PATHER PANCHALI - The Greatest Directorial Debut

The directorial debut of Satyajit Ray was a statement for Bengali, Indian and World Cinema. In fact, this film is credited with putting Indian Cinema on the world map.
Pather Panchali is an adaptation of a 1929 novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay about a young boy named ‘Apu’ growing up in rural Bengal. He belongs to a poor family, but his imagination and curiosity are hardly affected by the abject poverty of his family.

The film has portrayed a brilliantly detailed picture of a village in Bengal where the mother gets into deep debt while attempting to raise her daughter (Durga) and a young son (Apu) while also caring for an old aunt (Indir Thakrun). She has minimal help from her husband, a ne’er-do-well idealist who thinks education has placed him above physical drudge.

 

The mother is a resilient woman trying to do her best to keep their home together. She is often irritated by the old aunt in her house and even ill-treats her continuously in a manner one would highly disapprove, but cannot really hate. Despite all her efforts she eventually had to give in and move to the city with her family after a terrible tragedy.
Inspired by filmmakers like Jean Renoir and Vittorio De Sica, and himself being “the Renaissance man”, Ray was able to make the film with a humanitarian touch. One of the innumerable reasons that makes this film one of its kind is the fact that the actors he did cast were untrained. Not only he taught himself the practice and the art of film making as he went along, he also helped the cast to discover their potential as actors. Despite the tight budget he was working on, he devoted himself entirely to finish this film. 

The composition of every shot, the background score, the sound effects, the expressions and actions of not just the characters but the animals as well; there is not a single element in the film that does not carry a significance, a message of its own.

 

Ray has used such expressive shots that the film takes no time in touching the hearts of the audience. The film is so intricately carved that unlike the usual films with forced expressions and exaggerated emotions, Pather Panchali shows every human emotion in its most natural and purest form. Ray gave such attention to details that a lot of people almost found it mystical.

Ray was undoubtedly the first ‘auteur filmmaker’ of India, in fact of the entire South Asia. Some critics called him the complete filmmaker as he meticulously wrote his own scripts, composed film scores, made sketches of costumes, screenplays and even designed posters for his films. There is a trend of pure humanism that runs through almost all of his films that is utterly consistent and thought provoking.

Pather Panchali is a timeless piece of art which has this unfading influence on every film maker or film fanatic. It had such an impact that after the legendary news editor of Times of India, late Sham Lal watched the film in February, 1956, he was so moved that he dedicated almost an entire page of the newspaper to an essay he wrote on the film. This has probably been the only time in the 182 years of existence that the Times of India had done something of this kind. Pather Panchali, he said, would “rewrite the history of Indian Cinema”.

 

Honestly, you can go about reading hundreds of blogs and articles on the film but you won't understand the depth and brilliance of it unless you watch it yourself.

Did I just cut the branch I was sitting on by saying that?

Well.