Saturday, July 8, 2017
189 - Song of the Little Road (Pather Panchali), 1955, India. Dir. Satyajit Ray.
Apu is a boy living in Bengal.
He has an older sister Durga.
His parents are Harihar and Sarbajaya.
Sarbajaya's older cousin Indir lives with them. She seems like a grandmother to the children. But she acts like a sibling.
Durga takes fruit. The neighbor complains to her mother Sarbajaya. Durga defends herself. She tells her mother she taught her.
Durga and Apu play. Durga teases Apu. She chases him. They look for candy. They watch a local theatrical performance. They hide. They chase the train.
Harihar looks for work.
Sarbajaya struggles.
Indir dies.
The rains pour.
Harihar returns. With some money. And some things. But . . .
This was the first feature film by Satyajit Ray, who went on to become one of India's masters. This film received international acclaim, including an award for Best Human Document at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.
The film features shots of the landscape, the village, the weather. And it shows a way of life through compassionate eyes.
It was the first of three films looking at the life of Apu, and the three of them together are known as The Apu Trilogy. Each film starred a different actor as Apu.
This film stars newcomer Subir Banerjee as Apu, whom Ray's wife discovered playing on the roof of a neighboring apartment building.
His eyes resonate on film. The first shot of Durga's waking up him by manually opening his eyelids is one of the film's most memorable scenes.
After this one film, however, Banerjee never acted again.
Satyajit Ray had worked with Jean Renoir when Renoir was in India making The River (1951), and Ray drew from that experience and mentorship.
He had also seen De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) when visiting Europe. Pather Panchali shows the influence of Italian Neorealism on his work.
We will be watching several of Ray's films over the next few days.
Let us see what we can learn and discover from him.
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