The Apu Trilogy

Name	The Apu Trilogy
Caption	Region 2 box set cover
Director	Satyajit Ray
Producer	Satyajit Ray
Screenplay	Satyajit Ray
Based on
Starring	Kanu BanerjeeKaruna Banerjee
Music	Ravi Shankar
Cinematography	Subrata Mitra
Editing	Dulal Dutta
Studio	Government of West Bengal
Distributor	Edward Harrison
Released	1956
Runtime	342 minutes
Country
Language	Bengali
Budget	Rs. 1.5 lakh ($3,000)
Gross	$722,579

The Apu Trilogy is a trilogy consisting of three Bengali films directed by Satyajit Ray: Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu). The films — completed 1955-1959 — were based on two Bengali novels written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay: Pather Panchali (1929) and Aparajito (1932). The original music for the trilogy was composed by Ravi Shankar.

Produced on a shoestring budget of Rs. 1.5 lakh ($3000) using an amateur cast and crew, the trilogy was a milestone in Indian cinema and remains one of the finest examples of Parallel Cinema. The three films went on to win many national and international awards, including three National Film Awards and seven awards from the Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals. They are today frequently listed among the greatest films of all time and considered one of the greatest film trilogies ever made.

Plot

(1955).]] The films are a "coming of age" narrative in the vein of a bildungsroman, describing the childhood, education and early maturity of a young Bengali named Apu Roy in the early part of the 20th century. The first film Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) is about Apu's early experiences in rural Bengal, as the son of a poor but high caste family. His father Harihar, a Brahmin, has difficulty in supporting his family. After the death of Apu's sister, Durga, the family moves to the holy city of Benares.

In the second film Aparajito (The Unvanquished), the family's finances are still precarious. After his father dies there, Apu and his mother Sarbajaya come back to a village in Bengal. Despite incessant poverty, Apu manages to get formal schooling and turns out to be a brilliant student. The growing Apu comes into conflict with his mother. Later, when his mother dies too, he has to learn to live alone.

In the third film Apur Sansar (The World of Apu), attempting to become a writer, Apu accidentally finds himself pressured to marry a girl who has rejected her mentally ill bridegroom. Their blossoming marriage ends in her death in childbirth, after which the despairing Apu abandons his child, but eventually returns to accept his responsibilities.

Production

In 1950, Ray had decided that Pather Panchali, the classic bildungsroman of Bengali literature, published in 1928 by Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhyay, would be the subject matter for his first film. This semi-autobiographical novel describes the growing up of Apu, a small boy in a Bengal village. He went ahead with the film after meeting Jean Renoir during filming of The River (1951) and after watching the Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948) while he was in London. Besides the influence of European cinema and Bengali literature, Ray is also indebted to the Indian theatrical tradition, particularly the rasa theory of classical Sanskrit drama. The complicated doctrine of rasa "centers predominantly on feeling experienced not only by the characters but also conveyed in a certain artistic way to the spectator. The duality of this kind of a rasa imbrication" shows in The Apu Trilogy.

Ray gathered an inexperienced crew, although both his cameraman Subrata Mitra and art director Bansi Chandragupta went on to achieve great acclaim. The cast consisted of mostly amateur artists. Shooting started in late 1952, using Ray's personal savings. He had hoped once the initial shots had been completed, he would be able to obtain funds to support the project; however, such funding was not forthcoming. Pather Panchali was shot over the unusually long period of three years, because shooting was possible only from time to time, when Ray or production manager Anil Chowdhury could arrange further money. Even greater help than Renoir's encouragement occurred when Ray showed a sequence to John Huston who was in India scouting locations for The Man Who Would Be King. The sequence is the remarkable vision Apu and his sister have of the train running through the countryside. It was the only sequence Ray had filmed due to his small budget. Huston notified Monroe Wheeler at the New York Museum of Modern Art that a major talent was on the horizon. In India, the reaction to the film was enthusiastic, The Times of India wrote that "It is absurd to compare it with any other Indian cinema [...] Pather Panchali is pure cinema". In the United Kingdom, Lindsay Anderson wrote a glowing review of the film. Bosley Crowther, then the most influential critic of The New York Times, wrote a scathing review of the film that its distributor Ed Harrison thought would kill off the film when it got released in the United States, but instead it enjoyed an exceptionally long run.

Ray's international career started in earnest after the success of his next film, Aparajito (The Unvanquished). Many critics, notably Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak, rank it even higher than the first film.

Ray had not thought about a trilogy while making Aparajito, and it occurred to him only after being asked about the idea in Venice. The final installation of the series, Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) was made in 1959. Just like the two previous films, a number of critics find this to be the supreme achievement of the trilogy (Robin Wood, Aparna Sen). Ray introduced two of his favourite actors Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore in this film. The film finds Apu living in a nondescript Kolkata house in near-poverty. He becomes involved in an unusual marriage with Aparna, the scenes of their life together forming "one of the cinema's classic affirmative depiction of married life", but tragedy ensues. After Apur Sansar was harshly criticised by a Bengali critic, Ray wrote an article defending it—a rare event in Ray's film making career (the other major instance involved the film Charulata, Ray's personal favourite). His success had little influence on his personal life in the years to come. Ray continued to live with his mother, uncle and other members of his extended family in a rented house.

Critical reception

This trilogy is considered by critics around the globe to rank among the greatest achievements of Indian film, and is established as one of the most historically important cinematic debuts. Pather Panchali won at least thirteen international prizes (including Best Human Document at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival), followed by eleven international prizes for Aparajito (including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival) and numerous other awards for Apur Sansar (including the Sutherland Trophy at the London Film Festival). When Ray made Pather Panchali, he worked with a cast and crew most of whom had never been previously involved in the film medium. Ray himself at the time of directing Pather Panchali had primarily worked in the advertising industry, although he had served as assistant director on Jean Renoir's 1951 film The River. From this foundation, Ray went on to create other highly acclaimed films, like Charulata, Mahanagar, and Aranyer Dinratri, and his international success energized other Bengal filmmakers like Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak.

This extract from the South African author J. M. Coetzee, talks of the music in the Apu trilogy, which is based on Indian classical music. From Coetzee's Youth:

At the Everyman Cinema there is a season of Satyajit Ray. He watches the Apu trilogy on successive nights in a state of rapt absorption. In Apu's bitter, trapped mother, his engaging, feckless father he recognizes, with a pang of guilt, his own parents. But it is the music above all that grips him, dizzyingly complex interplays between drums and stringed instruments, long arias on the flute whose scale or mode - he does not know enough about music theory to be sure which - catches at his heart, sending him into a mood of sensual melancholy that last long after the film has ended.

On Rotten Tomatoes, Pather Panchali has a 97% fresh rating based on an aggregate of 34 reviews, Aparajito has a 93% fresh rating based on an aggregate of 14 reviews, and The World of Apu has a 100% fresh rating based on an aggregate of 16 reviews, with all three films having a 100% fresh rating based on reviews from top critics.

Legacy

Sight & Sound, the British Film Institute's film magazine, listed Pather Panchali several times in its Critics' Poll of all-time greatest films, in 1962 (ranked #11), 1982 (ranked #79), 1992 (ranked #6) and 2002 (ranked #22). The World of Apu appeared in 1982, ranked at #42. while The Apu Trilogy was ranked separately at #88. If the votes are combined, then The Apu Trilogy as a whole would be ranked at #14 in 1982, In 1998, the Asian film magazine Cinemaya's critics' poll of all-time greatest films ranked The Apu Trilogy at #7 on the list, while Pather Panchali alone was ranked at #2 on the same list. If the votes are combined, then The Apu Trilogy would be ranked at #1. In 1999, The Village Voice ranked Pather Panchali at #12 (tied with The Godfather) in its top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list, based on a poll of critics, while The Apu Trilogy was ranked separately at #54 in the same poll. If the votes are combined, The Apu Trilogy would be ranked at #5. In 2000, an audience poll of best Asian films conducted by MovieMail ranked The Apu Trilogy at #2 on the list.

Pather Panchali was included in various other all-time greatest film lists, including Time Out magazine's "Centenary Top One Hundred Films" in 1995, the San Francisco Chronicle "Hot 100 Films From the Past" in 1997, the Rolling Stone "100 Maverick Movies of the Last 100 Years" in 1999, and the British Film Institute's Top Fifty "Must See" Children's Films in 2005. In 1996, The World of Apu was included in Movieline Magazine's "100 Greatest Foreign Films". In 2002, Pather Panchali and The World of Apu featured in "The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made". The Apu Trilogy as a whole was included in film critic Roger Ebert's list of "100 Great Movies" in 2001 and in Time magazine's All-Time 100 best movies list in 2005. It was also ranked #17 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.

Influence

According to Michael Sragow of The Atlantic Monthly in 1994:

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Across the world, filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, James Ivory, Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, Carlos Saura, Isao Takahata, Philip Kaufman, Wes Anderson and Danny Boyle have been influenced by The Apu Trilogy, with many others such as Akira Kurosawa praising the work. In Gregory Nava's 1995 film My Family, the final scene is duplicated from the final scene of Apur Sansar. Similar influences and references to the trilogy can be found, for example, in recent works such as Sacred Evil, Key's 2004 visual novel Clannad, Paul Auster's 2008 novel Man in the Dark, the Elements trilogy of Deepa Mehta and even in films of Jean-Luc Godard. The technique of bounce lighting pioneered by Subrata Mitra, to recreate the effect of daylight on sets, has also had a profound influence on the development of cinematography. Winner - 1959 - President's Gold Medal (New Delhi) - Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)

;National Film Awards

Winner - 1956 - Best Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

Winner - 1956 - Best Feature Film in Bengali - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

Winner - 1960 - Best Film - Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)

International film festivals

;Cannes Film Festival

Winner - 1956 - Best Human Document - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

Winner - 1956 - OCIC Award (Special Mention) - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

Nominated - 1956 - Golden Palm for Best Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

;Venice Film Festival

Winner - 1957 - Golden Lion of St. Mark for Best Film - Aparajito (The Unvanquished)

Winner - 1957 - Cinema Nuovo Award - Aparajito (The Unvanquished)

Winner - 1957 - Critics Award - Aparajito (The Unvanquished)

;Berlin International Film Festival

Winner - 1957 - Selznick Golden Laurel for Best Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

Winner - 1960 - Selznick Golden Laurel for Best Film - Aparajito (The Unvanquished)

;British Film Institute Awards, London Film Festival

Winner - 1957 - FIPRESCI Award - Aparajito (The Unvanquished)

Winner - 1960 - Sutherland Trophy for Best Original And Imaginative Film - Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)

Winner - 1980 - Wington Award - Apu Trilogy (for each film)

;Edinburgh International Film Festival

Winner - 1956 - Diploma Of Merit - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

Winner - 1960 - Diploma Of Merit - Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)

;San Francisco International Film Festival

Winner - 1957 - Golden Gate for Best Picture - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

Winner - 1957 - Golden Gate for Best Director - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) - Satyajit Ray

Winner - 1958 - Golden Gate for Best Picture - Aparajito (The Unvanquished)

Winner - 1958 - Golden Gate for Best Director - Aparajito (The Unvanquished) - Satyajit Ray

Winner - 1958 - International Critics' Award - Aparajito (The Unvanquished)

;Vancouver International Film Festival

Winner - 1958 - Best Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

;New York Film Festival

Winner - 1959 - Best Foreign Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

;Stratford Film Festival

Winner - 1958 - Critics' Award for Best Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

Other international awards

;National Board of Review Awards (United States)

Winner - 1958 - Best Foreign Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)

Winner - 1960 - Best Foreign Film - Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)

Notes

See also

Bengali cinema

* Cinema of West Bengal

Cinema of India

* Parallel Cinema

References

. . . .

External links

The Apu trilogy (SatyajitRay.org)

The Apu Trilogy (1955, 1956, 1959) in Time

Voted #17 on The Arts and Faith Top 100 Films (2010)

Category:Film trilogies Category:Cinema of India Category:Films directed by Satyajit Ray Category:Coming-of-age films