Rachel Dwyer on Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray had the three hall-marks of genius

1) he was intensely productive and individualistic. He was a true auteur who, as he gained in confidence, took over almost every aspect of film-making. Indeed, he was smart enough to make himself relatively independent of the financiers and distributors. 

2) Ray set limitations on himself the better to develop his strengths. Thus he wouldn't have 'playback singers' or 'item numbers' etc. Also, he refused to go in front of the camera precisely because he was so handsome and physically imposing. One may say, by scrupulously observing the limitations he had placed on himself, Ray had made himself truly autonomous and thus able to follow the promptings of his own 'daemon' or native genius, regardless of worldly considerations.  

3) at his best, his art was universal. True we can say 'Piccasso was Spanish. Such and such trait he displays in such and such work, has deep Spanish roots'. But, the fact is, it has deep roots in every other civilization. Ray is like Picasso in this respect. Indeed, he too was a hugely talented painter. On the other hand, it must be admitted that universality doesn't always go with 'kairos' or timeliness. Things may have been different in the Fifties, but after the Chinese invasion in 1962, Ray's films seemed irrelevant or exercises in obfuscation or self-deceit. 

However, mine may be a parochial, desi, view. 

The brilliant Rachel Dwyer writes of Satyajit Ray as 'the mind of Bengal' in Open Magazine

Ray’s powerful cinematic images were my foundation for a sense of India.

This is unlikely. Rachel had seen films set in India on TV as a kid. She thinks she first saw Ray's movies in 1980 when she moved to London to study Sanskrit at SOAS. This suggests an earlier interest in India. Surely she would have read 'Jungle book' and watched the Disney animated movie?  

I could imagine the Bengali countryside by recalling Apu and Durga in the kash grass seeing the train, or understand the beauty of the monsoon by recalling the rain on the pond with music by Ravi Shankar (Pather Panchali, 1955).

Sadly, my own imagined India was based entirely on 'It aint half hot, Mum'. This is because I had actually lived in the place.  

I could envisage the zamindari world by thinking of the chandelier in Jalsaghar (1958), or recall the stylish life of contemporary Calcutta from the trilogy (Pratidwandi, 1970, Seemabaddha, 1971, Jana Aranya, 1975), while seeing love grow in the crumbling world of the middle class (Apur Sansar, 1959) or the older city through the street life glimpsed through the shutters by Charulata (1964) and the splendour of now decaying mansions and their decaying families in it and in Ghare Baire (1984).

I suppose Rachel is saying that she was a serious student. If you study Sanskrit, you stay away from the riff-raff who watch Sholay or Guru Dutt films. Incidentally Sholay was shown on British TV in 1981.

Other highlights included the aesthetics of religion as portrayed in Devi (1960)

Religion is bad unless it is very very boring.  

and encounters of the urban youth with another India in Aranyer Din Ratri (1969).

I have to take my hat off to Rachel. Few Indians showed up when I ran those films at the LSE in 1980. I complained of this to Pamela Cullen at the Indian High Commission. She had heard the same complaint  many times before. My memory is that she suggested I invite some Bengali professors to talk about each film. Their PhD students would feel compelled to show up with their friends.  I explained that Bengali professors ran away when they saw me approach. They may be good hearted, but they don't tolerate stupid Madrasis. 

The stylish world of Uttam Kumar, the film star on the amazing train and Sharmila Tagore’s iconic glasses in Nayak (1966) and of the town of Darjeeling in Kanchenjunga (1962) are among the other lasting impressions of India bequeathed by Ray. Who can forget comparing his Bengali Varanasi in Aparajito (1956) with Joy Baba Felunath (1979)?

Who can forget that the latter film was infinitely worse? 

People have sometimes said I was bound to like Ray because he wasn’t Indian in his aesthetics.

He was a self-hating Indian. His uncle had introduced play-back singing into Indian cinema thus giving it its 'killer app' or u.s.p. Ray stayed away from anything which might make his films popular with Indians. We must keep out the riff-raff, you know.  

Yet, he was indisputably a true Bengali.

Bengal had thrived under the Raj. True Bengalis, like Niradh, yearned for the day Whites returned to rule over them. Not Italian Whites. Any other sort.  

Born in a well-known family and raised in Calcutta, a writer in Bengali (I’m proud to say my basic Bengali has allowed me to read a little)

She probably understands more of what she reads in Bengali because of her solid grounding in Sanskrit.  

and English, his Feluda stories are loved by the bhadralok middle class who admire his films (according to a Bengali famous in the Western academy, Ashis Nandy),

I think Rachel published this article before Nandy published an essay taking down Ray as a deracinated snob. He asked ' Was Ray really Indian? Or was he basically a highly westernized, deracinated cosmopolitan who dealt with Indian themes merely because he happened to live in India?” Nandy, a Christian, suggests that Ray knew little about village India, caste and society.

Other Bengalis suggested that the bhadralok only pretended to like Ray because he was famous in the West.

though they aren’t known in the West.

Ray stands higher in the West than in India.  

Ray was simultaneously at home in Western high culture and in Bengali, though perhaps somewhat unfamiliar with the rest of India.

He got married in Bombay where his Uncle was a leading director. Prithviraj Kapoor attended his wedding.  However, he doesn't seem to have watched many films from the South. 

Ray doesn’t seem to have been comfortable with Western popular culture,

he says he was a big fan of the popular films of the Thirties and Forties. Deanna Durbin was a particular favorite perhaps because, like Ray's wife, she was a gifted soprano.  

his admiration being for European art cinema rather than Hollywood.

He admired the Italian neo-realists. Then Nehru and Marie Seton got Rossellini to make 'Matri Bhumi'. Sadly, that Latin Lothario eloped with Bimal Roy's niece.  

Nor do his films showcase contemporary popular culture—he seems to have enjoyed the old-fashioned Europeans such as Miss Gilby (Jennifer Kendal) in Ghare Baire rather than the hippies of Pratidwandi.

Ray's generation hated the hippies. They showed no color consciousness.  

The latter and Jana Aranya show the grim realities of contemporary Calcutta and the boredom that ensues, while Seemabaddha depicts the shallowness of the allegedly glamorous lives of some the Calcutta elite.

Ray was following a long tradition of elitists scolding the slightly less elite. Think of Madhusudhan's 'Ekei Ki Boley Sabyata'. Still, anything in which Sharmila Tagore appears is worth watching. Her son too is a great actor. 

In Aranyer Din Ratri, the male group of modern, educated and seemingly ‘Westernised’ youth that travels from the city, is selfish and insensitive, and crass in seeking thrills in the forest.

They are tourists. Tourists are bad. Why can't they be Maoists instead?  

Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) is composed and dignified, even when seeing them bathing in their underwear or dancing the twist at night, deliberately loses the memory game and has an impressively cool book and record collection. The story is again from literature (it is based loosely on a novel by Sunil Ganguly), but seems very Western in its characters and style.

It has a dated, Fifties, feel. By 1970, tribal areas were seen as centers of Naxal activity. Jayprakash Narayan had begun his dialogue with the Maoists in Bihar in that year.  Still, it could be seen as a critique of the 'urban bourgeoisie' or something of that sort. 

It is easy to see why Ray’s films were classed as arthouse in the West.

They couldn't be classed as entertainment. If they weren't art, what were they?  

In Calcutta, they were screened in cinemas which showed regular Bengali films, whose audiences in the 1950s and 1960s didn’t watch much Hindi cinema, but enjoyed middle-class Bengali films, including the Uttam-Suchitra romances.

Ray did get Bengali audiences but those audiences didn't get much out of Ray. 

Ray doesn’t fit into the history of Bengali cinema in Calcutta, always standing apart.

He does. His uncle was the cinematographer of Tagore's one and only venture into film. Ray praised Ravi Shankar's eldest brothers experimental 'Kalpana'. Ray went in the opposite direction to his Uncle- Nitin Bose. Thanks to Marie Seton, he was seen as Nehru's favorite director. Indira, a fellow Shantiniketan alumni, had a soft spot for him. Thus he was India's official 'Art Cinema' auteur. Ray was wise enough to hedge his bets. He made some commercial movies in the early Sixties and later made a good enough fist of 'Sociological' movies in the Brahmo, Tagorean, tradition.  

The true heirs of the New Theatres were those who migrated to make Hindi films in Bombay, such as Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Shakti Samanta.

and Ray's uncle Nitin Bose. Ganga Jamuna was a big hit in 1961.  

The loss of the audiences of East Pakistan was probably a major factor in these directors looking for wider audiences, though they continued their relationship with the Bengali cultural world and worked closely with other Bengalis.

The Bengalis felt that Mumbai had more venture capital and a more entrepreneurial culture.  

In the 1970s, the Bombay Bengali filmmakers, including Hrishikesh Mukherjee and a younger generation, made middle-class or middle-brow cinema, often remaking Bengali films.

There had been a migration from Calcutta to Bombay even in the Thirties. Bengal had talent but less entrepreneurship. Still, generally speaking, Bengali films were remade in Hindi rather than the other way around.  

RAY HAS CLEAR links to the world of Bengali literature.

If he took his time, he could 'story-board' Bengali novellas like nobody else. One might say that Hindi Cinema offers an ersatz 'Bengaliness' which, I suppose, those who know the real thing might find meretricious.  

He made films based on the fiction of the most highly regarded Bengali authors, including Tagore and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, as did Tapan Sinha who drew also on Tagore and many others. Shankar (Mani Shankar Mukherjee) provided the stories for two of Ray’s Calcutta Trilogy—Seemabaddha and Jana Aranya—but also films for other directors, including the wonderful but non-art film Chowringhee (1968), with many of the great stars of Bengali cinema: Uttam Kumar, Supriya Devi, Utpal Dutt and Biswajeet.

Bengal has always had a surplus of talent. The allegation is that their producers were short-sighted or just looking for a tax write-off.  

It’s striking that Ray eschewed the most popular Bengali author for adaptations, that is Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay,

perhaps because Ray wasn't comfortable with strong roles for women.  

whose many novels and stories were made into Bengali films, notably Devdas (many versions), Krishnakanter Will (1932 and 2007), Rajalakshmi O Srikanta (1958), and Hindi films, some of the latter by Bimal Roy—Parineeta (1953), Biraj Bahu (1954), Devdas (1955)—as did the 1970s Bengali and Bengali-influenced directors who made Majhli Didi (1967), Choti Bahu (1971), Khushboo (1975), Swami (1977). It would be fascinating to know more about why he didn’t use these famous works and how he chose others.

Sharat's work is psychologically complex. Ray was like Tagore, he threw so mighty a shadow that no intricacy of emotion was possible, more particularly for women, in his shade.  

Ray made many historical films, including the classic Jalsaghar, whose use of classical music and the crumbling world of the zamindar makes it among my favourites,

It is terrible. If you have Begum Akhtar- who started off as a film actress- you should get one or two specially commissioned ghazals to ensure the movie will be a super-hit.  

or his Tagore-stories (Teen Kanya (1961), Charulata, Ghare Baire).

Charulata is good. Ghare Baire was terrible.  

His Calcutta Trilogy can be compared to Mrinal Sen’s, whose trilogy is more radically arthouse.

It was more 'radical' but Sen changed direction later on. There was less to him than met the eye. Still, he launched Mithun.  

The fame of Ritwik Ghatak, regarded by some as a greater filmmaker than Ray,

one of his films was. He was a Jungian.  

has remained mostly among Bengalis and cinephiles. Even though the British Film Institute has issued DVDs of some of his films, and an excellent book in their ‘Classics’ series on Meghe Dhaka Tara (by Manishita Dass), his films have not found an audience in the West.

It is said that Congress and the Communists ganged up to make him unpopular in his native Bengal.  

Ray tried to promote him, but they differed temperamentally and occasionally clashed.

Ghatak got into films before Ray did. However, unlike Ray, Ghatak was seen as political. He couldn't be a 'sarkari' director. 

Rachel goes on to show her considerable knowledge of Ray's influence on contemporary Bengali cinema which, however, will be of little interest to non-Bengalis. 

The following, however, is interesting- 

Martin Scorsese says his Taxi Driver was influenced by Ray’s Abhijan (1962),

which was a commercial success. It is very well cut and has Waheeda Rehman. It is said that Ray took on the project for a friend who got cold feet. I suppose, under the Studio system, Ray would have produced a whole bunch of successful 'noir' type movies while still getting big budgets for prestigious or passion projects. As in other industries where Bengal previously had the lead, the quality of indigenous entrepreneurship was somewhat lacking. The rise and rise of Telugu Cinema has a lot to do with the success of the 'Andhrapreneur'.  

while others, including Francis Ford Coppola and Wes Anderson, have praised his work fulsomely.

Coppola's 'Godfather' has been hugely influential in India.  

Very few cultural figures from India were widely known in the West before Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and the subsequent interest in Indian English literature.

I think that is still true. Vikram Seth seems to have stopped writing. Rushdie has just brought out yet another big big book.  

Before the 1980s, the only household names I recall were Rabindranath Tagore, Ravi Shankar and Satyajit Ray.

Ravi Shankar did the music for a film by Chetan Anand which, I believe, was the first Indian film to win an international award (at Cannes). But it wasn't released in India because it was miserabilist shit.  

It’s striking that the three acclaimed figures were all Bengali upper-caste men.

They were from families deeply engaged in the Arts. Tagore came to Okakura and Rothenstein's attention through his nephew who was an artist. Ravi Shankar was the younger brother of Uday Shankar whose dance troupe was internationally famous. Ray's uncle was Nitin Bose for whom his wife had acted and done some play-back singing. 

Is the work of Ray another case of Bengali exceptionalism?

No. It is a case of Bengal's decline. Ray was considered great in the West, not in Bengal. By the late Twenties, Bengali poets had rejected Tagore for T.S Elot. Ravi Shankar was the music director for AIR in Delhi before he started touring internationally. Previously he was in Mumbai where he did the music for 'Dharti ki Lal'. His connection with Bengal was somewhat tenuous. By contrast, Ray- like his father and grandfather- remained rooted in Calcutta whose literature and cultural scene he greatly enriched. 

Bengal’s sense of (not entirely unjustified) cultural superiority makes many Bengalis comfortable in their own culture as well as in others.

They were culturally superior to the rest of us. Indeed, in our hearts, we still think that is true. The problem is that many Bengalis pretend to have read obscure authors or seen art movies. We can't tell the bluffers from the genuine article.  

They keep pre-war British food traditions alive and about 90 per cent of the queue outside 221B Baker Street is for those waiting to see the home of a Bengali who happened to be born British.

There is a very good Tibetan writer who has conclusively proved (to my mind) that Holmes was a Tibetan Yogi of some very advanced description.  

Ray’s films guide us through Bengali culture from the nineteenth century adaptation of Western ideas and culture,

No. He gives us a glimpse of the Tagores' rejection of the entrepreneurial legacy of Dwarkanath.  

through communist and leftist eras,

Not really. He had a vague sense that he ought to be on the side of the Naxals. But he had little understanding- perhaps he had little interest in- what was actually happening.  

to the loss of Calcutta’s status as a global city,

because the Brits left.  

economic powerhouse and India’s cultural heartland.

It wasn't the heartland. It was a 'City of Palaces' where new Western (but also Eastern- e.g. from Japan) ideas were first introduced. But resisting the partition of Bengal was a mistake. The bhadralok, despite Tagore's warnings, insisted on slitting their own throats again and again. Perhaps Mamta will stem the rot. Calcutta is still the Indian City with the biggest and most promising economic hinterland. It is more livable than Dacca and can rise swiftly because plenty of 'low hanging fruit' are available.  

Bengal has been apart from the rest of India in many ways, seeing itself as a leader more than an equal.

The founder of the current ruling party was the son of Sir Ashutosh. That's one reason Modi is so keen to win over the Bengalis.  

Bengal has even followed its own unique politics, from Netaji to Didi.

Netaji and his brother failed. Didi is far smarter. She will use the Muslims. She won't become their dupe. I say that with fingers crossed.  

One can only speculate how Ray would show the current political shifts whose results will coincide with his birth centenary.

Nonsense! Ray would show that Modi is Hitler. Mamta would pat him on the back. Rahul will explain that the real meaning of 'Abhijaan' is India should break up. The problem with the buddhijivi is that they need a foreign hand to lick or one to give them awards for being too proud to lick a hand nobody wants slobbered over. The rest of the time, they enjoy scolding everybody for being Bengali or not being Bengali enough.