Sathyajith Ray - The Master Craftsman

A famous quote by the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurazoa goes like this.‘‘

If you have a chance to born as man in the world, do you don’t know about
Sathyajith Ray?...more better than this you say that you don’t know about SUN
and MOON

."

A perfect simile which doesn't need much explainations. As far as Sathyajith Ray is concerned; cinema was not an accidental thing happened in his life; rather it was a fulfillment of his ambitions.

A brief biography (Ref: Seton, Marie. Portrait of a director: Satyajit Ray)

Being an excellent graphic artist trained at Rabindranath Tagore's university Shantiniketan, as well as a good writer, ray already possessed the qualities to be a film maker ,but still the important thing is that his passion towards cinema.At his younger days, just like every young college boy, he also had some personal interests one among them being the love for western and classical music and the other one was watching films. Watching more films made him to think about the technicians rather than the actors,. Thus directors like John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Capra etc..became his favorite film makers. After graduation, when he joined Shanthinikethan to study art, The training obtained from Shanthinikethan should have influenced him to build up his filmmaking style later. Also he had read lot of books on cinema at University library. Raymond Spotiswoode's “Grammar of the Film” was one of the most significant one. But still, there was no thought in his mind to become a film maker. Everything happened gradually; he started writing articles on cinema in magazines and also started writing screenplays of his own. In 1947, Ray co-founded Calcutta's first film society along with his friends. Battleship Potemkin was the first film they screened. But the turning point came in 1950 when he traveled to London .Out of the 6 months he spend there ,he watched almost 100 films .Vittorio Dessicca’s “Bicycle Thieves” was one among them . This film changed his perspectives towards filmmaking a lot. The neo-realist style of the film had influenced him in a great extend.

From a Commercial Artist to a Filmmaker

Ray’s first work was Pather Panchali released in 1955. On those days, the Indian film industry was at its childhood stage and traditional movies were like photo dramas. Most of the films were shot just like they picturised a drama with a movie camera. Ray brought a revolution by his neo realistic movie in the contemporary cinema, with brilliantly crafting each frames of his maiden movie venture. He used amateur artists to portray his characters. Moreover he almost shot the film outdoor which was alien to traditional films. A specialty of Ray was that he was flexible to be inspired from contemporary filmmakers and adapt new techniques from them. The Apu trilogy series was rich in its craft, complete utilization of visual elements .He didn’t use even unwanted lightning pattern in any of these movies. I think the 'frame-within-frame' technique (using windows,doors,or cabin windows) was favouite to ray as all teh movies in the Apu series possess many such frames .We should remember, there were not much editing transition styles available for him on those days to use; still he utilized ‘dissolve’ and ‘fade-in’ techniques very effectively. It is Ray who introduced the stylish way of film making (I can’t find anyone before him).

Certain scenes which seemed attractive to me in ‘Pather Panchali’ are:

1. In the opening scene, Durga picking up kittens from their container, shot as if the camera is inside the container. (This technique is still used widely, but remember this is 1955).

2. The stylish introduction of little Apu .

3. Discovery of train by Durga and Apu . ( This one is the most famous scene )

4. The rain scene.

Ray’s filmmaking style reveales that cinema is art of visuals and a director can pass whatever message he needs to tell spectators, a story, an incident, a biography, anything but he should depend on visuals to achieve this purpose. Even though Ray was mostly exposed to foreign/Hollywood movies while he was in a stage of learning , his own films dealt with the typical Indian culture and he portrayed stories of middle class and low class.

Some critics claim that after splitting with his camera man “Subrata Mitra” the quality of cinematography got lowered in his movies , but I believe it might be the because of the different working styles of the cinematographers . 1968 movie “Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne” was not like Ray’s usual genres. It is coming under the genre adventure/fantacy and camera work was not bad. In 1977 movie the historical drama “Sathranj ke Khiladi” ,the cinematography seems excellent . The conversation scene, between Weston and Outram , has a flavor of hollywood movies, in its angles, placing of props ,and the rhythm. However last films Ganashathru and Agantuk were not that much impressive in visuals, may be because of the peculiarity of their theme.

Some of Ray’s famous compositions /scenes from his very first film have been taken by many filmmakers later. This includes the train scene in Pather Panchali. Another example, the 1995 film , “My family” by Gregory Nava, copied the ending scene from ray’s ‘Apur Sansar’. Ray films are study materials in most of the film schools around the world. In 1992 he became the second Indian to be honored by Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science for Lifetime Achievement.