The World of Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray as a film maker

Born on May 02, 1921 in Calcutta, Satyajit Ray doesn’t need an introduction. Very fond of watching films since his childhood Ray wanted to pursue a 
a career in graphic designing. Films were his first love and music second. He used to watch all the American films being shown in Calcutta and note down all the credits in a small pocket diary with a small note of rating for each of them. An opportunity to watch Bicycle Thieves on a visit to London for work laid the way for him to make his first film Pather Panchali in the way the Bicycle Thieves was made. He decided to chose unknown actors and shooting on real locations.

He was not just watching Indian and foreign films with a keen interest, he was also writing about them with a critical point of view. Before entering into film making he thought of being a film journalist after he got a chance to meet Renoir. He observed and explained the problems with Indian films. He wrote about it in various film magazines and when he started to make films these problems never appeared in his work. According to him adopting American formula of film making was one of the problems with Indian films. Being an admirer of American films himself, and having accepted that he learnt film making watching American films, his own films were purely Indian. If we talk about his establishing film Pather Panchali for example, he never distorted the original novel of Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay in order to apply a foreign or precisely American formula to it. Yes, he changed the climax and the tone of the novel while writing the screenplay for the film which is an accepted prerogative of a director.  

As a director Ray was very clear about what he was going to make in the form of a film. After watching any of his films, it can be easily felt that the director must have seen the film in his mind before painting it on celluloid. Be it his own story and screenplay or an adaptation of somebody else’s writing, his imprints as a director can easily be seen on his work. In his films, story develops on the screen with appropriate characters, sets, music and dialogs. One cannot think of taking a frame out of a film or adding another. The striking display of emotions by the activities and expressions of the actors (which would neither be too subtle nor too loud) would make the viewer a part of the world thriving on the screen.

The best thing about Ray as a director was his treatment of the characters in his films. They are as natural and as lively as a real human being can be. They don’t seem artificial at all. It seems he has deeply felt his characters before displaying them on screen. It is like he has lived them within himself first before the actors playing the characters. Be it Apu of Apu trilogy, be it Charu of Charulata or Bimla of Ghare Baire Ray has felt his characters so deeply so that they speak not only through their dialogs but through every movement they make. For example the binocular speaks of the loneliness of Charulata, and the white sari and chopped hair speak of the death of Bimla’s husband.

Ray has made films of all the genres. He has made documentaries, short films, and feature films. In feature films he has made musical dramas, science fiction, detective films, children’s films and so on and all of them with same sincere expertise. Not only he wrote and made films but he also produced music for most of his films. It’s not that all his films received the same response from critics and audience but all his films are individual lessons on the art of film making.

The life and career of Satyajit Ray is an inspiration for all the film makers over the globe. Coming from a literary family, he took up film making because he enjoyed watching films. His love for this art form made him a great film-maker of all times because it is love and devotion what an art needs, for art itself means creation of beautiful things. And you can only create beautiful things when you create them out of love for their creation. So, it can be said, maker of 37 beautiful films, Satyajit Ray was a film-maker whose work itself is a schoo. If studied there, one can understand that cinema is a wonderful art form and a film can be as beautiful as a sculpture or a piece of poetry

A seminar paper (Minor Elective – Films of Satyajit Ray)

Submitted to: Prof. Sisir Basu

Submitted by: Pradeepika Saraswat