The World of Satyajit Ray

The world of

One of the world's great film directors, Satyajit Ray is among those who have made the cinema one of the "fine arts." Here Ray discusses moviemaking with writer Josephus Daniels.

Ray and his assistants peer at you want a film clip, above. to put your personal stamp on a film you have to control as much of its making as you can--from the writing of the screenplay to the final cutting." The maestro also composes music for his films. left. "I find composing most exciting, but also very arduous. have to shut myself lip with my piano and do it." Poor equipment or lack of funds do not worry the versatile Ray. At right he works with a make-shift trolley, improvised out o/a table, turned upside down. "I think they force you to be inventive and to stick to simplicity. It's what you photograph that really matters."

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SATYAJITRAy was born in Calcutta on May 2, 1921, to a family of talented intellectuals. He is six feet, four inches tall, and his usually placid exterior becomes animated when he talks about realism in the cinema. The first film Satyajit Ray ever made was Pather Panchali ("Song of the Road"), the first part of a trilogy based on a popular Bengali novel first published in 1934. Ray wrote the scenario himself and, unable to interest any investors, he scraped together some Rs. 23,000 and began shooting the film on holidays and week-ends. It took three years to complete even though there were only 70 shooting days. In 1955 Pather Panchali was released in India and was an immediate success among intellectuals.

In the late 1950's it was exported to the world; its hero, a young boy named Apu, charmed movie patrons everywhere.

In 1956 it went to France for the Cannes Film Festival where it won the festival's award for "best human document." In 1957 the second Apu movie, Aparajita ("Undefeated"), the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival.

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The Apu trilogy, later completed with Apur Sansar ("The World of Apu"), tells a story of childhood, youth and manhood in Bengal, and has won 16 international awards. Said the London Times: "In the world of films, superlatives are thrown around far too freely, but one may safely say that Mr. Ray's trilogy, chronicling the life of Apu, is beyond question unequalled in its scale, scope and consistent success." In 1967 Ray was honoured with Asia's version of the Nobel Prize: He received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for the Communication Arts. In 1969 the film-maker and critic Chidananda Das Gupta called Ray "an exception, a phenomenon, an object of pride for India like the Konarak Temple or Banaras textiles."

Question: What inspired you to write andfilm Pather Panchali?

Satyajit Ray: Well, I was in London working as an art director in an advertising agency. During my six months in England I went to the cinema almost every day and spoke with many British film theorists and critics. It was during this time that I saw Vittorio DeSica's The Bicycle Thief. I was already contemplating Pather Panchali but I was uncertain whether I would be able to work with amateur and unknown actors and a nonprofessional crew. The Bicycle Thief just bowled me over and changed many of my ideas. I wrote the first draft of Pather Panchali on the ship as I returned to India.

Question: Why were you thinking in terms of amateurs?

Satyajit Ray: Since I myself was a non-professional, I knew I couldn't get financing from the normal sources. It was also difficult to get along with professionals. They would say things like "You can't make this kind of film" ... "You have to work in,a studio" ... "You have to take in professionals," and so on. But I simply wanted to set up my own little group of non-professionals. I wanted to be my own master. I listened patiently to all those who told me I needed to use continued ABOUT THE AUTHOR: MR. DANIELS IS ALSO A PHOTOGRAPHER WHOSE PICTURES HAVE OFTEN APPEARED IN SPAN. HE HAS VISITED INDIA TWICE.

PHOTOGRAPHS

BY RAGHUBIR

SINGH

! WORLD

OF SATY AJIT RAY continued

Ray forms a de6nite image of each character, then looks for a person to fit that image. professionals, but I was still determined to go my own way.

Question: You still use many amateurs. How do youfind them?

Satyajit Ray: To give an example, while I was casting the second part of the Apu trilogy I was searching for a lO-year-old boy. You see the boy in the first part of the trilogy was six and for part two, in which the story takes place four years later, I needed a boy of about 10 who resembled the six-year-old. I wanted a child with the same kind of dreamy look, the same chiselled features, the same complexion. Then one day I was riding on a streetcar and I saw this boy. I spoke to him. I simply asked him if he'd like to act in my films. "Yes, why not?" he said.

Question: With your reputation now firmly established, you could use nothing but professionals, yet you still cast a great many amateurs. Wiry?

Satyajit Ray: In India we don't have that many professional actors and I don't want to keep using the same people over and over.

When I write a part I get a definite image of my character.

I look for a person who fits that image. If there is a professional around who fits it, I'll use him. Otherwise I look for an amateur.

Question: Look where?

Satyajit Ray: Sometimes I place ads in the papers describing the type of character I'm looking for and then I interview everyone who answers the ad. Sometimes I go into the streets and look for faces. When I have found a particular face, I speak with the person and listen to the voice to see if it's suitable-as I did with the boy in the streetcar. All three of the trilogy films were cast in that manner with a few exceptions. One actress was the wife of a friend of mine whom I knew quite well but she had never done any films. Other persons I found in places like Banaras, on the steps by the riverside.

I found one old man that way. I was sitting on the steps by the river just looking around for faces and I saw this old man who fit an image I had in mind. I spoke to him. He appeared in the second part of the trilogy. You see I had written the scenario in Banaras, and many of the scenes were laid on those very steps. Actually I'm constantly amazed at how many people have this urge to act. Once they're approached they say yes right away. Not everybody, mind you, but a lot more than you might think.

Question: How do you get a peljormance out of them when they have no experience at all?

Satyajit Ray: If there is a willingness on the part of the person to act, to face the camera, then the rest is easy. Then it's always possible to get the kind of performance you want. I have, however, made a couple of films which are what you might call "professional theatre" in their conception-19th century

period pieces-and in these cases I needed several professionals not only for their ability to memorize lines but also for phrasing. With an amateur you would need hours to extract something a professional, with a little guidance, can deliver in a much shorter time. But in small parts, or in parts which don't have a lot of dialogue, it's wonderful to use amateurs because they perform with a kind of non-acting which, combined with prescribed actions and life-like speech, can be very effective. I write a kind of dialogue that is neither stagey, nor literary, nor theatrical-a dialogue derived from life itself, but "life" cut down to the bare essentials. In films one needs an almost life-like speech that must not be literary or theatrical. By almost life-like I mean that in real life people speak more words than they do in my dialogue-in real life there are more gaps and pauses. My style cuts out those extra words, those gaps and pauses. It's a dialogue that even non-professionals find easy to deliver.

Question: Are you involved in the financial side of your pictures?

Satyajit Ray: I am very bad about financial matters, so I have a production manager who looks after that. I make films for other people who put up the money. I work for a fee and they get the profits. I don't want to be involved in keeping track of each film I make, especially when they are going out of the country. It involves keeping an office and files and looking into accounts, hiring agents, etc. Once I finish a film I like to stop thinking of what I have done and go on to the next one.

Question: Do you film your scenes many times?

Satyajit Ray: No, usually I have no more than two or three takes.

Generally the first is the best, sometimes the second. I hardly ever do more than three unless there is some complicated synchronization involved. For example, in one film we had a scene involving a little boy and his brother and sister and a dog. The children decide to break into a run and the dog is supposed to follow right along. We were shooting in a rural village, you see, and this is a real stray dog from the village.

In order to do the scene as I wanted it, we had to have 11 takes. That's the largest number of takes I've ever had for a single scene. I must be economical since our budgets are small because my films are in Bengali. Those who understand the language constitute only a small part of India. I think I have survived because I have a foreign market. At least half my films are exported. That puts me in a position whcre the producers can have a certain faith in me as a man who will evcntually bring back a return on their investments.

Question: Do your films carry a message or are they pure entertainment?

Satyajit Ray: In my first four films I made three different kinds of pictures. And later I made period pieces. I have made contemporary stories about the middle class and their problems.

Generally the emerging theme has been the conflict between the old and the new existing side by side. This is the recurring continued

o SPAN SEPTEMBER

1970

An accomplished artist, Ray writes his own screen scenario, sketches sets and characters, above. "Right from the beginning I have been doing my scripts in the form of sketches showing the frames, with the dialogue and movements indicated alongside." For Ray, the camera, left, is the all-powerful weapon to register the many nuances of a complex human situation. "With Mahanagar, I even took over the camera to get the shots exactly as I wanted them." Totally immersed in the shooting, Ray, below, concentrates on the movement of a scene in one of his films.

fiE WORLD OF SATYAJIT

RAY continued

Repeating oneself is a waste of time, Ray says. He makes films of different moods. theme of all my films. Not consciously but-as I look backI see the theme repeated again and again. My first original screenplay was about an upperclass family on holiday in Darjeeling. It was a study of the relationship between an autocratic father and his young children, and what takes place when the family finally decides to oppose the dictatorship of this autocrat who belongs to the past generation.

People in India are used to being spoonfed in the cinemaI mean fed things that don't require much thought-but my films require that you read between the lines and be attentive.

You must listen to the words, watch the action carefully.

Even the background is important. Every prop has some business to perform even when it is not being handled. You know it's there and it tells a story of its own. That's why someone who has seen one of my films only once may not be enthusiastic. But if he has a second chance to see it he begins to like it more and more. And then he sees it a third time.

Question: Do you aim for the international market?

Satyajit Ray: I think of myself as a Bengali and my films are aimed primarily at our own audience. I never know beforehand if the film will click outside India because I don't know what other people are interested in. I haven't found out what parts or what aspects of India are interesting to non-Indians.

Generally, however, I find my period pieces and my rural stories well received outside the country, whereas films relating to contemporary India and the intermingling of Indian and Western ideas haven't been as successful on the international market.

Question: Does your personality change with your films?

Satyajit Ray: If it's a sombre film it makes me sombre for days, but when it's finished I go back to my normal self. Yet I have always made films with a variety of moods. I mean, when I make a comedy I follow it up with, well not necessarily a tragedy but maybe I'll go back 100 years and make a period piece. India is still greatly unexplored by the cinema both historically and geographically-and quite a lot remains to be done. And there is no point in repeating yourself, like Antonioni who makes, say six films in a row on alienation.

It's not worthwhile doing something like that. It's a terrible waste of time. It would be foolish for me not to exploit my opportunity of doing tremendously varied types of films.

Question: What are your feelings on nudity and explicit sexuality in many contemporary international films?

Satyajit Ray: It's a bit overdone. Obviously, if you have a strong bedroom scene, you're safe at the box office. Most films I seeand I see very many-seem shoddy, fragmented, inefficient and full of pretensions. They would normally be rejected at the box office, but these film-makers save themselves by in-

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jecting certain elements that assure good box office. And, of course, they take care to never make the bedroom scenes shoddy, fragmented or inefficient. They're always very good when it comes to that sort of thing but it's all the rest of the film that's shoddy.

Question: Are you influenced by what is being done in films today?

Satyajit Ray: Only to the extent that I sometimes start worrying whether some Westerners might find my films too simple or barren and say "they're nothing." In fact some critics, Kenneth Tynan, I think, criticized my best film Charulata in one of his reviews. The film is based on a Tagore story dealing with a 19th-century intellectual family. The wife falls in love with the husband's cousin. Tynan wanted to know why they didn't kiss. Why keep it under the surface, he wrote.

Why not show them kissing, embracing and what not. But in those days such a thing would not happen as quickly or as easily as it would happen now in the West or even now here in the East! Even now, out in the streets of Calcutta, boys and girls don't hold hands, let alone kiss. When one makes a period piece one must depict things as they truly were in that period.

Question: In your latest picture, Days and Nights in the Forest, what sort of critical reaction did you receive?

Satyajit Ray: Many critics called it inconsequential. The best review said it's occasionally brilliant but ultimately not as weighty as it might have been. I don't know what they mean by that.

I think it's a very satisfying film. I liked it very much. I have seen it six or seven times now. It is very contemporary in mood. It's thrilling and it shows varied characters who have different sets of values.

Question: What is the film about?

Satyajit Ray: It's about several people. There are these four friends and they all live in a restrictive atmosphere in Calcutta and they want to have a little kind of brief bohemian week-end.

One is a sportsman-an athlete and cricket player-and he meets a girl and has this sort of quick, stormy physical thing.

It has no after-effects on him at all. And the second chap has no worries or frustrations, in fact no job. He is a kind of congenital parasite and wit who is fun to have around. He has no girls. He just gets stuck in a gambling booth at the fair. The other two have rather serious involvements. The timid one has all sorts of inhibitions. He is a labour officer in a factory and he is almost seduced by a young widow but he ends up miserably because he can't bring himself to reciprocate. The fourth has a serious involvement. The wording is on a rather sophisticated level. The story is very involved. You must read between the lines all the time. There is no central character, no central character at all. Everyone is given his or her due weight. Very interesting film. The critics just missed the point. Well, most of the critics are' END very old anyway.

At right Ray instructs an actress. "If there is willingness on the part of the person to act, it's possible to get the performance you want."