Satyajit Ray (May 2, 1921 - April 23, 1992)
Film Director, Producer, Screen play writer, Music Composer, Author, Graphic Designer
Satyajit Ray was born on May 2, 1921 in Calcutta to Sukumar and
Suprabha Ray. He graduated from from the Ballygunge Government
School and studied Economics at Presidency College.
He then attended Kala Bhavan, the Art Institute at Rabindranath Tagore's
University, Santiniketan during 1940-1942. Without completing the five-
year course, he returned to Calcutta in 1943, to join the British-owned
advertising agency, D.J.Keymer as a visualizer. Within a few years, he
rose to be its art director.
Ray was born to a distinguished family of artists, litterateurs, musicians,
scientists and physicians. His grandfather Upendra Kishore was an
innovator, a writer of children's story books (popular to this day), an
illustrator and a musician. His father, Sukumar, trained as a printing
technologist in England, was also Bengal's most beloved nonsense-rhyme
(ABOLTABOL), writer, illustrator and cartoonist. He died young when
Satyajit was two and a half years old.
As a youngster, Ray developed two very significant interests. The first was
music, especially Western Classical music. He listened, hummed and
whistled. He then learned to read music, began to collect albums, and
started to attend concerts whenever he could. These interests and skills
were to prove most useful when he chose to score music for his own films.
His second interest was cinema, or "bioscope," as it was called in the early
years of motion pictures. He saw silent films as well as "talkies" and started
to compile scrapbooks with clippings culled from newspapers and
magazines on Hollywood stars.
Pather Panchali
In 1950, Satyajit Ray was asked by a major Calcutta publisher to illustrate a
children's edition of aam antir bhepu, Bibhuti Bhushan Banerjee's semi-
autobiographical novel. On his way back from London, with little to do on a two-
week ship journey, Ray ended up sketching the entire book. These formed the
kernel and the essential visual elements in the making of Pather Panchali, Ray's
very first film and the film that brought him instant international recognition and
fame. At the Cannes Film Festival, in 1956, Ray received in absentia, the Best
Human Document Award for this hauntingly beautiful film, its carefully executed
details of joys and sorrows in the life of a little boy named Apu in a tiny village in
Bengal in the 1920s. Instant fame, however, did not bring in its wake instant
fortune.
Ray resigned from his job as a visualizer in the British advertisement firm soon
after Pather Panchali was released. The die was cast: Ray was now a full-time
professional filmmaker. After the completion of the Apu Trilogy (1959), regarded
as a classic of World Cinema, Ray continued to work with amazingly diverse and
varied material. With each film made in the 1960s, his reputation soared to new
heights. Many distinguished awards and prizes came his way.
Summary
The time is early twentieth century, a remote village in W. Bengal. The film deals
with a Brahmin family, a priest - Harihar, his wife Sarbajaya, daughter Durga, and
his aged cousin Indir Thakrun - struggling to make both ends meet.
Harihar is frequently away from home on work. The wife is raising her
mischievous daughter Durga and caring for elderly cousin Indir, whose
independent spirit sometimes irritates her... Apu is born. With the little boy's
arrival, happiness, play and exploration uplift the children's daily life.
Durga and Apu share an intimate bond. They follow a candy seller whose wares
they can not afford, enjoy the theatre, discover a train and witness a marriage
ceremony. They even face death of their aunt - Indir Thakrun. Durga is accused
of a theft. She fall ill after a joyous dance in rains of the monsoon. On a stormy
day, when Harihar is away on work.
On Harihar's return, the family leaves their village in search of a new life in
Benaras. The film closes with an image of Harihar, wife and son - Apu, slowly
moving way in an ox cart.
