoyed". Edward Harrison, an American distributor was worried that Crowther's review would dissuade audiences, but the film enjoyed an eight months theatrical run in the United States.

Ray's international career started in earnest after the success of his next film, the second in ''The Apu Trilogy'', ''Aparajito'' (1956) (''The Unvanquished''). This film depicts the eternal struggle between the ambitions of a young man, Apu, and the mother who loves him. Upon release, ''Aparajito'' won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, bringing Ray considerable acclaim. In a retrospective review, Edward Guthmann of the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' praised Ray for his ability to capture emotions, and blend music with storytelling to create a "flawless" picture. Critics such as Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak rank it higher than Ray's first film.

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. ''Timeout'' magazine gave ''Jalsaghar'' a positive review, describing it as "slow, rapt and hypnotic".

While making ''Aparajito'', Ray had not planned a trilogy, but after he was asked about the idea in Venice, it appealed to him. He finished the last of the trilogy, '' Apur Sansar'' (''The World of Apu'') in 1959. Ray introduced two of his favourite actors, Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore, in this film. It opens with Apu living in a Calcutta house in near-poverty; he becomes involved in an unusual marriage with Aparna. The scenes of their life together form "one of the cinema's classic affirmative depictions of married life." Critics Robin Wood and Aparna Sen thought it was a major achievement to mark the end of the trilogy.

After ''Apur Sansar'' was harshly criticised by a Bengali critic, Ray wrote an article defending it. He rarely responded to critics during his filmmaking career, but also later defended his film ''Charulata'', his personal favourite. Critic Roger Ebert summarised the trilogy as "It is about a time, place and culture far removed from our own, and yet it connects directly and deeply with our human feelings. It is like a prayer, affirming that this is what the cinema can be, no matter how far in our cynicism we may stray."

Despite Ray's success, it had little influence on his personal life in the years to come. He continued to live with his wife and children in a rented house, with his mother, uncle and other members of his extended family.

From ''Devi'' to ''Charulata'' (1959–1964)

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.

Ray followed ''Apur Sansar'' with 1960's ''Devi'' (''The Goddess''), a film in which he examined the superstitions in Hindu society. Sharmila Tagore starred as Doyamoyee, a young wife who is deified by her father-in-law. Ray was worried that the Central Board of Film Certification might block his film, or at least make him re-cut it, but ''Devi'' was spared. Upon international distribution, the critic from ''Chicago Reader'' described the film as "full of sensuality and ironic undertones".

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.

In the same year, together with Subhas Mukhopadhyay and others, Ray was able to revive ''Sandesh'', the children's magazine which his grandfather had founded. Ray had been saving money for some years to make this possible. A duality in the name (''Sandesh'' means both "news" in Bengali and also a sweet popular dessert) set the tone of the magazine (both educational and entertaining). Ray began to make illustrations for it, as well as to write stories and essays for children. Writing eventually became a steady source of income.

In 1962, Ray directed ''Kanchenjungha,'' Based on his first original screenplay, it was also his first colour film. It tells the story of an upper-class family spending an afternoon in Darjeeling, a picturesque hill town in West Bengal. They try to arrange the engagement of their youngest daughter to a highly paid engineer educated in London.

Ray had first conceived shooting the film in a large mansion, but later decided to film it in the famous town. He used many shades of light and mist to reflect the tension in the drama. Ray noted that while his script allowed shooting to be possible under any lighting conditions, a commercial film crew in Darjeeling failed to shoot a single scene, as they only wanted to do so in sunshine. ''The New York Times Bosley Crowther gave the film a mixed review; he praised Ray's "soft and relaxed" filmmaking but thought the characters were clichés.

In 1964, Ray directed ''Charulata'' (''The Lonely Wife''). One of Ray's favourite films, it was regarded by many critics as his most accomplished. 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", while ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' praised Madhabi Mukherjee's casting, the film's visual style, and its camera movements. 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. At the 15th Berlin International Film Festival, ''Charulata'' earned him a Silver Bear for Best Director. 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.

Also in the 1960s, Ray visited Japan and took pleasure in meeting filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, whom he highly regarded.

New directions (1965–1982)

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.

The first major film in this period is 1966's '' Nayak'' (''The Hero''), the story of a screen hero travelling in a train and meeting a young, sympathetic female journalist. Starring Uttam Kumar and Sharmila Tagore, in the twenty-four hours of the journey, the film explores the inner conflict of the apparently highly successful matinée idol. Although the film received a "Critics Prize" at the Berlin International Film Festival, it had a generally muted reception.

In 1967, Ray wrote a script for a film to be called '' The Alien'', based on his short story "Bankubabur Bandhu" ("Banku Babu's Friend"), which he wrote in 1962 for ''Sandesh'' magazine. It was planned to be a U.S. and India co-production with Columbia Pictures, with Marlon Brando and Peter Sellers cast in the leading roles. Ray found that his script had been copyrighted and the fee appropriated by Michael Wilson. Wilson had initially approached Ray through their mutual friend, Arthur C. Clarke, to represent him in Hollywood. Wilson copyrighted the script credited to ''Mike Wilson & Satyajit Ray'', although he contributed only one word. Ray later said that he never received compensation for the script. After Brando dropped out of the project, the producers tried to replace him with James Coburn, but Ray became disillusioned and returned to Calcutta. Columbia attempted to revive the project, without success, in the 1970s and 1980s.

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''). 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. He also composed the songs and music for the film.

Next, Ray directed the film adaptation of a novel by the poet and writer, Sunil Gangopadhyay. Featuring a musical motif structure acclaimed as more complex than ''Charulata'', '' Aranyer Din Ratri'' (1970) (''Days and Nights in the Forest'') follows four urban young men going to the forests for a vacation. They try to leave their daily lives behind, but one of them encounters women, and it becomes a deep study of the Indian middle class. First shown at the New York Film Festival in 1970, critic Pauline Kael wrote "Satyajit Ray’s films can give rise to a more complex feeling of happiness in me than the work of any other director ..No artist has done more than Ray to make us reevaluate the commonplace". Writing for the BBC
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