Apu trilogy
Encyclopedia
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 Festival
s. They are today frequently listed among the greatest films of all time and considered one of the greatest film trilogies ever made.
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 (Apurba Kumar 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.
, 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. With a loan from the West Bengal government
, the film was finally completed and released in 1955 to great critical and popular success, sweeping up numerous prizes and having long runs in both India and abroad. During the making of the film, Ray refused funding from sources who demanded a change in script or the supervision of the producer
, and ignored advice from the government (which finally funded the film anyway) to incorporate a happy ending in having Apu's family join a "development project". 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. However, the reaction was not uniformly positive. After watching the movie, François Truffaut
is reported to have said, "I don’t want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands." 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). This film shows the eternal struggle between the ambitions of a young man, Apu, and the mother who loves him. Many critics, notably Mrinal Sen
and Ritwik Ghatak, rank it even higher than the first film. Aparajito won the Golden Lion
at the Venice Film Festival
. The film is also notable for introducing the technique of bounce lighting, to recreate the effect of daylight on sets, pioneered by the cinematographer Subrata Mitra
.
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.
, 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:
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. Pather Panchali has been included on Rotten Tomatoes' list of top 100 foreign films.
, 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. In the 1992 edition, both Aparajito
and The World of Apu were tied at #127, while The Apu Trilogy was ranked separately at #88. In a combined list of Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll results in 2002, Pather Panchali was ranked at #28, The World of Apu at #93 and Aparajito
at #160. If the votes are combined, then The Apu Trilogy as a whole would be ranked at #14 in 1982, #4 in 1992 and #14 in 2002.
In 1988, John Kobal
's poll of critics and filmmakers ranked The Apu Trilogy at #35 on the list. 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.
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
.
National Film Awards
Venice Film Festival
Berlin International Film Festival
British Film Institute Awards
, London Film Festival
Edinburgh International Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival
Vancouver International Film Festival
New York Film Festival
Stratford
Film Festival
(United States)
Kinema Junpo Awards
(Tokyo)
Bodil Awards
(Denmark) http://www.filmkritik.dk/1b.lasso?n=4
British Academy Film Awards
(United Kingdom)
Other awards
But soon, by the quirk of fate, he completely loses his desire to write when his wife Aparna dies during child birth. In a poignant scene from the film ‘Apur Sansar’, a defeated Apu is seen consigning the pages of his unfinished manuscript to the silence of the forest. He then returns to his family and finally meets his son Kajol.
In the final scene of the film, Apu is seen with Kajol, walking along the banks of the river. Kajol reignites in his father the desire to live and the journey of life continues.
For decades now, audiences and readers around the world have wondered what happened to Apu. Did death and discovery meet at some common ground later in his life? What happened to his aspirations of becoming an author? Audiences felt that the journey was incomplete, the narrative untold.
Iti Apu, a long narrative poem written by Prithwiraj Choudhury creates a fictitious plot and traces Apu’s journey into the 1990s. Apu is now in his seventies, living in Calcutta. In a long letter written to his childhood friend Pulu, he looks back at his life and tells the story that audiences have wanted to hear.
The poem has been read by Soumitra Chattopadhay. Soumitra played Apu’s character in Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece. Like the fictitious Apu, Soumitra is now in his seventies and lives in Calcutta. The photography is by Joydeep Banerjee, background score by Shantanu Bandopadhay, Art Direction by Tapan Biswas. Mrigankasekhar Ganguly has edited and directed this short film based on the poem by Prithwiraj.
ITI APU
Bengali, 2011
written by prithwiraj choudhury
concept prithwiraj choudhury & mrigankasekhar ganguly
screenplay mrigankasekhar ganguly
art direction tapan biswas
direction of photography joydeep banerjee
editing & direction mrigankasekhar ganguly
Trilogy
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, or video games...
consisting of three Bengali films
Bengali cinema
Bengali cinema refers to the Bengali language filmmaking industries in the Bengal region of South Asia. There are two major film-making hubs in the region: one in Kolkata, West Bengal, India and the other in Dhaka, Bangladesh .The history of cinema in Bengal dates back to the 1890s, when the first...
directed by Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature...
: Pather Panchali
Pather Panchali
Pather Panchali is a 1955 Bengali drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray and produced by the Government of the Indian state of West Bengal. Based on Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's 1929 Bengali novel of the same name, the film was the directorial debut of Ray...
(Song of the Little Road), Aparajito
Aparajito
Aparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar
Apur Sansar
Apur Sansar , also known as The World of Apu, is a Bengali film directed by Satyajit Ray. It is the third part of The Apu Trilogy, about the childhood and early adulthood of a young Bengali named Apu in the early twentieth century Indian subcontinent...
(The World of Apu). The films — completed 1955-1959 — were based on two Bengali novels
Bengali novels
Bengali novels occupy a major part of Bengali literature. Though the first Bengali novel was "Karuna O Phulmonir Bibaran", the Bengali novel actually started its journey with Durgeshnondini written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1865...
written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay
Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay was one of the most famous Bengali novelist and writer of modern Bengali literature...
: Pather Panchali
Pather Panchali (novel)
Pather Panchali is a novel written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay and was later adapted into a film of the same name by Satyajit Ray...
(1929) and Aparajito (1932). The original music for the trilogy was composed by Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...
.
Produced on a shoestring budget of Rs.
Indian rupee
The Indian rupee is the official currency of the Republic of India. The issuance of the currency is controlled by the Reserve Bank of India....
1.5 lakh
Lakh
A lakh is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand . It is widely used both in official and other contexts in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and is often used in Indian English.-Usage:...
($3000) using an amateur cast and crew, the trilogy was a milestone in Indian cinema
Cinema of India
The cinema of India consists of films produced across India, which includes the cinematic culture of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. Indian films came to be followed throughout South Asia and...
and remains one of the finest examples of Parallel Cinema
Parallel Cinema
The Indian New Wave, commonly known in India as Art Cinema or Parallel Cinema as an alternative to the mainstream commercial cinema, is a specific movement in Indian cinema, known for its serious content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the sociopolitical climate of the times...
. The three films went on to win many national and international awards, including three National Film Awards
National Film Awards
The National Film Awards is the most prominent film award ceremony in India. Established in 1954, it is administered, along with the International Film Festival of India and the Indian Panorama, by the Indian government's Directorate of Film Festivals since 1973.Every year, a national panel...
and seven awards from the Cannes
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
, Berlin
Berlin International Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival , also called the Berlinale, is one of the world's leading film festivals and most reputable media events. It is held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in West Berlin in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978...
and Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
s. They are today frequently listed among the greatest films of all time and considered one of the greatest film trilogies ever made.
Plot
Coming of age
Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies...
" narrative in the vein of a bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
, describing the childhood, education and early maturity of a young Bengali
Bengali people
The Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal in South Asia. They speak Bengali , which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী...
named Apu (Apurba Kumar 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
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
, as the son of a poor but high caste family. His father Harihar, a Brahmin
Brahmin
Brahmin Brahman, Brahma and Brahmin.Brahman, Brahmin and Brahma have different meanings. Brahman refers to the Supreme Self...
, has difficulty in supporting his family. After the death of Apu's sister, Durga, the family moves to the holy city of Benares
Varanasi
-Etymology:The name Varanasi has its origin possibly from the names of the two rivers Varuna and Assi, for the old city lies in the north shores of the Ganga bounded by its two tributaries, the Varuna and the Asi, with the Ganges being to its south...
.
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 PanchaliPather Panchali (novel)
Pather Panchali is a novel written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay and was later adapted into a film of the same name by Satyajit Ray...
, the classic bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
of Bengali literature
Bengali literature
Bengali literature is literary works written in Bengali language particularly from Bangladesh and the Indian provinces of West Bengal and Tripura. The history of Bengali literature traces back hundreds of years while it is impossible to separate the literary trends of the two Bengals during the...
, 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
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
during filming of The River
The River (1951 film)
The River is a 1951 film directed by Jean Renoir. It was filmed in India and was seminal to the launching of the careers of Satyajit Ray , who assisted on the film, and Subrata Mitra, Ray's cinematographer whom he met during the filming of The River.A fairly faithful dramatization of an earlier...
(1951) and after watching the Italian neorealist
Italian neorealism
Italian neorealism is a style of film characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class, filmed on location, frequently using nonprofessional actors...
film Bicycle Thieves
Bicycle Thieves
Bicycle Thieves , also known as The Bicycle Thief, is a 1948 Italian neorealist film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to be able to work. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Luigi...
(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
Sanskrit drama
The earliest-surviving fragments of Sanskrit drama date from the 1st century CE. The Mahābhāṣya by Patañjali contains the earliest reference to what may have been the seeds of Sanskrit drama. This treatise on grammar from 140 BCE provides a feasible date for the beginnings of theatre in India.Its...
. 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
Subrata Mitra
Subrata Mitra was an Indian cinematographer. Acclaimed for his work in The Apu Trilogy , Mitra is often considered one of the greatest of Indian cinematographers....
and art director
Art director
The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
Bansi Chandragupta
Bansi Chandragupta
Bansi Chandragupta was an Indian art director and production designer, regarded among the greatest of art directors of Indian film industry. He won Filmfare Best Art Direction Award thrice, for Seema in 1972, for Do Jhoot in 1976 and for Chakra in 1982. He was awarded Evening Standard British Film...
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
Anil Chowdhury
Anil Chowdhury was a production controller or production manager in several films in the Bengali film industry located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. He is especially remembered for his association with Satyajit Ray. Anil Chowdhury was the production controller of all the films by Ray.-References:...
could arrange further money. With a loan from the West Bengal government
Government of West Bengal
The Government of West Bengal also known as the State Government of West Bengal, or locally as State Government, is the supreme governing authority of the Indian state of West Bengal and its 19 districts...
, the film was finally completed and released in 1955 to great critical and popular success, sweeping up numerous prizes and having long runs in both India and abroad. During the making of the film, Ray refused funding from sources who demanded a change in script or the supervision of the producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
, and ignored advice from the government (which finally funded the film anyway) to incorporate a happy ending in having Apu's family join a "development project". Even greater help than Renoir's encouragement occurred when Ray showed a sequence to John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
who was in India scouting locations for The Man Who Would Be King
The Man Who Would Be King
For the 1975 film based on this story, see The Man Who Would Be King "The Man Who Would Be King" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It is about two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan...
. 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
The Times of India
The Times of India is an Indian English-language daily newspaper. TOI has the largest circulation among all English-language newspaper in the world, across all formats . It is owned and managed by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd...
wrote that "It is absurd to compare it with any other Indian cinema [...] Pather Panchali is pure cinema". In the United Kingdom, Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...
wrote a glowing review of the film. However, the reaction was not uniformly positive. After watching the movie, François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
is reported to have said, "I don’t want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands." Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
, then the most influential critic of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, 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
Aparajito
Aparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished). This film shows the eternal struggle between the ambitions of a young man, Apu, and the mother who loves him. Many critics, notably Mrinal Sen
Mrinal Sen
Mrinal Sen is a Bengali Indian filmmaker. He was born on 14 May 1923, in the town of Faridpur, now in Bangladesh in a Hindu family. After finishing his high school there, he left home to come to Calcutta as a student and studied physics at the well-known Scottish Church College and at the...
and Ritwik Ghatak, rank it even higher than the first film. Aparajito won the Golden Lion
Golden Lion
Il Leone d’Oro is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes...
at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
. The film is also notable for introducing the technique of bounce lighting, to recreate the effect of daylight on sets, pioneered by the cinematographer Subrata Mitra
Subrata Mitra
Subrata Mitra was an Indian cinematographer. Acclaimed for his work in The Apu Trilogy , Mitra is often considered one of the greatest of Indian cinematographers....
.
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
Apur Sansar
Apur Sansar , also known as The World of Apu, is a Bengali film directed by Satyajit Ray. It is the third part of The Apu Trilogy, about the childhood and early adulthood of a young Bengali named Apu in the early twentieth century Indian subcontinent...
(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
Robin Wood (critic)
Robert Paul "Robin" Wood was a Canada-based film critic and educator. He wrote books on Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Ingmar Bergman, and Arthur Penn and was a member, until 2007, of the editorial collective that publishes the magazine CineACTION!, a film theory collective founded by Wood and...
, Aparna Sen
Aparna Sen
Aparna Sen is a critically acclaimed Bengali Indian filmmaker, script writer, and actress. She is the winner of three National Film Awards and eight international film festival awards.-Biography:...
). Ray introduced two of his favourite actors Soumitra Chatterjee
Soumitra Chatterjee
Soumitra Chatterjee or Soumitra Chattopadhyay is an iconic Bengali actor from India, known among other things for his frequent collaborations with the great Bengali film director Satyajit Ray and his constant comparison with the Bengali screen idol Uttam Kumar.-Background:Soumitra graduated from...
and Sharmila Tagore
Sharmila Tagore
Sharmila Tagore is an Indian film actress. She has won National Film Awards and Filmfare Awards for her performances.She has led the Indian Film Censor Board from October 2004 till March 2011...
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 filmCinema of India
The cinema of India consists of films produced across India, which includes the cinematic culture of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. Indian films came to be followed throughout South Asia and...
, 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
1956 Cannes Film Festival
-Jury:*Maurice Lehmann *Arletty *Louise de Vilmorin *Jacques-Pierre Frogerais *Henri Jeanson *Domenico Meccoli *Otto Preminger *James Quinn *Roger Regent *María Romero...
), followed by eleven international prizes for Aparajito
Aparajito
Aparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(including the Golden Lion
Golden Lion
Il Leone d’Oro is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes...
at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
) and numerous other awards for Apur Sansar
Apur Sansar
Apur Sansar , also known as The World of Apu, is a Bengali film directed by Satyajit Ray. It is the third part of The Apu Trilogy, about the childhood and early adulthood of a young Bengali named Apu in the early twentieth century Indian subcontinent...
(including the Sutherland Trophy
Sutherland Trophy
Created in 1958, the Sutherland Trophy was awarded annually by the British Film Institute to "the maker of the most original and imaginative [first or second feature] film introduced at the National Film Theatre during the year"...
at the London Film Festival
London Film Festival
The BFI London Film Festival is the UK's largest public film event, screening more than 300 features, documentaries and shorts from almost 50 countries. The festival, , currently in its 54th year, is run every year in the second half of October under the umbrella of the British Film Institute...
). 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
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
's 1951 film The River
The River (1951 film)
The River is a 1951 film directed by Jean Renoir. It was filmed in India and was seminal to the launching of the careers of Satyajit Ray , who assisted on the film, and Subrata Mitra, Ray's cinematographer whom he met during the filming of The River.A fairly faithful dramatization of an earlier...
. From this foundation, Ray went on to create other highly acclaimed films, like Charulata
Charulata
Charulata is a 1964 film by Bengali director Satyajit Ray, based upon the novella Nastanirh by Rabindranath Tagore...
, Mahanagar
Mahanagar
Mahanagar is a 1963 film directed by Satyajit Ray. It is sometimes released as The Big City in the English-speaking world. Based on a short story, Abataranika written by Narendranath Mitra, it tells the story of a housewife who disconcerts her traditionalist family by getting a job as a salesperson...
, and Aranyer Dinratri, and his international success energized other Bengal filmmakers like Mrinal Sen
Mrinal Sen
Mrinal Sen is a Bengali Indian filmmaker. He was born on 14 May 1923, in the town of Faridpur, now in Bangladesh in a Hindu family. After finishing his high school there, he left home to come to Calcutta as a student and studied physics at the well-known Scottish Church College and at the...
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
Indian classical music
The origins of Indian classical music can be found in the Vedas, which are the oldest scriptures in the Hindu tradition. Indian classical music has also been significantly influenced by, or syncretised with, Indian folk music and Persian music. The Samaveda, one of the four Vedas, describes 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
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, 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. Pather Panchali has been included on Rotten Tomatoes' list of top 100 foreign films.
Legacy
Sight & SoundSight & Sound
Sight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute .Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today...
, the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
'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. In the 1992 edition, both Aparajito
Aparajito
Aparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
and The World of Apu were tied at #127, while The Apu Trilogy was ranked separately at #88. In a combined list of Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll results in 2002, Pather Panchali was ranked at #28, The World of Apu at #93 and Aparajito
Aparajito
Aparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
at #160. If the votes are combined, then The Apu Trilogy as a whole would be ranked at #14 in 1982, #4 in 1992 and #14 in 2002.
In 1988, John Kobal
John Kobal
John Kobal was an Austrian-born British based film historian responsible for The Kobal Collection, a commercial photograph library related to the film industry....
's poll of critics and filmmakers ranked The Apu Trilogy at #35 on the list. In 1998, the Asian film magazine Cinemaya
Cinemaya
Cinemaya is an influential film magazine established in 1988 devoted exclusively to coverage of Asian film. It is published in New Delhi, India and distributed internationally. The present editor-in-chief of Cinemaya is Aruna Vasudev, noted film journalist...
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
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
ranked Pather Panchali at #12 (tied with The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
) 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
Asian cinema
Asian cinema refers to the film industries and films produced in the continent of Asia, and is also sometimes known as Eastern cinema. More commonly however, it is used to refer to the cinema of Eastern, Southeastern and Southern Asia. West Asian cinema is sometimes classified as part of Middle...
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
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
"Hot 100 Films From the Past" in 1997, the Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
"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
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made". The Apu Trilogy as a whole was included in film critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
's list of "100 Great Movies" in 2001 and in Time magazine
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
's All-Time 100 best movies list in 2005. It was also ranked #17 in Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.
Influence
According to Michael Sragow of The Atlantic Monthly in 1994:Across the world, filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
, James Ivory
James Ivory (director)
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, best known for the results of his long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, which included both Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala...
, Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami is an internationally acclaimed Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer. An active filmmaker since 1970, Kiarostami has been involved in over forty films, including shorts and documentaries...
, Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
, Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés is a Spanish film director and photographer.-Early life:Born into a family of artists , he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies...
, Isao Takahata
Isao Takahata
is a Japanese anime filmmaker that have earned critical international acclaim for his work as a director. Takahata is co-founder of Studio Ghibli with long-time collaborative partner Hayao Miyazaki. He has directed films such as the war-themed Grave of the Fireflies, the romantic-drama Only...
, Philip Kaufman
Philip Kaufman
Philip Kaufman is an American film director and screenwriter. His movies have adapted novels of widely different types – from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being to Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun; from Tom Wolfe’s heroic epic The Right Stuff to the erotic writings of Anaïs Nin’s...
, Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson
Wesley Wales Anderson is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer of features, short films and commercials....
and Danny Boyle
Danny Boyle
Daniel "Danny" Boyle is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for his work on films such as Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Trainspotting. For Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle won numerous awards in 2008, including the Academy Award for Best Director...
have been influenced by The Apu Trilogy, with many others such as Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
praising the work. In Gregory Nava
Gregory Nava
Gregory Nava is a film director, producer and screenplay writer, of Mexican and Basque heritage.-Education:...
's 1995 film My Family
My Family (film)
My Family is an American drama film directed by Gregory Nava and written by Nava and Anna Thomas. The motion picture stars Jimmy Smits, Edward James Olmos, Esai Morales, and others. It also features Jennifer Lopez in her second film role....
, 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
Sacred Evil
Sacred Evil is an Indian supernatural/surreal film directed by Abhigyan Jha and Abhiyan Rajhans. It was released in 2006.Sacred Evil is about duality. It explores the premise that reality always has two sides...
, Key
Key (company)
Key is a Japanese visual novel studio which formed on July 21, 1998 as a brand under the publisher Visual Art's and is located in Kita, Osaka, Japan. Key released their debut visual novel Kanon in June 1999, which combined an elaborate storyline, an up-to-date anime-style drawing style, and a...
's 2004 visual novel
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
Clannad, Paul Auster
Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...
's 2008 novel Man in the Dark
Man in the Dark (novel)
Man in the Dark is a novel by Paul Auster published in August 2008. Its topic is a dystopian scenario of the present-day USA being torn apart by a new secession and civil war after the presidential elections of 2000...
, the Elements trilogy
Elements trilogy
The Elements trilogy is a trilogy of films by Indian film-maker Deepa Mehta, dealing with controversial issues of social reform on the Indian subcontinent. Fire, the first release in 1996, dealt with issues of arranged marriage and homosexuality in the patriarchal culture of India...
of Deepa Mehta
Deepa Mehta
Deepa Mehta, LLD is a Genie Award-winning Indian-born Canadian film director and screenwriter, most known for her Elements Trilogy, Fire , Earth , and Water , among which Earth was submitted by Indian government for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film...
and even in films of Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
. The technique of bounce lighting pioneered by Subrata Mitra
Subrata Mitra
Subrata Mitra was an Indian cinematographer. Acclaimed for his work in The Apu Trilogy , Mitra is often considered one of the greatest of Indian cinematographers....
, to recreate the effect of daylight on sets, has also had a profound influence on the development of cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
.
National awards
President's Medals- Winner - 1955 - President's Gold & Silver Medals (New DelhiNew DelhiNew Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
) - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) - Winner - 1959 - President's Gold Medal (New DelhiNew DelhiNew Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
) - Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)
National Film Awards
National Film Awards
The National Film Awards is the most prominent film award ceremony in India. Established in 1954, it is administered, along with the International Film Festival of India and the Indian Panorama, by the Indian government's Directorate of Film Festivals since 1973.Every year, a national panel...
- Winner - 1956 - Best FilmNational Film Award for Best FilmThe National Award for Best Feature film is one of the National Film Awards presented annually by the Directorate of Film Festivals, India, and was constituted in the year 1954. This is one of the Golden Lotus Awards given among National Film Awards...
- Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) - Winner - 1956 - Best Feature Film in BengaliNational Film Award for Best Feature Film in BengaliThe Indian National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali winners:...
- Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) - Winner - 1960 - Best FilmNational Film Award for Best FilmThe National Award for Best Feature film is one of the National Film Awards presented annually by the Directorate of Film Festivals, India, and was constituted in the year 1954. This is one of the Golden Lotus Awards given among National Film Awards...
- Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)
International film festivals
Cannes Film FestivalCannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
- Winner - 19561956 Cannes Film Festival-Jury:*Maurice Lehmann *Arletty *Louise de Vilmorin *Jacques-Pierre Frogerais *Henri Jeanson *Domenico Meccoli *Otto Preminger *James Quinn *Roger Regent *María Romero...
- Best Human Document - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) - Winner - 19561956 Cannes Film Festival-Jury:*Maurice Lehmann *Arletty *Louise de Vilmorin *Jacques-Pierre Frogerais *Henri Jeanson *Domenico Meccoli *Otto Preminger *James Quinn *Roger Regent *María Romero...
- OCIC AwardSIGNISSIGNIS is a Roman Catholic lay ecclesial movement for professionals in the communication media, including radio, television, cinema, video, media education, Internet and new technology. It is a non-profit organization with representation from over 140 countries...
(Special Mention) - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) - Nominated - 19561956 Cannes Film Festival-Jury:*Maurice Lehmann *Arletty *Louise de Vilmorin *Jacques-Pierre Frogerais *Henri Jeanson *Domenico Meccoli *Otto Preminger *James Quinn *Roger Regent *María Romero...
- Golden Palm for Best FilmPalme d'OrThe Palme d'Or is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and is presented to the director of the best feature film of the official competition. It was introduced in 1955 by the organising committee. From 1939 to 1954, the highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du...
- Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)
Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
- Winner - 1957 - Golden Lion of St. Mark for Best FilmGolden LionIl Leone d’Oro is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes...
- AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished) - Winner - 1957 - Cinema Nuovo Award - AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished) - Winner - 1957 - Critics Award - AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished)
Berlin International Film Festival
Berlin International Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival , also called the Berlinale, is one of the world's leading film festivals and most reputable media events. It is held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in West Berlin in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978...
- Winner - 1957 - SelznickDavid O. SelznickDavid O. Selznick was an American film producer. He is best known for having produced Gone with the Wind and Rebecca , both of which earned him an Oscar for Best Picture.-Early years:...
Golden Laurel for Best Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) - Winner - 1960 - SelznickDavid O. SelznickDavid O. Selznick was an American film producer. He is best known for having produced Gone with the Wind and Rebecca , both of which earned him an Oscar for Best Picture.-Early years:...
Golden Laurel for Best Film - AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished)
British Film Institute Awards
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
, London Film Festival
London Film Festival
The BFI London Film Festival is the UK's largest public film event, screening more than 300 features, documentaries and shorts from almost 50 countries. The festival, , currently in its 54th year, is run every year in the second half of October under the umbrella of the British Film Institute...
- Winner - 1957 - FIPRESCI AwardFIPRESCIThe International Federation of Film Critics is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the world for "the promotion and development of film culture and for the safeguarding of professional interests." It was founded in June 1930 in...
- AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished) - Winner - 1960 - Sutherland Trophy for Best Original And Imaginative FilmSutherland TrophyCreated in 1958, the Sutherland Trophy was awarded annually by the British Film Institute to "the maker of the most original and imaginative [first or second feature] film introduced at the National Film Theatre during the year"...
- Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) - Winner - 1980 - Wington Award - Apu Trilogy (for each film)
Edinburgh International Film Festival
Edinburgh International Film Festival
The Edinburgh International Film Festival is an annual fortnight of cinema screenings and related events taking place each June. Established in 1947, it is the world's oldest continually running 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
San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival is the oldest continuously running film festival in the Americas. Organized by the San Francisco Film Society, the International is held each spring for two weeks, presenting an average of 150 films from over 50 countries...
- 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 RaySatyajit RaySatyajit Ray was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature...
- Winner - 1958 - Golden Gate for Best Picture - AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished) - Winner - 1958 - Golden Gate for Best Director - AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished) - Satyajit RaySatyajit RaySatyajit Ray was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature... - Winner - 1958 - International Critics' Award - AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished)
Vancouver International Film Festival
Vancouver International Film Festival
The Vancouver International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada for two weeks in late September and early October...
- Winner - 1958 - Best Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)
New York Film Festival
New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...
- Winner - 1959 - Best Foreign Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)
Stratford
Stratford, Ontario
Stratford is a city on the Avon River in Perth County in southwestern Ontario, Canada with a population of 32,000.When the area was first settled by Europeans in 1832, the townsite and the river were named after Stratford-upon-Avon, England. It is the seat of Perth County. Stratford was...
Film Festival
- Winner - 1958 - Critics' Award for Best Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)
Other international awards
National Board of Review AwardsNational Board of Review of Motion Pictures
The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures was founded in 1909 in New York City, just 13 years after the birth of cinema, to protest New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.'s revocation of moving-picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. The mayor believed that the new medium...
(United States)
- Winner - 1958National Board of Review Awards 1958- Top Ten Films :#The Old Man and the Sea#Separate Tables#The Last Hurrah#The Long, Hot Summer#Windjammer#Cat on a Hot Tin Roof#The Goddess#The Brothers Karamazov#Me and the Colonel#Gigi- Top Foreign Films :...
- Best Foreign FilmNational Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language FilmThe National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the annual awards given by the National Board of Review.Note: This list is incomplete.-1930s:-1940s:-1950s:-1960s:-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:...
- Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) - Winner - 1960National Board of Review Awards 1960- Top Ten Films :#Sons and Lovers#The Alamo#The Sundowners#Inherit the Wind#Sunrise at Campobello#Elmer Gantry#Home from the Hill#The Apartment#Wild River#The Dark at the Top of the Stairs- Top foreign Films :...
- Best Foreign FilmNational Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language FilmThe National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the annual awards given by the National Board of Review.Note: This list is incomplete.-1930s:-1940s:-1950s:-1960s:-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:...
- Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)
Kinema Junpo Awards
Kinema Junpo
, commonly called , is a Japanese film magazine which began publication in July 1919. The magazine was founded by a group of four students, including Saburō Tanaka, at the Tokyo Institute of Technology . In that first month, it was published three times on days with a "1" in them. These first three...
(Tokyo)
- Winner - 1967 - Best Foreign Film - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Awards/Kinema_Junpo_Awards/1967
Bodil Awards
Bodil Awards
The Bodil Awards are the major Danish film awards given by Denmark's National Association of Film Critics . The awards are presented annually at a ceremony in the Imperial Cinema in Copenhagen. Established in 1948, it is one of the oldest film awards in Europe...
(Denmark) http://www.filmkritik.dk/1b.lasso?n=4
- Winner - 1967 - Best Non-European FilmBodil Award for Best Non-European FilmThe Bodil Award for Best Non-European Film was one of the categories for the Bodil Awards presented annually by the Danish Union of Film Critics . The Bodil Awards were created in 1948 and are one of the oldest film prizes in Europe. This category was originally named "Best American Film" until...
- AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished) - Winner - 1969 - Best Non-European FilmBodil Award for Best Non-European FilmThe Bodil Award for Best Non-European Film was one of the categories for the Bodil Awards presented annually by the Danish Union of Film Critics . The Bodil Awards were created in 1948 and are one of the oldest film prizes in Europe. This category was originally named "Best American Film" until...
- Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road)
British Academy Film Awards
British Academy Film Awards
The British Academy Film Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . It is the British counterpart of the Oscars. As of 2008, it has taken place in the Royal Opera House, having taken over from the flagship Odeon cinema on Leicester Square...
(United Kingdom)
- Nominated - 195811th British Academy Film AwardsThe 11th British Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1958, honoured the best films of 1957.-Best Film: The Bridge on the River Kwai *12 Angry Men*3:10 to Yuma*The Bachelor Party...
- BAFTA Award for Best FilmBAFTA Award for Best FilmThis page lists the winners and nominees for the BAFTA Award for Best Film, BAFTA Award for Best Film not in the English Language and Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film for each year, in addition to the retired earlier versions of those awards...
- Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) - Nominated - 195912th British Academy Film AwardsThe 12th British Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1959, honoured the best films of 1958.-Best Film: Room at the Top *Aparajito*Ice-Cold in Alex*Indiscreet*The Cranes Are Flying...
- BAFTA Award for Best FilmBAFTA Award for Best FilmThis page lists the winners and nominees for the BAFTA Award for Best Film, BAFTA Award for Best Film not in the English Language and Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film for each year, in addition to the retired earlier versions of those awards...
- AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished) - Nominated - 195912th British Academy Film AwardsThe 12th British Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1959, honoured the best films of 1958.-Best Film: Room at the Top *Aparajito*Ice-Cold in Alex*Indiscreet*The Cranes Are Flying...
- BAFTA Award for Best Foreign ActressBAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading RoleBest Actress in a Leading Role is a British Academy Film award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts to recognise an actress who has delivered an outstanding leading performance in a film.- Winners and nominees :...
- AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished) - Karuna BanerjeeKaruna BanerjeeKaruna Banerjee was a Bengali actress immortalized by her roles in Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy as the long suffering mother, Sarbajaya. She was nominated for Best Actress at the 1959 BAFTA Awards for her performance in Aparajito , the second part of The Apu Trilogy... - Nominated - 196215th British Academy Film AwardsThe 15th British Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1962, honoured the best films of 1961.-Best Film: The Hustler Ballad of a Soldier *Apur Sansar*The Innocents...
- BAFTA Award for Best FilmBAFTA Award for Best FilmThis page lists the winners and nominees for the BAFTA Award for Best Film, BAFTA Award for Best Film not in the English Language and Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film for each year, in addition to the retired earlier versions of those awards...
- Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)
Other awards
- Winner - 1956 Golden Carbao (ManilaManilaManila is the capital of the Philippines. It is one of the sixteen cities forming Metro Manila.Manila is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay and is bordered by Navotas and Caloocan to the north, Quezon City to the northeast, San Juan and Mandaluyong to the east, Makati on the southeast,...
) - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) - Winner - 1956 Vatican Award (RomeRomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
) - Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) - Winner - 1958-1959 Golden Laurel for Best Foreign Film (United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
) - AparajitoAparajitoAparajito is a 1956 Bengali 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 focuses on the life of Apu from childhood to college...
(The Unvanquished)
Journey After
After a long Apu Trilogy returns as Iti Apu. Iti Apu is a fictitious narrative of Apu, a character that helped Indian cinema and Bengali literature make its mark on the world scene in the year 1955. The world cried, held it's collective breath and admired Apu’s journey from the small Bengali village of Nischindipur to the city of Calcutta. A journey marked by human ambition and relentless personal loss. Fighting poverty and having lost his parents and his sister, Apu went against the family tradition of training to become a priest and instead comes to the city of Calcutta to get a college education. This brush with modernity creates an aspiration in his young mind and he trains to become an author.But soon, by the quirk of fate, he completely loses his desire to write when his wife Aparna dies during child birth. In a poignant scene from the film ‘Apur Sansar’, a defeated Apu is seen consigning the pages of his unfinished manuscript to the silence of the forest. He then returns to his family and finally meets his son Kajol.
In the final scene of the film, Apu is seen with Kajol, walking along the banks of the river. Kajol reignites in his father the desire to live and the journey of life continues.
For decades now, audiences and readers around the world have wondered what happened to Apu. Did death and discovery meet at some common ground later in his life? What happened to his aspirations of becoming an author? Audiences felt that the journey was incomplete, the narrative untold.
Iti Apu, a long narrative poem written by Prithwiraj Choudhury creates a fictitious plot and traces Apu’s journey into the 1990s. Apu is now in his seventies, living in Calcutta. In a long letter written to his childhood friend Pulu, he looks back at his life and tells the story that audiences have wanted to hear.
The poem has been read by Soumitra Chattopadhay. Soumitra played Apu’s character in Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece. Like the fictitious Apu, Soumitra is now in his seventies and lives in Calcutta. The photography is by Joydeep Banerjee, background score by Shantanu Bandopadhay, Art Direction by Tapan Biswas. Mrigankasekhar Ganguly has edited and directed this short film based on the poem by Prithwiraj.
ITI APU
Bengali, 2011
written by prithwiraj choudhury
concept prithwiraj choudhury & mrigankasekhar ganguly
screenplay mrigankasekhar ganguly
art direction tapan biswas
direction of photography joydeep banerjee
editing & direction mrigankasekhar ganguly
See also
- Bengali cinemaBengali cinemaBengali cinema refers to the Bengali language filmmaking industries in the Bengal region of South Asia. There are two major film-making hubs in the region: one in Kolkata, West Bengal, India and the other in Dhaka, Bangladesh .The history of cinema in Bengal dates back to the 1890s, when the first...
- Cinema of West BengalCinema of West BengalThe cinema of West Bengal refers to the Tollygunge-based Bengali film industry in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The origins of the nickname Tollywood, a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge and Hollywood, dates back to 1932...
- Cinema of West Bengal
- Cinema of IndiaCinema of IndiaThe cinema of India consists of films produced across India, which includes the cinematic culture of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. Indian films came to be followed throughout South Asia and...
- Parallel CinemaParallel CinemaThe Indian New Wave, commonly known in India as Art Cinema or Parallel Cinema as an alternative to the mainstream commercial cinema, is a specific movement in Indian cinema, known for its serious content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the sociopolitical climate of the times...
- Parallel Cinema
External links
- The Apu trilogy (SatyajitRay.org)
- The Apu Trilogy (1955, 1956, 1959) in TimeTime (magazine)Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
- Voted #17 on The Arts and Faith Top 100 Films (2010)