- published: 27 Jun 2012
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Aparajito (Bengali: অপরাজিত Ôporajito; The Unvanquished) is a 1956 Indian Bengali drama film directed by Satyajit Ray, and is the second part of The Apu Trilogy. It is adapted from the last one-fifth of Bibhutibhushan Bannerjee's novel Pather Panchali and the first one-third of its sequel Aparajito. It starts off where the previous film Pather Panchali ended, with Apu's family moving to Varanasi, and chronicles Apu's life from childhood to adolescence in college, right up to his mother's death, when he is left all alone.
When Ray started making Pather Panchali, he had no plans of following it up with a sequel. The critical and commercial success of the film prompted him to start making Aparajito. Unlike his previous venture, where he stayed faithful to the novel, Ray took some bold artistic decisions here, like portraying the relationship between Apu and his mother in a very different manner. As a result, in contrast to its predecessor, the film was not received well locally; Ray recalled that "as for the suburban audience, it was shocked by the portrayal of the mother and son relationship, so sharply at variance with the conventional notion of mutual sweetness and devotion".