The education of a filmmaker (Calcutta, September 1982) SATYAJIT RAY (1921–1992)
July 27, 2020
The education of a filmmaker (Calcutta, September 1982) SATYAJIT RAY (1921–1992)
Memorial Lecture, he agreed with great reluctance since he rarely gave
speeches. e lecture was delivered at the small auditorium of the Academy
of Fine Arts. e hall was packed and the audience remarkably silent—not
a cough was heard even though Ray spoke for over an hour. Ray sat alone
on the stage with a table in front of him, a single lamp illuminated the
script from which he read and a spotlight created a halo of light around
where he sat. I was fortunate enough to be present and it is one of the most
unforgettable occasions of my life.
MAIN SPEECH
When I was asked to deliver their annual lecture by the Amal Bhattacharji
Centre for European Studies, my immediate response was to say no. It was
easy for me to do so, since 15 years of saying no to such requests has turned
it into a habit. e only occasion when I didn’t decline, the lecture never
took place. Although I had, in the end, to yield to persuasion, a great deal
of diffidence remains. It is difficult to dissociate the idea of discourse from
the idea of erudition; especially in the present case, where the enterprise is
meant to perpetuate the memory of an outstanding scholar. Now, erudition
is something which I singularly lack. As a student, I was only a little better
than average: and in all honesty, I cannot say that what I learnt in school
and college stood me in good stead in the years that followed. I studied for a
degree, of course, but my best and keenest memories of college consist
largely of the quirks and idiosyncracies of certain professors. College was
fun, but college, at least for me, was hardly a fount of learning. All my
useful reading has taken place since I finished my formal education. is
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reading has been wide and varied, but it has not been deep. Even on films I
am not particularly well read. When I got interested enough in films to start
reading about them, there were hardly a dozen books in English on the
subject. By the time I finished them, I was already at work on my first film.
One day’s work with camera and actors taught me more than all the dozen
books had done. In other words, I learnt about filmmaking primarily by
making films, not by reading books on the art of the cinema. Here, I must
say, I am in very good company. is is how all the pioneers of filmmaking
learnt their craft. But for a few exceptions; none of these pioneers was a
learned scholar. Rather, they liked to think of themselves as craftsmen. If
they were also able, on occasion, to produce works of art, they often did so
intuitively. Or at least, that is how most of them feel. e famous American
director John Ford was once asked by an admiring critic how he got the idea
for a particularly felicitous touch in one of his films. Ford said: ‘Aw, I don’t
know, it just came to me.’
Which brings me to the second reason for my diffidence. Filmmaking is
such a demanding process that directors—especially those who keep up a
steady output—rarely have time to assemble their thoughts. Of all the
major directors in the world, only one—Sergei Eisenstein—lectured and
theorized on the cinema, and described his own creative process at length.
But we must remember that in the space of nearly 20 years, Eisenstein
made only seven films, of which two were never completed. I have regularly
pursued my two vocations of filmmaking and writing for young people,
untrammelled by any thoughts of ever having to describe or analyse why I
do certain things in the way I do them.
Yet a third reason concerns a special problem that faces one who must talk
about films. Lectures on art should ideally be illustrated. One who talks on
paintings usually comes armed with slides and a projector. is solves the
difficulty of having to describe in words, what must be seen with the eyes.
e lecturer on music must bless the silicon revolution, now that he can
cram all his examples on to a cassette no bigger than a small bar of
chocolate. But the lecturer on the cinema has no such advantage—at least
not in the present state of technology in our country. If he wishes to cite an
example, he can do no more than give a barely adequate description in
words, of what is usually perceived with all one’s senses. A film is pictures, a
film is words, a film is movement, a film is drama, a film is music, a film is a
story, a film is a thousand expressive aural and visual details. ese days one
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must also add that film is colour. Even a segment of film that lasts barely a
minute can display all these aspects simultaneously. You will realize what a
hopeless task it is to describe a scene from a film in words. ey can’t even
begin to do justice to a language which is so complex.
So when it was suggested that I talk on the European cinema, I declined. I
didn’t wish to talk about films which would be unfamiliar to many of the
listeners. Even reading about such films can be tiresome. But at least, with a
book, one can stop reading, and think, and try to visualize. Unfortunately, it
is not easy to stop a lecturer, and ask for time to think. At least, it is not
conventional to do so.
So I shall avoid describing films which the majority of my listeners are
unlikely to have seen. I should also make it clear that I do not propose to
discuss the cinema in all its aspects. You will not learn about its history
from this talk, nor about its sociology, its economics, its semiology. Nor will
you learn about the New Wave, the star system, or the regional cinema, and
what the governments are doing to help or hinder its growth. I shall confine
myself mainly to the language of films, and the possibilities of artistic
expression inherent in it. is will involve an occasional glance at the other
arts, as well as at films from other countries and other epochs. My main
concern, however, will be Bengal, the Bengali cinema, and my own films.
But before I get on to the subject of films, I should like to recall the gradual
stages which led to my being involved in this very versatile, very popular
and very chancy medium. One thing I cannot avoid in this talk is the first
person singular. is is a fact which had better be conveyed now, lest the
listeners spot it on their own and begin to question my modesty. ere is no
one I know better than myself, and no one I have a better right to talk
about. On the strength of my first film and the wide success it won, I have
heard it said that I was a born filmmaker. And yet, I had no thoughts, and
no ambitions, of ever becoming one even as late as three or four years before
I actually took the plunge. I have loved going to the cinema ever since I can
remember, but I must have shared this love with millions of others, or there
wouldn’t have been such a flourishing film business in India for such a long
time.
I was born in the heyday of silent cinema. Chaplin, Keaton, and Harold
Lloyd were producing what then were uproarious comedies, and are now
seen as timeless masterpieces. Living in North Calcutta then, and most of
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the cinemas showing foreign films being around Chowringhee, going to the
‘Bioscope’ was a rare event. So I never had a surfeit of films. Every visit was
a very special occasion, and every film was followed by weeks of musing on
its wonders. When the talkies came, I was just old enough to realize that a
revolution had taken place. ere were two kinds of talkies to start with:
partial talkies—which had bursts of dialogue, followed by long stretches of
silence; and one hundred percent talkies. Newspapers in those days carried
large pictorial ads of the foreign films. One look at them, and a glance at
the headlines were enough to tell the elders whether or not the films were
likely to tarnish innocent minds. ose were the days of the flamboyant
Hollywood stars, and what they were good at was not considered
particularly suitable for a boy barely in his teens. So ‘sizzling romance’ was
out, and so was ‘tempestuous, hotblooded passion’. I saw jungle stories,
slapstick comedies, and swashbuckling adventures. But occasionally there
were chance visits to supposedly adult movies. Ernst Lubitsch was a great
name in the cinema in those days. As an Austrian who had settled in
Hollywood, he had a highly sophisticated approach to romantic comedy. I
saw three of his films, around the age of ten: Love Parade, e Smiling
Lieutenant, and One Hour With You—a forbidden world, only half
understood, but observed with a tingling curiosity.
Films remained a great attraction right through college. But by then I had
discovered something which was to grow into an obsession. is was
Western classical music. I had grown up in an atmosphere of Bengali songs,
mainly Rabindrasangeet and Brahmo Samaj hymns. Even as a child, the
ones that I liked most had a Western tinge to them. A Vedic hymn like
Sangachhadhwam, or the song by Rabindranath with a rather similar tune,
Anandalokay Mangalalokay; or the stately chorus, Padoprantay rakho shebokey,
that came as a wonderful relief after three exhausting hours of sermon on
Maghotsab Day. My response to Western classical music was immediate
and decisive. As a small boy, I had read about Beethoven in the Book of
Knowledge, and developed an admiration for him which amounted to heroworship.
Now I was listening enraptured to his sonatas and symphonies. If
films were fun and thrills and escape, the pursuit of music was something
undertaken with deadly seriousness. It was a great voyage of discovery, and
it transported me to a world of ineffable delight. Films were at the most a
once-a-week affair, while music played on the hand-cranked gramophone
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took up all my spare time at home. At the age when the Bengali youth
almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music.
My reading was then confined to light English fiction. I hardly read any
Bengali those days; not even the classics. In fact, I was not conscious of any
roots in Bengal at all. at happened in Santiniketan.
e few occasions that I met Rabindranath [Tagore] face to face—well,
meeting is hardly the word: one stole up to him with one’s heart in one’s
mouth, and touched his feet—he would glance up at my mother and say:
‘Why don’t you send your son to my school?’ To be quite honest, I had no
wish to go to his school at all. e few Santiniketanites that I got to know—
usually painters and musicians—all had long hair, and spoke Bengali in a
strange, affected sing-song. One took this to be the Santiniketan accent.
Well, such accent and such people put me off, and I thought—if this is
what Santiniketan does to you, I have no use for that place.
When, after my graduation, I did go to Santiniketan, it was out of
deference to my mother’s wish, and much against my own inclination. I
think my mother believed that proximity to Rabindranath would have a
therapeutic effect on me, much as a visit to a hill station or health resort has
on one’s system. Although I joined as a student of Kalabhawan, I had no
wish to become a painter—certainly not a painter of the Oriental school. I
strongly disliked the wishy-washy sentimentalism of the Oriental art one
encountered in the pages of Prabasi and Modern Review. I had shown a flair
for drawing from a very early age, doubtless inherited, and my taste in
painting had been formed by the same ten-volume Book of Knowledge which
had told me about Beethoven.
e Book of Knowledge left out everything before the Renaissance, and
ended with the Royal Academicians. Among the paintings and sculptures I
knew and loved were: Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, Franz Hals’s Laughing
Cavalier, Michelangelo’s David, Rodin’s inker, Landseer’s Proud Stag
With e Spreading Antlers, and Joshua Reynolds’s Bubbles, which, in those
days, was used in advertisements for Pear’s Soap. Of course, I also knew
Raphael’s Madonna, and Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. I read somewhere that
Mona Lisa’s right hand was the most beautifully executed hand in all
painting. I would gaze at this hand, and marvel at the critic who had
studied all the hands in all the paintings of the world, and come to that
conclusion.
S I l h fi f K l bh I l f
Since I never meant to complete the five-year course of Kalabhawan, I left
at the end of two and a half. Rabindranath had died a year before. It was
hard for me to judge if it had made a material difference to the place; after
all, he had been virtually invisible to us much of the time. But with
everybody saying ‘it’s not the same thing any more,’ one found oneself
concurring. But the main reason I left was not because Rabindranath was
no more, but because I felt I had got as much out of the place as was
possible for me.
My relationship with Santiniketan was an ambivalent one. As one born and
bred in Calcutta, I loved to mingle with the crowd on Chowringhee, to
hunt for bargains in the teeming profusion of second-hand books on the
pavements of College Street, to explore the grimy depths of Chor Bazar for
symphonies at throwaway prices, to relax in the coolness of a cinema, and
lose myself in the makebelieve world of Hollywood. All this I missed in
Santiniketan, which was a world apart. It was a world of vast open spaces,
vaulted over with a dustless sky that on a clear night showed the
constellations as no city sky could ever do. e same sky, on a clear day,
could summon up in moments an awesome invasion of billowing darkness
that seemed to engulf the entire universe. And there was the Khoai, rimmed
with serried ranks of tall trees, and the Kopai, snaking its way through its
rough-hewn undulations. If Santiniketan did nothing else, it induced
contemplation, and a sense of wonder, in the most prosaic and earthbound
of minds.
In the two and a half years, I had time to think, and time to realize that,
almost without my being aware of it, the place had opened windows for me.
More than anything else, it had brought to me an awareness of our
tradition, which I knew would serve as a foundation for any branch of art
that I wished to pursue.
But my attitude to painting as a vocation did not change. e first painting
I did as a student showed a very old, blind beggar standing in the middle of
nowhere, leaning on the shoulder of an angelic looking boy who carried the
begging bowl. My later paintings improved, as I moved away from literary
themes, but I just didn’t have it in me to become a painter.
But Santiniketan taught me two things—to look at paintings, and to look at
nature. We used to go out in the afternoon to sketch from nature. Nandalal
Bose, our Mastermoshai, would steal up from behind, peer over the
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shoulder and say: ‘at’s a good outline of a cow. But a cow is more than an
outline. You must feel the form of the animal—the flesh and bones beneath
the skin—and this feeling must show in the way your pencil moves.’
It was Santiniketan which opened my eyes to the fact that the kind of
painting that I used to admire, the kind that provokes the reaction, ‘How
life-like!’, should be a preoccupation that lasted only 400 years. It started
with the first awareness of perspective in the fifteenth century, and ended
with the invention of photography in the nineteenth. e first
representations of nature by man are believed to be the stone-age cave
paintings of 20,000 years ago. What is 400 years in a span that stretches 200
centuries?
Neither Egyptian, nor Chinese, Japanese, or Indian art ever concerned itself
with factual representation. Here the primary aim was to get at the essence
of things; a probing beneath the surface. Nature was the point of departure
for the artist to arrive at a personal vision. Personal, but within the ambit of
certain well-defined conventions.
Two trips to the great art centres of India—Ajanta, Ellora, Elephanta,
Konarak, and others—consolidated the idea of Indian tradition in my mind.
At last I was beginning to find myself, and find my roots.
What I missed most in Santiniketan was films. Almost imperceptibly, they
had become an object of study, as music was, and not something to be just
seen and enjoyed. I had found and read a couple of books on film aesthetics
in the Kalabhawan library. ey were most revealing. How interesting to
know, for instance, that films and music had so much in common! Both
unfold over a period of time; both are concerned with pace and rhythm and
contrast; both can be described in terms of mood—sad, cheerful, pensive,
boisterous, tragic, jubilant. But this resemblance applies only to Western
classical music. Since our music is improvised, its pattern and duration are
flexible. One can hear a complete raga in a three-minute version on old
gramophone records, and we know that a raga can be stretched to well over
two hours. Also, the structure of Indian music is decorative, not dramatic. It
builds up from a slow beginning to a fast conclusion, becoming more and
more intricate and ornamental in the process. is is rather like an Indian
temple, which builds up from a solid base, goes through narrower and
narrower layers of ornamentation, and ends up in the dizzy heights of the
shikhara. e mood of the music is predetermined by the raga, and
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convention demands that there should be no departure from it. What the
musician aims at is to give the ideal form to the concept implicit in a
particular combination of notes. at is why Indian music is great only in
the hands of a great musician performing at the top of his form. In the
process of execution, the musician can achieve beauty, he can achieve
tension and excitement, and he can achieve sublimity. But he cannot
achieve drama, because there is no conflict in the music.
Unlike Indian music, Western music can depart from the tonic or Sa, and
much of the drama arises from this modulation of certain basic melodies
from key to key. is can be likened to the vicissitudes experienced by
characters in a story. At the end, the music has to return to the tonic or Sa,
which again is like the resolution of a conflict, where one feels nothing
more needs to be said, as the drama has come to an end.
It is significant that most of the pioneers of the cinema—those who helped
to create its grammar and its language (Griffith in the USA, Abel Gance in
France, Eisenstein and Pudovkin in Soviet Russia)—were all deeply
responsive to music. Griffith was one man who virtually created the
language of the cinema single-handed. It took him a little while to realize
the incredible potentialities of the medium, but once he saw that images
could be invested with meaning, and such meaningful images could be
strung together like sentences in a story, and the story could be made to
unfold with the grace and fluency of music, the art of the cinema evolved in
no time at all.
In the early days, when books on film aesthetics had yet to be written,
filmmakers who were in the forefront were geniuses who instinctively
produced works of art which at the same time had a wide appeal. at films
had to reach a large public was taken for granted, since filmmaking was a
costly business. But the wonder is how little pandering this involved. e
one obvious concession to the public was in the use of slapstick, which was
a direct importation from the Music Hall and Vaudeville. But in the hands
of a filmmaker of genius, even slapstick could be so inventive, so precise in
timing and so elaborate in execution that it acquired a high aesthetic value,
while retaining its power to provoke laughter. Buster Keaton in his film e
General performs the most incredible antics in the driver’s seat of a runaway
train, while a full-scale battle rages in the background. To say that the scene
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is funny is not nearly enough; it is one of the most elating aesthetic
experiences in the cinema.
Unfortunately, this double function of artist and entertainer was rarely
sustained in the period of sound. Popular entertainment too often came to
mean films of overt escapism, where the artist was conspicuous by his
absence.
It is not easy to define what gives a film the distinction of a work of art.
Some definitions will emerge in the course of this talk, but it is necessary at
this point to stress the fact that to be able to tell a work of art from a work
of mere craftsmanship calls for a trained response. In other words, it calls
for what the shastras define as a rasika. One wouldn’t think so from the way
seemingly learned opinions on this or that film are bandied about by all and
sundry. Nevertheless, it is true that serious accomplished films, films which
use the language of the cinema with insight and imagination, challenge our
sensibilities in the same way as the more rarefied forms of music, painting,
and literature. Even an apparently simple film which makes a direct impact
on the emotions may call for understanding.
It was my growing interest in the cinema as an object for serious study
which led to our forming the Calcutta Film Society in the year of India’s
independence. Most of the films we showed and discussed were from
abroad. To be quite honest, we found nothing worth studying in Bengali
films from an aesthetic point of view. But it was interesting to try and
discover why they were like what they were.
ere is little doubt that the Bengali’s fondness for the theatre and jatra was
one of the things which impeded the growth of a pure cinema in Bengal.
When one watched the shooting of a film in the studio, as I had done on
several occasions, one had the strong feeling of watching the performance of
a play. Rooms had three walls and no ceilings, windows gave onto crudely
painted backdrops, dummy books lined the shelves, and the performers
appeared plastered with makeup. Right from the start, speech was taken as
the primary means of conveying information, with images and gestures
hardly given a chance to speak for themselves. Songs and melodrama,
standard prescription for Bengali films, were direct imports from the stage.
Such was the Bengali’s fondness for songs that K.L. Saigal became a
popular hero, and no questions were asked either about his Bengali accent,
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which was redolent of the Punjab, or his acting ability, which was
rudimentary.
e fact that some of the leading Bengali writers of the time—Sailajananda
Mukherji, Premankur Atarthi, Premendra Mitra, Saradindu
Bandopadhyaya—were involved in films as writers or directors or both, did
little to improve the quality of Bengali films. When writing fiction or
poetry, these writers obviously aimed at a literate public; but when writing
for films or directing them, they seemed to assume a totally different
identity, and aim at the lowest of lowbrows. Occasionally, one would come
across a believable character, or a situation with a breath of life in it, but
they were invariably smothered by the dead-weight of formula. e idea
seemed to be that the cinema being a popular medium, it should only
lightly divert and not seriously engage the audience. at it was possible for
a film to do both seems not to have struck them at all.
And yet Bengal never lacked craftsmen. ere were excellent cameramen,
editors, and sound recordists who knew their jobs, and above all, acting
talent of a high order. If the mannerisms of the stage occasionally crept into
a film performance, it was because the material itself was conceived in
theatrical terms. Such mannerisms were actually encouraged as a sop to the
public. Having worked with stage actors myself, I know how well they’re
able to tailor style to suit the needs of the cinema.
But all this excellent material was being used by people who were
determined not to encroach into areas which would endanger the safety of
their positions. What was singularly lacking was the spirit of adventure.
Everyone played safe, and the result was stagnation.
Two years before the film society was born, I had illustrated an abridged
edition of Pather Panchali. It had struck me then that there was a film in the
book. But it was no more than a passing thought. But ever since then,
whenever I read a work of Bengali fiction, half of my mind would be
engaged in exploring its cinematic possibilities.
One such work of fiction was Rabindranath’s Ghare-Baire. I was then
working as an artist in a British advertising agency. In my spare time, I
occasionally wrote screenplays as a hobby. In the late forties I wrote one of
Ghare-Baire, and there came an exciting point when a producer liked it
enough to decide to sponsor a film of it. I signed a contract with him, and
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so did my friend Harisadhan Das Gupta, who was to direct the film. Since
my contribution ended with the writing, it didn’t affect my job in any way.
But the producer went on to have second thoughts on the screenplay, and
suggested some changes. In my youthful pride, I put my foot down. I was
certainly not going to let a compromise sully my maiden contribution to the
cinema. is led to a deadlock, and ended up in the project falling through.
I felt like a pricked balloon at the time, but I can say now, after 35 years,
that I consider it the greatest good fortune that the film was never made.
Reading the screenplay now, I can see how pitifully superficial and
Hollywoodish it was.
At any rate, I found my mind turning back to Pather Panchali, which had by
then taken a more concrete shape. I pondered on it, and on the implications
of giving up my job. I felt it would be fun to be an independent artist,
working to satisfy a creative urge rather than satisfy the needs of a client.
Even at best, advertising art is a functional art, its sole aim being to sell a
product. Of course, there is a commodity aspect to films too: the filmmaker
works for a sponsor who expects to get his money back, and with a profit.
But if—and this was a big if—inspite of a sponsor, it was possible to make a
film in total freedom, then the choice for me would be simple.
Two things happened around this time to ease the way towards a resolution.
e first was the encounter with a director of world stature. Jean Renoir had
come to Calcutta to scout locations and interview actors for a film he would
be making in Bengal. Renoir was a French director who had emigrated to
Hollywood just before Hitler’s army invaded France. I knew his American
films, but not his French ones. His films had a poetry and a humanism one
rarely found in American films.
As it turned out, the man himself was very much like his films. He was
genial, warm hearted, and ready with advice to a young aspirant. On two
occasions, I was lucky enough to be with him while he was out looking for
locations. He reacted with gasps of surprise and delight at details which
eventually found their way into his film, capturing the Bengal countryside
as it had never been captured before. As Renoir told me: ‘You don’t have to
have too many elements in a film, but whatever you do, they must be the
right elements, the expressive elements.’ Simple-sounding advice, which
nevertheless touched on one of the fundamentals of art, which is economy
of expression.
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e second important event took place a year later. I was on my first trip to
London to work for a spell in the head office of our advertising agency. e
first film I saw in London was De Sica’s Bicycle ieves. I came out of the
theatre my mind fully made up. I would become a filmmaker. As soon as I
got back home, I would go all out to find a sponsor for Pather Panchali. e
prospect of giving up a safe job didn’t daunt me any more. I would make my
film exactly as De Sica had made his: working with non-professional actors,
using modest resources, and shooting on actual locations. e village which
Bibhutibhusan had so lovingly described would be a living backdrop to the
film, just as the outskirts of Rome were for De Sica’s film.
Bicycle ieves was in many ways a revelation. I assume many of you have
seen the film. For those who haven’t, I shall give the briefest outline of the
story.
Ricci, a poor worker in Rome, needs a bicycle in order to get a job. His own
bike has been lying in a pawn-shop. To get it back, Ricci has to pawn some
household possessions. Within a day of his acquiring it, the bike is stolen.
Ricci desperately tries to retrieve it, but fails. At the end of an exhausting
day, in a mood of abject despair, Ricci notices a bike left standing in an
apparently deserted street. After a long fight with his conscience, he decides
to steal it. But he makes a clumsy job of it, and is caught and beaten up by
an angry mob in the presence of his ten-year-old son Bruno. As Ricci
makes his way home weeping in humiliation, Bruno, who is also crying,
joins him and offers his hand in sympathy. e two walk hand in hand and
are lost in the crowd.
As you can see, there isn’t much of a story, and not much of a theme either.
But De Sica and his writer Zavattini pack into its 90 minutes such an
incredible amount of social observation that one never notices the
slenderness of the plot. e film simply bristles with details, some of which
add depth to the story in unexpected ways. For instance, there’s a scene
towards the end where Ricci suddenly runs into the thief in front of the
latter’s house, pounces upon him, and demands that he hands back his bike.
Hotly denying his guilt, the thief suddenly goes into an epileptic fit. As he
sinks to the ground shaking and foaming at the mouth, his mother, who’s
been watching from an upstairs window, tosses pillows to put under his
head. Meanwhile, Bruno has dragged along a policeman, whom Ricci now
takes into the house to make a search. We see the miserable pigeonhole of a
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room where the mother cooks a meagre meal for the family of four. ‘Instead
of accusing him,’ she says, ‘why don’t you find him a job?’ e bike,
however, is not found. As Ricci comes out of the house, he finds that the
whole neighbourhood has turned against him. His hopes dashed to the
ground, he has no choice but to walk despondently away.
Apart from adding dimension to the story, the film challenges our stock
response of instant antipathy towards a character who brings misery on the
hero by an unsocial act. But so finely is the balance maintained that the
incident doesn’t lessen the calamity of the hero’s loss. It merely makes the
film a far richer experience than a conventional treatment would have done.
One quality which is sure to be found in a great work of cinema is the
revelation of large truths in small details. e world reflected in a dew drop
will serve as a metaphor for this quality. ere is a scene in Bicycle ieves
where father and son go feverishly looking for a man they believe to have
connections with the thief. In the process the two lose each other. Finding
himself alone in a back street of a quiet neighbourhood, Bruno is seen to
approach a wall while unbuttoning his pants. But before he can do what he
wishes to do, Ricci suddenly appears and calls out urgently. Bruno whirls
round and runs to join his father, his urge unsatisfied. is one detail brings
home the implications of this desperate, daylong search more vividly than
anything could have done. It is such details, combined with acute social
observation, and the suffusing warmth of the father-and-son relationship
that make Bicycle ieves a great work of cinema.
When I finally decided to become a filmmaker, I was well aware that I
would be up against a relatively backward audience. And yet I had set my
mind on breaking all manner of conventions. I had discussed the project
with a number of professionals, and, to a man, they had discouraged me by
saying that it couldn’t be done the way we wanted to do it. ‘You can’t shoot
entirely on location,’ they had said. ‘You need the controlled conditions of a
studio.’ ‘You can’t shoot in cloudy weather; you can’t shoot in the rain; you
can’t shoot with amateur actors’, and so on and so forth.
So one of the first things we did was to borrow a 16 mm camera and go to a
village and take test shots. Subrata, who was to be my cameraman, and I
went to Bibhutibhusan’s village Gopalnagar, the Nishchindipur of Pather
Panchali. It was in the middle of the rainy season, and we had to squelch
through knee-deep mud to reach our destination. But once we got there, we
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lost no time. We took shots in the dim light of a mango grove, we shot in
pouring rain, and we shot in the failing light of dusk. Everything came out.
I shall not go into the various ordeals we had to face in the two and a half
years it took to make Pather Panchali. e story has been told often enough.
But what I have probably not mentioned elsewhere is that it was in a way a
blessing that the film took so long to make. We learnt filmmaking as we
went along, and since we went on for so long, it gave us that much more
time to learn. With all my knowledge of Western cinema, the first thing I
realized was that none of the films I had ever seen was remotely like the
story I was about to film. Pather Panchali had its roots deep in the soil of
Bengal. e life it described had its own pace and its own rhythm, which in
turn had to mould the pace and the rhythm of the film. e inspiration had
to come from the book, and from the real surroundings in which we had
decided to place the story.
If the books on filmmaking helped, it was only in a general sort of way. For
instance, none of them tells you how to handle an actor who has never faced
a camera before. You had to devise your own method. You had to find out
yourself how to catch the hushed stillness of dusk in a Bengali village, when
the wind drops and turns the ponds into sheets of glass, dappled by the
leaves of shaluk and shapla, and the smoke from ovens settles in wispy trails
over the landscape, and the plaintive blows on conchshells from homes far
and near are joined by the chorus of crickets, which rises as the light falls,
until all one sees are the stars in the sky, and the stars that blink and swirl in
the thickets.
We wanted to show fireflies in Aparajito. e books didn’t tell us that the
light they gave off was too weak to be photographed. Our own tests with
the camera proved that. So we had to invent a way of showing them. What
we did was photograph a group of bare-bodied assistants in black
loincloths, who hopped about in total darkness, holding in their hands tiny
electric bulbs which flashed on and off in a simulation of the dance of the
fireflies.
If film books didn’t help much, I was helped enormously by Bibhutibhusan.
He is one writer whose stories are a gold-mine of cinematic observation,
and it is fortunate that I developed a taste for him right at the start of my
career. Even in his lesser works—and there aren’t many that rise to the
heights of Pather Panchali.
A ’ d h Kh h d d f
Annapurna’s daughter Khenti has just got married, and it is now time for
the bride to depart. e palki is resting on the ground with the bride and
the groom in it. Annapurna, whose heart is torn by anguish, glances at the
palki and notices—I translate—‘that the end of Khenti’s modest red
balucbar has trailed out of the palki, and is nestling against a drooping
cluster of medi flowers by the bamboo fencing.’ In its context, this is a
heartrending detail, and a perfect film close-up of the kind described by
Eisenstein as pars pro toto, part standing for the whole.
Yet another quality which Bibhutibhusan had was a wonderful ear for
lifelike speech. A vital and unending pursuit for a filmmaker is the study of
speech patterns: speech as a reflection of class, and speech as revealing states
of mind. is is one area where Bengali cinema had been particularly weak.
e forties and fifties were the era of something called smart dialogue. One
often heard it said that ‘so-and-so is unsurpassed as a writer of smart
dialogue.’ e implication seemed to be that dialogue was something to be
admired for its own sake and not, as it should be, as a concomitant of the
characters who speak it. e epitome of this was, of course, Udayer Patbe,
where the hero’s speech gave the impression that he was born spouting
epigrams. e best film dialogue is where one doesn’t feel the presence of
the writer at all. I am talking here of the kind of film that tries to capture
the feel of reality. ere are also films which attempt a larger-than-life style,
or an oblique, fractured or expressionist style: I myself wrote dialogue with
end rhymes in Hirok Rajar Deshay, which was a fantasy. But the
overwhelming majority of narrative films belong in the tradition of realism,
where the dialogue sustains the feeling of lifelikeness that is conveyed
through the camera. is realism in films is not the naturalism of the
painter, who sets up his easel before his subject, and proceeds to record
faithfully what he sees. For a filmmaker, there is no ready-made reality
which he can straightaway capture on film. What surrounds him is only raw
material. He must at all times use this material selectively. Objects, locales,
people, speech, viewpoints—everything must be carefully chosen, to serve
the ends of his story. In other words, creating reality is part of the creative
process, where the imagination is aided by the eye and the ear.
e novelist has a similar task. In his supposed omniscience, he can describe
the innermost workings of his characters’ minds, while evoking the
surroundings in the minutest detail. e reader sees only what the author
chooses to describe. It may be just a factual description, or it may go beyond
h h h h dd h b I h
that, where the author adds his subjective comments to it. It is such
description and such comments—this combination of the concrete and the
abstract—that builds up the picture of reality in the reader’s mind.
A film, on the other hand, presents information in lumps, as it were. At any
given moment, the image on the screen may be filled with a plethora of
details, each carrying information. In other words, the language here is far
more diffused than the language of words, and it is the filmmaker’s job to
direct the attention of the audience to the dominant idea contained in the
image. If the idea is conveyed through dialogue, there is usually no
ambiguity. But when it is conveyed in non-verbal terms—through gestures,
objects, pure sounds, and so on—precise communication becomes difficult.
When a writer is at a loss for words, he can turn to his esaurus; but there
is no esaurus for the filmmaker. He can fall back on clichés, of course—
goodness knows how many films have used the snuffed-out candle to
suggest death—but the really effective language is both fresh and vivid at
the same time, and the search for it an inexhaustible one.
Since nine out of ten Bengali films are based on novels, and since both films
and novels use words and images, one would think that such novels would
substantially help in the creation of a film language. But here a problem
arises. I don’t know if it is a reflection of the Bengali temperament, but
many of our writers seem more inclined to use their minds, rather than
their eyes and ears. In other words, there is a marked tendency to avoid
concrete observation. Here is a small segment of Balzac’s description of
Madame Vauquer’s lodging-house in Old Goriot:
‘e indestructible furniture which every other house throws out, finds its
way to the lodging-house, for the same reason that the human wreckage of
civilization drifts to the hospitals for the incurable. In the room, you would
find a barometer with a monk, which appears when it is wet; execrable
engravings, bad enough to spoil your appetite, and all framed with
unvarnished black wood; a clock with a tortoise-shell case inlaid with
copper; a green stove; lamps coated with dust and oil; a long table covered
with oil cloth so greasy that a facetious boarder can write his name on it
with fingernails; broken-backed chairs; wretched little grass mats
unravelling endlessly, without ever coming completely to pieces; and finally,
miserable foot warmers, their orifices enlarged by decay, their hinges broken
d h d h d f ll ld k d d h k
and their wood charred. e furniture is all old, cracked, decaying, shaky,
worm-eaten, decrepit, rickety, ramshackle and on its last legs.’
Here you have the art director’s job already done for him. is sort of vivid
observation—the kind that is a godsend to a filmmaker—is by no means
common in Bengali fiction. Bankim reveals this quality occasionally—there
is a minutely observed description of Nagendranath’s house in Bisha-
Briksha, and Debi Choudhurani’s houseboat is described in sumptuous
detail. Such descriptions occur in almost every page of Hutom, and in more
recent times, one finds it again and again in the writings of Kamal Kumar
Majumdar. But to come to a major novel I’m involved in at the moment, for
the second time—Rabindranath’s Ghare-Baire—such concreteness is
noticeably lacking.
For instance, there is no description of Nikhilesh’s house anywhere in the
book. Of the two rooms where most of the action takes place—Nikhilesh’s
bedroom in the inner part of the house and the drawing room in the outer
part—barely three or four details are mentioned by name. Sandip has
regular meetings with his boys, but we’re never told where they meet.
Occasionally, there is a description of what Bimala is wearing, but none of
the male characters’ dresses is ever described. In the present case, this lack
of visualization may be because the chronicler is not the author himself but
the three main characters, who by turns reveal their mind and motives, and
advance the story. Also, the clash of ideas and ideals which forms the
substance of the novel may account for the predominance of the abstract
over the concrete. However, the fact remains that the trait is a common one
in Bengali fiction, and leads one to conclude that the writers are either
incapable of or disinclined to visualize beyond a certain point. is itself
need not be held against a novel, but in a film writer, the tendency can only
lead to a film that shows a lot but tells very little. A film by its very nature
makes the characters and their surroundings concrete. e camera makes
them so. You see the characters, you see the setting in which the story
unfolds. But this concreteness is a sum of the elements that go to make a
character, a room, a background; and these can come alive only through a
deliberate and apt choice of such elements. In other words, what a film says
is intimately bound up with these elements, these visual details.
Our films have consistently neglected these details in their preoccupation
with content. Our critics too have shown a tendency to judge a film
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predominantly on what it says rather than how it says it. I have no wish to
belittle content, but we must remember that the lousiest of films have been
made on the loftiest of themes. at a director says all the right things is in
itself no guarantee of artistry. At best it is a reflection of his attitude, or his
ideology. If it is a true reflection—and often there is no way of telling—it
will mark him out as an honest man, but not necessarily as an artist. Unless
a film aims at deliberate obfuscation, or is unintelligible through sheer
clumsiness of execution, what it says is usually clear to all. But what it says
is only a partial index of a filmmaker’s personality, because it is the manner
of saying which indicates the artist. ere are filmmakers who are not overly
concerned with what they say as long as they can say it with style or finesse.
One would sooner describe them as craftsmen, because it is difficult to
think of an artist who is totally devoid of an attitude to life and society
which he reveals in his work. Usually the attitude is implicit in his choice of
material. But his success in portraying it in terms of the cinema is in direct
ratio to the purity, power, and freshness of his language.
I shall end this talk by describing a scene from one of my own films, which
attempts to use a language entirely free from literary and theatrical
influences. Except for one line of dialogue in its seven minutes, the scene
says what it has to say in terms that speak to the eye and the ear. e scene
will also introduce an important element I haven’t spoken of so far. is is
the recurring motif. Appearing at several points in a film, often in different
contexts, these motifs serve as unifying elements.
e seven minutes refer to the opening scene of Charulata. Once again I
assume many of you will have seen the film—if not in the cinema, at least
on television. is scene establishes visually the approximate period of the
story, the upper-class ambience in which the story unfolds, the central
character of Charu, and a crucial aspect of her relationship with her
husband. In other words, it sets the stage for the drama that follows. I
should point out that no such scene as this occurs in Nashta-nirh, the
Rabindranath story on which the film is based, and that there are elements
in it which have been invented for the purpose of the film. But this is
inevitable in any adaptation of a literary work for the screen. It is also
justifiable if what has been introduced serves to articulate the author’s
theme, and illuminates the characters conceived by him.
fil h h l ‘B’ b b d d h dk h f b
e film opens with the letter ‘B’ being embroidered in a handkerchief by
Charu. is will prove to be a major motif in the film. We will learn later
that the handkerchief is meant for Charu’s husband Bhupati. It will trigger
off the conversation which will make Bhupati aware of Charu’s loneliness.
Towards the end of the film, after Bhupati’s traumatic discovery of Charu’s
feelings towards Amal, Bhupati will use the handkerchief to wipe his tears,
and will notice the embroidery before he decides to return to his wife.
As Charu finishes her needlework, we hear the grandfather clock on the
verandah strike four. e clock is heard chiming the hour at several points
in the film, and may be said to be the second motif.
But what is special about four o’clock? We learn in a few moments when
Charu puts down the embroidery, goes out of the bedroom and down the
verandah to the top of the backstairs, calls out to the servant and asks him
to take tea to the master in the office. We thus know that Bhupati’s place of
work is in the house itself.
Her duty done, Charu comes back to the bedroom. For a few moments she
is undecided what to do. is, of course, is an inevitable aspect of boredom.
One has time on one’s hands, but is frequently at a loss to know how to use
it. Charu briefly admires her handiwork, then picks up a book from the bed,
ruffles through the pages and puts it down.
She now comes out of the bedroom, and once again proceeds down the
verandah towards the outer apartments. Apart from the obvious fact of
Charu’s restlessness, these comings and goings in and out of rooms help to
establish the plan of the first floor of Bhupati’s house where most of the
action will take place. In a story like Charulata, the setting itself is a
character, and must be established as carefully in all its details as any human
participant in the story.
Charu now comes into the drawing-room and picks out from a bookcase a
novel by Bankimchandra. is is the third motif: Bankim will prove to be a
common link between Charu and Amal.
Charu has already reacted to a monkeyman’s drumming which is heard
from somewhere in the neighbourhood. Idly turning the pages of the novel,
she makes her way to her husband’s study which lies in the direction of the
sound of drumming. She goes to a window in the room, raises the shutters
and peers out—and there is the monkeyman in the house next door.
Ch d Sh f h b k h
is gives Charu an idea. She scurries out of the room, comes back to the
bedroom and takes out a lorgnette from a drawer. is lorgnette is the
fourth motif, and will feature in a crucial later scene with Amal.
As she hurries back to her husband’s study swinging the lorgnette in her
hand, the camera follows the object through the verandah railings. Precisely,
the same viewpoint will recur in a very different context when a triumphant
Charu will make a headlong dash for Amal’s room, this time swinging in
her hand the magazine which has published her article.
e monkeyman is now brought up close as Charu observes him through
the lorgnette. But the man goes away, and Charu now turns to another
window. is one gives on the street. is time Charu has a glimpse of a
palki, which is followed by a fatman who carries a lot of sweetmeats
dangling at the end of a string. e man goes out of view, but Charu,
anxious to stay with this amusing character a little longer, rushes to the
drawing-room and follows him through three successive windows until the
man turns a corner and is finally lost to sight.
It was important to stress this playful aspect of Charu, because this is where
she is farthest from her staid husband and closest to the youthful, exuberant
Amal.
Charu has now reached a point where she is once again undecided what to
do. e first musical motif is introduced here: a line of melody which will be
associated with Charu, and which now unfolds as Charu makes her way
pensively to the piano. She lifts the lid and casually strikes a note. But she is
immediately distracted by the sound of booted footsteps from the verandah.
We now see Bhupati in his shirtsleeves, stomping busily down the verandah
towards the bedroom.
Charu comes out of the drawing-room and stands by the door, looking the
way her husband has gone, her chin resting on the hand holding the
lorgnette. She knows her husband will return, and sure enough he does, this
time with a fat book in his hand, his eyes glued to an open page.
He stops by Charu for a moment to turn a page, then walks on without
noticing her. Charu keeps looking at the receding figure. en, in a playful
gesture, she brings the lorgnette up to her eyes. For a brief moment Bhupati
is brought up close before he goes out of sight down the staircase.
Ch h l f h d k l k f f
Charu removes the lorgnette from her eyes and keeps looking for a few
more seconds towards the door through which her husband has just gone
out.
en her hand with the lorgnette flops down. We now know that Charu is
resigned to her state of loneliness. And this brings the scene to a close.