Satyajit Ray (Bangla:সত্যজিত্‍ রায়) (May 2 1921 - April 23 1992) was an Academy Award winning Indian film director whose films are perhaps the greatest testament to Bengali and Indian cinema. He is mostly known for his Apu trilogy - the films Pather Panchali (Song of the Road), Aparajito (The Unconquered), and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu). - but has a large collection of works that are widely acclaimed.

He has been called one of the four greatest directors of cinema in the world, and Kurosawa famously said of Ray:

"Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon."

Life

Satyajit Ray was born into a relatively wealthy and highly influential Brahmo family in Kolkata. His father Sukumar Ray was one of the leading Bengali writers, in the vein of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, and his grandfather Upendrakishore Ray (Ray Chowdhuri) was a renaissance man with many interests ranging from writing to typography. Likewise, Ray was well-educated, attending the Presidency College, Kolkata, where he studied Economics, and the Vishwabharati (Santiniketan) established by Rabindranath Tagore. At Santiniketan, he studied visual arts under the tutelage of the renowned blind artist, Benode Behari Mukherjee, on whose life and work he later went on to make a documentary, named "The Inner Eye". Thereafter, he spent many years as a layout artist in a publishing house (Signet Press) and worked with a reputed advertising agency (D.J.Keemer). Inspired by the novel Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, he decided to adapt it into a film and shoot it on location using friends as actors, putting up the initial funding himself.

He was married to Bijoya, a distant cousin, with whom he had a son, Sandip, who is a film director of some repute in his own right.

Ray died on 23 April 1992, at the age of 71, at Calcutta.

Creative career

In 1949, before he decided to make films, Ray met the great French director Jean Renoir who visited Calcutta to scout locations for his film The River (1950). Renoir encouraged Ray to make films and this was part of the motivation that led to the making of Pather Panchali.

Partway through filming he ran out of funds; the Government of West Bengal loaned him the rest, allowing him to finish the film. The money was loaned on record for 'roads improvement' (Pather Panchali translates as

Most of Ray's work especially his early work including the Apu Trilogy or the three films entitled Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1957) and The World of Apu / Apur Sansar (1959) seems to have been influenced by the Italian Neorealist movement in Italian post-war cinema. In fact, the one film which moved Ray the most before he started scripting Pather Panchali was Italian Neorealist film-maker Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief, which he reportedly saw 55 times. Two of the actors from the Apu Trilogy, Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore (the great-grandaughter of Rabindranath Tagore) would appear in a number of his other films.

Ray's work tends to be both realistic and subdued; his early work is compassionate and touching; his later work, while more political, is also at times cynical, but still infused with his typical humour. Ray's first film outside of the Apu trilogy was the comic Parash Pathar/The Philosopher's Stone, in 1958. It was soon followed by Jalsaghar/The Music Room, which generated critical praise in the U.S. and Europe.

As the Apu trilogy was completed, it was followed by a creative period that won Ray continued acclaim at home and internationally - several of his most popular films (Charulata, Mahanagar/The Big City, Devi, and Teen Kanya/Three Daughters) were made at this time. In 1962, Ray directed Kanchenjungha, which was his first original screenplay and colour film. Kanchenjungha is notable as one of the few films to be shot in real time. Beginning with Teen Kanya, Ray also took over responsibility for musical composition within his films.

Later projects

Other notable works in Ray's career include Nayak (1965), Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures Of Goopy And Bagha), a children's film from 1969 featuring Ray's own songs based on a novella by his grandfather Upendrakishore Ray, and 1970's Aranyer Dinratri/Days And Nights In The Forest. During the 1970s Ray completed the Calcutta trilogy: Seemabaddha/Company Limited, Pratidwandi/The Adversary and Jana Aranya/The Middleman, three films which were conceived separately, but whose thematic connections form a loose trilogy. Each generated further acclaim, with Jana Aranya winning additional awards.

In 1977, Ray completed Shatranj Ke Khiladi/The Chess Players, an Urdu/Hindi movie about chess players of Lucknow. This film starred Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Amjad Khan, Shabana Azmi, Victor Bannerjee and Richard Attenborough. Apart from a later short film in Hindi, Sadgati, starring Om Puri and the late Smita Patil, this was his only feature film in a language other than Bengali.

Literary adaptations

Though some of the Bengali stories Ray filmed are also written by him, he adapted a number of books by famous authors too: Apu trilogy and Ashani Sanket (Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay), Kapurush (Premendra Mitra), Mahanagar (Narendranath Mitra), Mahapurush and Parash Pathar (Parashuram), Chiriyakhana (Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay), Tagore's Charulata, Teen Kanya, Ghare Baire, Shankar's Jana Aranya and Seemabaddha, and Sunil Gangopadhyay's Aranyer Dinratri and Pratidwandi. He had also adapted Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People in his film Ganashatru.

Unfilmed

In 1967, Ray wrote a script for a movie to be entitled "The Alien," with Columbia Pictures as producer for this planned US/India co-production, and Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando as the leading actors. However Ray was surprised to find that the script he had co-written had already been copyrighted and the fee appropriated. Marlon Brando dropped out of the project and though an attempt was made to bring James Coburn in his place, Ray became disillusioned and returned to Calcutta. Columbia expressed interest in reviving the project several times in the 70s and 80s but nothing came of it. When E.T. was released in 1982, many saw striking similarities in the movie to Ray's earlier script - Ray discussed the collapse of the project in a 1980 Sight & Sound feature, with further details revealed by Ray's biographer Andrew Robinson (in The Inner Eye, 1989). Ray believed that Spielberg's movie "would not have been possible without my script of The Alien being available throughout America in mimeographed copies." Spielberg agreed this by saying "Yes I have copied ideas from that material". Satyajit Ray was known as Manikda to near and dear ones as well as the people of the film-world in India.

• Sikkim (film) - the documentary was commissioned by the King of Sikkim when he saw the sovereignty of Sikkim under threat from China and India. Satyajit Ray's documentary captures exactly that - the sovereignty of Sikkim. After the Indian annexation of Sikkim in 1975, the documentary was banned by the Indian government, and all existing copies of the documentary destroyed. The only piece of the film left is a scene-by-scene written reconstruction of the film by the remaining film team members. However, rumors flame of a copy of the film being present with the royal family in exile, and another copy in the film library of an American university. As a postscript, India and China agreed to mutually recognize Sikkim and Tibet as legal parts of the other nation, a sad story for the South Asian diversity which this film projected.

• Ray's literary works are not as famous as his films worldwide. However, Ray was a very popular writer in Bengali language.

• Ray spent many years as a layout artist in a publishing house (Signet Press) and worked with a reputed advertising agency (D.J.Keemer).He had drawn the covers of many famous books,including Chander pahar by Bibhutibhushan Banerjee.

• Ray drew the covers and illustrations of most of his fictions and short stories.

• Satyajit Ray had plans to make a film about the Mahabharata.

• His son Sandip Ray, has made one full length feature film, Bombaiyer Bombete, and is making another one, Tintorettor Jishu - both are adventures of Feluda.

Filmography - as director

• Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) (1955)
• Aparajito (The Unvanquished) (1957)
• Parash Pathar (The Philosopher's Stone) (1958)
• Jalsaghar (The Music Room) (1958)
• The World of Apu / Apur Sansar (1959)
• Devi / The Goddess (1960)
• Teen Kanya (Three Daughters / Two Daughters)(1961)
• Rabindranath Tagore (1961)
• Kanchenjungha (1962)
• Abhijan (The Expedition) (1962)
• Mahanagar (The Big City) (1963)
• Charulata (The Lonely Wife) (1964)
• Two (1965)
• Kapurush (The Coward) (1965)
• Mahapurush (The Holy Man)(1966)
• Nayak (The Hero)(1966)
• Chiriyakhana (The Zoo)(1967)
• Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha) (1969)
• Aranyer Din Ratri / Days and Nights in the Forest (1970)
• Pratidwandi (The Adversary) (1971)
• Seemabaddha (Company Limited)(1971)
• Sikkim (1971)
• The Inner Eye (1972)
• Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder) (1973)
• Sonar Kella (The Fortress)(1974)
• Jana Aranya (The Middleman)(1976)
• Bala (1976)
• Shatranj Ke Khiladi ( The Chess Players) (1977)
• Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God) (1978)
• Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds)(1980)
• Pikoor Diary (Pikoo's Day) (1981)
• Sadgati (The Deliverance)(1981)
• Ghare Baire/ The Home and the World (1984)
• Sukumar Ray (1987)
• Ganashatru (Enemy of the People) (1989)
• Shakha Proshakha (Branches of the Tree)(1990)
• Agantuk (The Stranger)(1991)

Filmography - as screenplay writer and composer

Filmography - as composer

Filmography - as screenplay writer

Personal awards

This lists the Personal Awards Ray achieved apart from several distinctions his films earned worldwide.

1958

• Padma Shri, India

1965

• Padma Bhushan, India

1967

• Ramon Magsaysay Award, Manila

1971

• Star of Yugoslavia

1973

• Doctor of Letters, Delhi University

1974

• D. Litt., Royal College of Arts, London

1976

• Padma Vibhushan, India

1978

• D. Litt., Oxford University
• Special Award, Berlin Film Festival
• Deshikottam, Visva-Bharati University, India

1979

• Special Award, Moscow Film Festival

1980

• D. Litt., Burdwan University, India
• D. Litt., Jadavpur University, India

1981

• Doctorate, Benaras Hindu University, India
• D. Litt. , North Bengal University, India

1982

• Hommage à Satyajit Ray, Canes Film Festival
• Special Golden Lion of St. Mark, Venice Film Festival
• Vidyasagar Award, Govt. of West Bengal

1983

• Fellowship, The British Film Institute

1985

• D. Litt., Calcutta University, India
• Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India
• Soviet Land Nehru Award

1986

• Fellowship, Sangeet Natak Academy, India

1987

• Légion d'Honneur, France
• D. Litt., Rabindra Bharati University, India

1992

• Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, USA
• Bharat Ratna, India

References

• Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye, Robinson, A. Andre Deutsch (1989). ISBN 0233984739.
• Robinson, A. I.B. Tauris (2003). ISBN 1860649653.
• Robinson, A. I.B. Tauris (2005). ISBN 1845110749.

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