Going on 70, and still India’s finest film

Pather Panchali was Satyajit Ray’s debut film and ode to realism. He made it on a shoestring budget in 1955, without a regular script or even studio lights. Now, once again, Time magazine has named it among the 100 best movies of the past 100 years
Srirupa Ray (THE TIMES OF INDIA; March 31, 2024)

If you could place only one Indian film in the same league as Taxi Driver, Psycho and Godfather II, which would it be? Time Magazine has chosen Pather Panchali again (last time was in 2005). Satyajit Ray’s debut film figures on Time’s ‘100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades’ list. That’s just one movie for each year from 1920 to 2019.

Released in 1955, the film evokes a small village with ramshackle huts, ponds blooming with water lilies, thick groves dripping dew and rain, and a train chugging past swaying white fields of kaash flowers. Although it’s based on Bengali author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s 1929 novel of the same name, Ray made a few narrative departures in the screenplay. In fact, he made the film from a storyboard with notes scribbled on the side rather than a proper script.

How Ray, a junior visualiser at British advertising agency D J Keymer & Co in 1950, became a filmmaker and picked Pather Panchali for his debut is a story. While in London, he also designed book covers for Signet Press. One of its commissions was to illustrate a children’s version of Pather Panchali, and Ray had begun the first drafts on his voyage to London.

The story deeply influenced him. At the same time he had been watching path-breaking films from around the world, including French filmmaker Jean Renoir’s ‘The Rules Of The Game’, Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Rashomon’, Soviet filmmaker Alexander Dovzhenko’s ‘Earth’ and, most importantly, Italian neorealist filmmaker Vittorio De Sica’s ‘Bicycle Thieves’. He is said to have watched around 100 films in London and by the time he returned, he was a changed man determined to translate Pather Panchali into film.

Incidentally, Bicycle Thieves is also part of the Time list. Ray literally followed in De Sica’s footsteps, refusing to either use studio lights or hire trained actors for enduring realism.

It took three long years to complete the film, and that was because no producer wanted to finance it. Ray kept his day job as a graphic designer and did the shooting on weekends. A good part of his salary went into the film, but that was obviously not enough. He sold off his prized gramophone records, pawned his insurance policy and even his wife’s jewels for the film’s production.

When Ray exhausted his means, West Bengal govt stepped into the role of ‘production company’. Chief minister Bidhan Chandra Roy agreed to help and the home publicity department loaned him money in installments. Curiously, the loan records say it was for road improvement, as govt officials thought it was a documentary on rural development. They probably took the ‘Pather’ in its title literally. The film went on to win major awards, including National Film Award, Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1956, Best Human Document, Vatican Award, Diploma of Merit from Edinburgh, San Francisco’s Golden Gate for Best Director and Best Picture, and Critic’s Award for Best Film at Stratford, among others.

Pather Panchali was also a milestone for Ray’s contemporary Pandit Ravi Shankar, who scored the film’s music. The soundtrack is part of the list of 50 greatest film soundtracks compiled by The Guardian in 2007.

PATH(ER)-BREAKING FILM
- Pather Panchali means ‘ballad of the road’
- Adapted from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s 1929 novel of the same name
- Inspired by Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica’s film Bicycle Thieves
- Made over 3 years
- Released in 1955
- Music by Pandit Ravi Shankar
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THE TIMES OF INDIA (April 1, 2024)

An article, ‘Going on 70, and still India’s finest film’ published in TOI on March 31, stated the following, “Curiously, the loan records say it was for road improvement, as govt officials thought it was a documentary on rural development. They probably took the ‘Pather’ in its title literally”.

Responding to the statement, reader Amit Shanker has written, “This is absolutely incorrect. I know it for a fact, because my real uncle Prakash Swarup Mathur, who was director publicity in the BC Roy govt, was the person responsible for arranging funds for Pather Panchali. And he was the one who went to Cannes, on West Bengal govt’s behalf, to receive the award.”

Shanker adds, “To put the record straight, Ray had exhausted all his resources and the film had been rejected by both critics and financiers, when Ray’s mother approached a friend of BC Roy (then West Bengal CM) to enquire if the government could help with funds. An appointment was promptly granted and the lady was able to convince Roy to say yes to funding the film. Govt didn’t have any provision for funding films and Roy called in Mathur, my uncle, to find a way.

Roy and my uncle were both too highly educated for anyone to say they thought it was a documentary on rural development. They knew exactly what they were doing. Like any other bureaucrat would have done, my uncle too was initially reluctant to oblige but just because the CM insisted, he arranged for the funds from his department and put the expenses under the road improvement head.

Despite all the obstacles, my uncle managed to get Ray about Rs 2 lakh, which was the entire cost of the film. Mym other remembers vividly, Ray coming to their house regularly and showing my uncle and his colleagues the rushes.”

Going on 70, and still India’s finest film