The Apu Trilogy
The Apu Trilogy | |
---|---|
Region 2 box set cover of Satyajit Ray's trilogy | |
Directed by | Satyajit Ray |
Written by | Satyajit Ray |
Screenplay by | Satyajit Ray |
Based on | Pather Panchali and Aparajito by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay |
Produced by | Satyajit Ray |
Starring |
|
Cinematography | Pather Pachali was distributed by The Aurora Film Corporation) |
Release dates | Pather Panchali:
Apur Sansar :
|
Running time | 342 minutes (total) |
Country | India |
Language | Bengali |
The Apu Trilogy comprises three Indian
The films are based on two
Plot summaries
The three films comprise a "
Pather Panchali (English, "Song of the Little Road")
Apu's early experiences in rural Bengal as the son of a poor but high caste family are presented. Apu's 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.
Aparajito (English, "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 unrelenting poverty, Apu manages to get formal schooling and turns out to be a brilliant student. He moves to Calcutta to pursue his education. He slowly distanced himself from his rural roots and his mother who was not keeping well at the time. In the process the growing Apu comes into conflict with his mother. Later he is informed that, when his mother dies too, he has to learn to live alone.
Apur Sansar (English, "The World of Apu")
Attempting to become a writer, Apu unexpectedly finds himself pressured to marry a girl whose mother rejected her mentally ill bridegroom on the day of their wedding. 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
Ray gathered an inexperienced crew, although both his cameraman
Ray's international career started in earnest after the success of his next film, Aparajito (The Unvanquished).[10] This film shows the eternal struggle between the ambitions of Apu as a young man and the mother who loves him.[10] Some critics, notably Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak, rank it even higher than the first film.[10] Aparajito won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The film is also notable for its application of bounce lighting to recreate the effect of daylight on sets with the use of large scale diffusers, pioneered by the cinematographer Subrata Mitra.[11]
Ray had not thought about a trilogy while making Aparajito, and it occurred to him only after being asked about the idea in Venice.
Cast and characters
Character | Film | ||
---|---|---|---|
Pather Panchali (1955) |
Aparajito (1956) |
The World of Apu (1959) | |
Apurba "Apu" Roy | Subir Banerjee | Pinaki Sen Gupta (boy) Smaran Ghosal (adolescent) |
Soumitra Chatterjee |
Durga Roy | Runki Banerjee (child) Uma Dasgupta (teenager) |
||
Harihar Roy | Kanu Banerjee | ||
Sarbajaya Roy | Karuna Banerjee | ||
Indir Thakrun | Chunibala Devi | ||
Prasanna | Tulsi Chakraborty | ||
Bhabataran | Ramani Ranjan Sen | ||
Nanda Babu | Charu Prakash Ghosh | ||
Headmaster | Subodh Ganguly | ||
Aparna | Sharmila Tagore | ||
Kajal | Alok Chakravarty | ||
Pulu | Swapan Mukherjee | ||
Pulu's wife | Sefalika Devi | ||
Sasinarayan | Dhiresh Majumdar | ||
The Landlord | Dhiren Ghosh |
Critical reception
This trilogy is considered by critics around the globe to rank among the greatest achievements of
This extract from Youth, by South African author J. M. Coetzee, talks of the music in the Apu trilogy, which is based on Indian classical music:
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 lasts long after the film has ended.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Pather Panchali has a 97% fresh rating based on an aggregate of 38 reviews[16] and in 2009 was included in its list of top 100 foreign films.[17] Aparajito has a 94% fresh rating based on an aggregate of 16 reviews,[18] and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) has a 100% fresh rating based on an aggregate of 22 reviews.[19] This makes The Apu Trilogy one of the highest-rated film trilogies of all time (97%, 94%, 100%), along with the Toy Story trilogy (100%, 100%, 99%), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (91%, 96%, 93%), the original Star Wars trilogy (94%, 97%, 83%), and the Before trilogy (100%, 95%, 98%).
Film critic
The great, sad, gentle sweep of "The Apu Trilogy" remains in the mind of the moviegoer as a promise of what film can be. Standing above fashion, it creates a world so convincing that it becomes, for a time, another life we might have lived.[20]
Theme
Andre Robinson, in his book Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye, comments that the three films differ in their predominant moods, and he compares the trilogy to the development of an Indian classical raga.[21]
Legacy
In 1988,
Pather Panchali was included in various other all-time greatest film lists, including
Apur Panchali is a Bengali film based on Subir Banerjee's life, who played child Apu in the first installment of Apu Trilogy.[53][54] Director Kaushik Ganguly won the award of best director for Apur Panchali in the 44th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in November 2013.[55] The director mentioned in an interview that he found similarities between certain parts of the life of Subir Banerjee and the iconic character Apu.[53] In the film actor Parambrata Chatterjee portrays a younger Subir Banerjee, while Ardhendu Bannerjee plays the role of the aged Banerjee.[56]
Influence
According to Michael Sragow of The Atlantic Monthly in 1994:
In the four decades since Ray's debut as a writer-director—with the first Apu movie, Pather Panchali (1955)—his influence has been felt both in the type of work other directors attempt and in the means they employ to execute it. The youthful
dramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy, which Terrence Rafferty has rightly called "cinema's purest Bildungsroman". In baggy-pants homage to Ray, American TV's cartoon-burlesque Bildungsroman, The Simpsons—which could be called "The Education of Bart Simpson"—contains an Indian convenience-store owner named Apu.[57]
Across the world, filmmakers such as
Awards and nominations
National awards
- President's Medals
- Winner – 1955 – President's Gold & Silver Medals (New Delhi) – Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)[74]
- Winner – 1959 – President's Gold Medal (New Delhi) – Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)[75]
- Winner – 1956 – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- Winner – 1956 – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- Winner – 1960 – Best Film – Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)
International film festivals
- Winner – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- Winner – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- Nominated – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- 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)
- Winner – 1957 – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- Winner – 1960 – Selznick Golden Laurel for Best Film – Aparajito (The Unvanquished)
- 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)[76]
- Winner – 1956 – Diploma of Merit – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- Winner – 1960 – Diploma of Merit – Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)
- 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)
- Winner – 1958 – Best Film – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- 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 – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- Winner – Best Foreign Film – Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)[75]
- Kinema Junpo Awards (Tokyo)
- Winner – 1967 – Best Foreign Film – Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)[77]
- Bodil Awards (Denmark)[78]
- Winner – 1967 – Best Non-European Film – Aparajito(The Unvanquished)
- Winner – 1969 – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- British Academy Film Awards (United Kingdom)
- Nominated – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- Nominated – 1959 – BAFTA Award for Best Film – Aparajito (The Unvanquished)
- Nominated – 1959 – BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress – Aparajito (The Unvanquished) – Karuna Banerjee
- Nominated – 1962 – BAFTA Award for Best Film – Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)
- Other awards
- Winner – 1956 Golden Carbao (Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- Winner – 1956 Vatican Award (Rome) – Pather Panchali(Song of the Little Road)
- Winner – 1958–1959 Golden Laurel for Best Foreign Film (United States) – Aparajito (The Unvanquished)[79]
See also
- Avijatrik
- Bengali cinema
- Cinema of India
- Parallel Cinema
References
Citations
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- ^ Seton 1971, p. 95
- ^ a b Seton 1971, pp. 112–15
- ^ "Filmi Funda Pather Panchali (1955)". The Telegraph. Calcutta, India. 20 April 2005. Archived from the original on 20 April 2005. Retrieved 29 April 2006.
- ^ a b c Robinson 2003, pp. 91–106
- ^ a b "Subrata Mitra". Internet Encyclopedia of Cinematographers. Retrieved 22 May 2009.
- ^ Wood 1972, p. 61
- ^ Wood 1972
- ^ Ray mentions this in Ray 1993, p. 13
- ^ Robinson 2003, p. 5
- ^ Pather Panchali at Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ "Best of Rotten Tomatoes: Foreign". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on 3 June 2009. Retrieved 19 April 2009.
- ^ Aparajito at Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ The Apu Trilogy at Rotten Tomatoes
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- user-generated source]
- ^ [1] Archived 7 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Aparajito". Satyajit Ray official site. Archived from the original on 21 November 2015. Retrieved 1 May 2009.
General bibliography
- Ray, S (1993). Our films, their films (3 ed.). Asia Book Corp. of America. ISBN 978-0-86311-317-8.
- Robinson, Andrew (1989). Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-06946-6.
- Robinson, A (2003). Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker. I. B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-86064-965-3.
- ISBN 978-0-253-16815-3.
- Wood, R (1972). The Apu trilogy. November Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-85631-003-4.
Further reading
- Nyce, Ben (1988). Satyajit Ray: A Study of His Films. Praeger. 1988. ISBN 978-0275926663.
External links
- Pather Panchali at IMDb
- Aparajito at IMDb
- The World of Apu at IMDb
- The Apu Trilogy Archived 10 July 2017 at the Wayback Machine at SatyajitRay.org
- The Apu Trilogy Archived 2 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine at Janus Films
- The Apu Trilogy (1955, 1956, 1959) in Time
- Voted #17 on The Arts and Faith Top 100 Films (2010) Archived 4 April 2010 at the Wayback Machine
- The Apu Trilogy: Behind the Universal an essay by Criterion Collection