The Big City (Satyajit Ray, 1963)

Anil Chatterjee and Madhabi Mukherjee in The Big City

Arati Mazumdar: Madhabi Mukherjee
Subrata Mazumdar: Anil Chatterjee
Himangshu Mukherjee: Haradhan Bannerjee
Edith Simmons: Vicky Redwood
Priyogopal, Subrata's Father: Haren Chatterjee
Sarojini, Subrata's Mother: Sefalika Devi
Bani, Subrata's Sister: Jaya Bhaduri
Pintu: Prasenjit Sarkar

Director: Satyajit Ray
Screenplay: Satyajit Ray
Based on stories by Narendranath Mitra
Cinematography: Subrata Mitra
Art direction: Bansi Chandragupta
Film editing: Dulal Dutta
Music: Satyajit Ray

For a long time, cities got a bad rap in the movies: Think of Fritz Lang's soul-devouring futuristic city in Metropolis (1027), the hedonistic town that sends out tendrils like the sinister Woman From the City to ensnare country folk like The Man and The Wife in F.W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927), or the weblike New York City that blights the lives of John and Mary in The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928). But these are surviving remnants of the Romanticism that proclaimed "God made the country and man made the town." By the mid-20th century, even our poets, or at least our songwriters, had turned the great big city into a wondrous toy, just made for a girl and boy, and a place where if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere -- a heroic challenge. In The Big City, Satyajit Ray's Kolkata retains some of the old sinister qualities, but it also represents opportunity, especially for women emerging from the shadows of male domination. Ray's domestic drama doesn't set up a contrast between town and country so much as a contrast between the dark, cramped home that Subrata and Arati Mazumdar share with his mother and father and sister and their young son, and the expanse of the city, which offers up tempting alternatives to the tight nuclear household. And those alternatives are something that the older members of that household view with disgust and horror: Arati's going out to work and to supplement the small income of the traditional breadwinner, Subrata. A world opens up for Arati, though it's also a world that can easily crumble around her. Madhabi Mukherjee's wonderful performance as Arati, tremulous and naive at first but gradually gaining fire and courage, animates the film. Obstacles present themselves: Subrata loses his job as a bank clerk, and Arati eventually loses hers by standing up for the Anglo-Indian Edith. But at the end, husband and wife, who have found their marriage tested by her employment, summon up reserves of courage to face the job market. The ending has been criticized as sentimental, but Ray has so carefully shown the growth of both Arati and Subrata that I find it hopeful.

Devi (Satyajit Ray, 1960)

Doyamoyee: Sharmila Tagore
Umaprasad: Soumitra Chatterjee
Kalikinkar Roy: Chhabi Biswas
Harasundari: Karuna Bannerjee
Taraprasad: Purnendu Mukherjee
Khoka: Arpan Chowdhury

Director: Satyajit Ray
Screenplay: Satyajit Ray
Based on a story by Prabhat Kumar Mukherjee
Cinematography: Subrata Mitra
Music: Ali Akbar Khan

The dialectic of tradition and change that informs so many of Satyajit Ray's films is uppermost in Devi, as is the director's ongoing portrayal of the role of women in Indian society. Doya is Uma's 17-year-old wife, enchantingly beautiful and touchingly naive. She wonders why Uma must leave her to go study in Calcutta -- he doesn't need the money, she says. Indeed, his family is rich, but Uma's desire to become something more than the son of the wealthy Kalikinkar is beyond Doya's limited experience. While he's away, Doya becomes a much-loved member of the household, to the point that her sister-in-law, Harasundari, feels jealous that Khoka, the son of Harasundari and Taraprasad, seems to love Doya more than his own mother. Doya's father-in-law, Kalikinkar, is so infatuated with her that one night he dreams that she is the incarnation of the goddess Kali, to whom his own name is a sign of his devotion. Kalikinkar proclaims his vision and sets up a special place in the house for Doya to be venerated. The girl is bewildered, but powerless to protest. A man who has heard of the incarnated goddess brings his seriously ill son, who has so far not benefited from medical treatment, to the house, praying for help, and when the boy recovers, Doya attracts crowds of the faithful. Alerted to what's going on, Uma returns home, but is unable to persuade the frightened Doya to go away with him. Then young Khoka falls ill and Kalikinkar insists that his parents send away the doctors and allow Doya alone to cure him. The boy dies, and Uma comes home again to find his wife destroyed by the experience. What is essentially a fable about misplaced faith gains immense strength and dignity from Ray's straightforward treatment, which emphasizes the increasing entrapment of Doya in a situation she can't control. Tagore's haunting performance and Biswas's portrayal of Kalikinkar's mad obsession are highlights of a still-provocative film. It became a cause célèbre in India after politicians decided it somehow insulted Hinduism, and only the intervention of Prime Minister Nehru allowed Devi to be shown abroad.

Watched on Filmstruck Criterion Channel

Charulata (Satyajit Ray, 1964)

Madhabi Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee in Charulata

Charulata: Madhabi Mukherjee
Amal: Soumitra Chatterjee
Bhupati Dutta: Shailen Mukherjee
Umapada: Shyamal Ghoshal
Manda: Gitali Roy

Director: Satyajit Ray
Screenplay: Satyajit Ray
Based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore
Cinematography: Subrata Mitra
Production design: Bansi Chandragupta
Music: Satyajit Ray

Watched on Filmstruck Criterion Channel

Charulata is the beautiful, bored wife of the wealthy Bhupati, who spends his time working on his newspaper devoted to the independence of India. At the start of the film, behind the opening credits, we watch as she embroiders a handkerchief for him, then Ray's ever-fluid camera follows her as she wanders through the richly appointed rooms of their house, gazing at the outside world through opera glasses and searching for something to read. At one point, Bhupati enters the house, smoking his pipe and reading a book, and walks right by her, not seeing or acknowledging her. But he becomes conscious of his wife's ennui and invites her brother, Umapada, and his wife, Manda, to live with them, and turns over the management of his business affairs to Umapada so Bhupati can devote more time to his newspaper. But Manda is empty-headed and prefers playing card games to providing intellectual companionship. Then Bhupati's cousin Amal, an aspiring writer, comes to visit, and Charulata is immediately attracted to him because of his literary interests and his sensitive poetic nature. In a scene set in the neglected garden of Bhupati's house, Amal writes poetry while Charulata soars on a swing, the camera tracking her movements. Their conversation inspires Charulata to express herself in writing, and she succeeds in getting a piece published about her memories of the village where she grew up -- even inspiring a little envy on Amal's part. Then we learn that Umapada has embezzled money from Bhupati and he and Manda have disappeared. Despondent, Bhupati tells Amal that he has lost trust in everyone but him, which stirs Amal's guilt: He realizes that he and Charulata have fallen in love, and rather than add to the burden of betrayal that has already been unloaded on Bhupati, he leaves suddenly. Charulata's grief at Amal's departure opens Bhupati's eyes to what has happened between his wife and his cousin. At the film's end, Charulata and Bhupati reach out for each other, but Ray chooses to depart from his usual mobile camera and to record the moment in a series of still photographs, over which he superimposes not the title of the film but that of the story by Rabindranath Tagore on which it was based: "The Broken Nest."

The World of Apu (Satyajit Ray, 1959)

Soumitra Chatterjee in The World of Apu

Apurba Roy: Soumitra Chatterjee
Aparna: Sharmila Tagore
Pulu: Swapan Mukherjee
Kajal: Alok Chakravarty
Sasinarayan: Dhiresh Majumdar
Landlord: Dhiren Ghosh

Director: Satyajit Ray
Screenplay: Satyajit Ray
Based on a novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
Cinematography: Subrata Mitra
Music: Ravi Shankar

The exquisite conclusion to Ray's trilogy takes Apu into manhood. He leaves school, unable to afford to continue into university, and begins to support himself by tutoring while trying to write a novel. When his friend Pulu persuades him to go along to the wedding of his cousin, Aparna, Apu finds himself marrying her: The intended bridegroom turns out to be insane, and when her father and the other villagers insist that the astrological signs indicate that Aparna must marry someone, Apu, the only available male, is persuaded, even though he regards the whole situation as nonsensical superstition, to take on the role of bridegroom. (It's a tribute to both the director and the actors that this plot turn makes complete sense in the context of the film.) After a wonderfully awkward scene in which Apu and Aparna meet for the first time, and another in which Aparna, who has been raised in comparative luxury, comes to terms with the reality of Apu's one-room apartment, the two fall deeply in love. But having returned to her family home for a visit, Aparna dies in childbirth. Apu refuses to see his son, Kajal, blaming him for Aparna's death and leaving him in the care of the boy's grandfather. He spends the next five years wandering, working for a while in a coal mine, until Pulu finds him and persuades him to see the child. As with Pather Panchali and Aparajito, The World of Apu (aka Apur Sansar) stands alone, its story complete in itself. But it also works beautifully as part of a trilogy. Apu's story often echoes that of his own father, whose desire to become a writer sometimes set him at odds with his family. When, in Pather Panchali, Apu's father returns from a long absence to find his daughter dead and his ancestral home in ruins, he burns the manuscripts of the plays he had tried to write. Apu, during his wanderings after Aparna's death, flings the manuscript of the novel he had been writing to the winds. And just as the railroad train figures as a symbol of the wider world in Pather Panchali, and as the means to escape into it in Aparajito, it plays a role in The World of Apu. Instead of being a remote entity, it's present in Apu's own backyard: His Calcutta apartment looks out onto the railyards of the city. Adjusting to life with Apu, Aparna at one point has to cover her ears at the whistle of a train. Apu's last sight of her is as she boards a train to visit her family. And when he reunites with his son, he tries to play with the boy and a model train engine. The glory of this film is that it has a "happy ending" that is, unlike most of them, completely earned and doesn't fall into false sentiment. I don't use the world "masterpiece" lightly, but The World of Apu, both alone and with its companion films, seems to me to merit it.  

Aparajito (Satyajit Ray, 1956)

Smaran Ghosal in Aparajito

Apu as a boy: Pinaki Sengupta
Apu as an adolescent: Smaran Ghosal
Harihar, Apu's father: Kanu Bannerjee
Sarbajaya, Apu's mother: Karuna Bannerjee
Bhabataran, Apu's great uncle: Ramani Sengupta
Nanda: Charuprakash Ghosh
Headmaster: Subodh Ganguli

Director: Satyajit Ray
Screenplay: Satayajit Ray, Kanaili Basu
Based on a novel by Bibhutibhushan Bannerjee
Cinematography: Subrata Mitra
Music: Ravi Shankar

As the middle film of a trilogy, Aparajito could have been merely transitional -- think for example of the middle film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson, 2002), which lacks both the tension of a story forming and the release of one ending. But Ray's film stands by itself, as one of the great films about adolescence, that coming-together of a personality. The "Apu trilogy," like its source, the novels by Bibhutibhushan Bannerjee, is a Bildungsroman, a novel of ... well, the German Bildung can be translated as "education" or "development" or even "personal growth." In Aparajito, the boy Apu (Pinaki Sengupta) sprouts into the adolescent Apu (Smaran Ghosal), as his family moves from their Bengal village to the city of Benares (Varanasi), where Apu's father  continues to work as a priest, while his mother supplements their income as a maid and cook in their apartment house. When his father dies, Apu and his mother move to the village Mansapota, where she works for her uncle and Apu begins to train to follow his father's profession of priest. But the ever-restless Apu persuades his mother to let him attend the village school, where he excels, eventually winning a scholarship to study in Calcutta. In Pather Panchali (1955), the distant train was a symbol for Apu and his sister, Durga, of a world outside; now Apu takes a train into that world, not without the painful but necessary break with his mother. Karuna Banerjee's portrayal of the mother's heartbreak as she releases her son into the world is unforgettable. Whereas Pather Panchali clung to a limited setting, the decaying home and village of Apu's childhood, the richness of Aparajito lies in its use of various settings: the steep stairs that Apu's father descends and ascends to practice his priestly duties on the Benares riverfront, the isolated village of Mansapota, and the crowded streets of Calcutta, all of them magnificently captured by Subrata Mitra's cinematogaphy.

Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)

When I first saw Pather Panchali I was in my early 20s and unprepared for anything so foreign to my experience either in life or in movies. And as is usual at that age, my response was to mock. So half a century passed, and when I saw it again a few months ago, both the world and I had changed. Now I've watched it again, because Turner Classic Movies scheduled it as part of a showing of the entire "Apu trilogy," and I wanted to see it in context with the other two films in the series, which I hadn't seen. It is, of course, a transformative experience -- even for one whom the years have transformed. What it shows us is both alien and familiar, and I wonder how I could have missed its resonance with the Southern poverty that I had witnessed in my own childhood: the significance of family, the problems consequent on adherence to a social code, the universal effect of wonder and fear of the unknown, the necessity of art, and so on. Central to it all is Ray's vision of the subject matter and the essential participation of Ravi Shankar's music and Subrata Mitra's cinematography. And of course the extraordinary performances: Kanu Bannerjee as the feckless, deluded father, clinging to a role no longer relevant in his world; Karuna Bannerjee as the long-suffering mother; Uma Das Gupta as Durga, the fated, slightly rebellious daughter; the fascinating Chunibala Devi as the aged "Auntie"; and 8-year-old Subir Banerjee as the wide-eyed Apu. It's still not an immediately accessible film, even for sophisticated Western viewers, but it will always be an essential one, not only as a landmark in the history of movie-making but also as an eye-opening human document of the sort that these fractious times need more than ever.