Speaking of Films
BY SATYAJIT RAY
Rupa Publications
2005
Even the most ardent of Ray’s fans have probably not heard of ‘Bishay Chalachitra’- a compilation of Ray’s articles on cinema in Bengali. This book remedies such a lapse in the cinegoer’s education. Thanks to Gopa Maujamdar, who has translated the articles of Ray, readers outside Bengal for the first time will be able to read the most memorable writings on film and film-making by the master film-maker. With the masterly precision and clarity that characterize his films , Ray discusses a wide array of subjects ranging from the language of cinema, use of background music in films, Soviet cinema and the making of his films like Pather Panchali, Apur Sansar, Charulata etc.
This book with its compilation of eighteen articles on film-making can serve as a bible for established film-makers as well as for novices taking their first faltering steps into the world of film-making. It can also serve as a ready reference for research scholars on film studies. This book can do all this and more without losing its quality of easy readability and interest for a lay-person.
The first of these articles was written as early as 1955 in the context of a fledgling film industry. But it has not lost its relevance and freshness even after fifty years. This article called ‘Alias Indir Thakrun’ is on Ray’s search for his character Indir Thakrun of ‘Pather Panchali’ fame. He at length describes how he found his character in Chunibala Devi who realistically portrayed the character of Apu’s seventy-five year old grandmother Indir. He highlights the acting prowess of this old woman when he describes the bier-scene where Chunibala plays dead and is strapped to a bier. Ray describes how at the end of the scene much to the consternation of the unit Chunibala did not move and sat up only after a while saying “Has the shot been taken already? Why nobody told me! So I was still pretending to be a corpse.” Such anecdotes, interspersed throughout the collection, make it extremely readable.
Perhaps, Ray’s most comprehensive and exhaustive article on the art of film –making is ‘The Making of a Film: Structure, language and Style’. In this article, he describes how image and sound, the basic ingredients of any a film, form the distinctive language of a film. Ray has reduced film-making to a simple three –phase process-writing the scenario, shooting the scene with actors at an appropriate location and editing the scene. And yet, this simplicity is belied by his attention to detail when he describes the shot by shot complexity of the scene where Harihar is informed about the death of his daughter Durga by his wife Sarabjaya. One such shot highlights the grief of the mother Sarabjaya with a close-shot of the the bubbling rice-pot. It is these intricate and yet simple filmic renderings that have made the film world acknowledge Ray as the master craftsman.
This intricate merging of the simple and complex is also reflected in the content and the language of the collection of articles. Lucid and precise, the articles give valuable insights into the mind of a genius. A ‘must read’ for all Indian cinema buffs and Satyajit Ray fans.
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