Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee

A month before his passing in 1992, filmmaker Satyajit Ray was honoured by the Academy at the 64th Oscar Awards. Ray accepted his award from a hospital bed in Kolkata. Very few Indians have been honoured by what is commonly considered the highest honour in cinema around the globe – the Oscar awards.  

Satyajit Ray was honoured by the Academy at the 64th Academy Awards in 1992 with the Honorary Award but Ray could not be there in person to collect his award in person owing to his ill health. At the time, Ray was hospitalised in Kolkata and could not fly to Los Angeles but a video message from the auteur was shown at the ceremony in Dolby Theatre.

Ray’s award was announced by actor Audrey Hepburn who described his work as a “rare mastery of the art of motion pictures and his profound humanism which has had an indelible influence on filmmakers and audiences throughout the world.”

Satyajit Ray is known as one of the finest filmmakers in the world and is remembered for his films like Pather Panchali, Charulata, Mahanagar, Sonar Kella, Shatranj Ke Khiladi among others.  On May 2, 2021, the whole country organized several programmes to celebrate his birth centenary and on May 2, 2022, the programmes have come to the final stage. The Information and Broadcasting ministry one year ago announced that Satyajit Ray’s birthday was to be celebrated throughout the year with various events.

In homage to Satyajit Ray, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Friday announced that it will organize year-long celebrations across India and abroad to mark the 100th birth anniversary of the legendary filmmaker.

“I can watch Satyajit Ray’s film in peace. There is a sort of mysticism in his filmmaking,” said Shoojit Sircar Cinematographer and filmmaker. Premendu Bikash Chaki has paid tribute to Satyajit Ray on his birth centenary through a 25-minute-long film Rayscope. The film was screened at the 27th Kolkata International Film Festival Nandan. He chose five scenes from five Ray films: Pather Panchali, Kanchenjungha, Kapurush, Mahanagar, and Apur Sansar. Anik Dutta’s Aparajito has been selected to be screened at Satyajit Ray’s birth centenary celebration at the Ministry of I&B, Government of India, on May 2 in 2021 in Mumbai. The inauguration of a gallery dedicated to Ray was planned. A number of Ray’s films and films made by the master filmmaker are showcased at the do.

He was a versatile talent and besides being a filmmaker he was a screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Ray is celebrated for works such as The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), The Music Room (1958), The Big City (1963), and Charulata (1964). Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts and authored several short stories and novels, primarily for young children and teenagers. 

Feluda, the sleuth, and Professor Shonku, the scientist in his science fiction stories, Tarini Khuro, the storyteller, and Lalmohan Ganguly, the novelist, are popular fictional characters created by him.

Satyajit Ray was born in Calcutta to renowned writer Sukumar Ray, who was prominent in the field of arts and literature chose the career of independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica‘s Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948) during a visit to London.

Ray received many major awards in his career, including 36 Indian National Film Awards, a Golden Lion, a Golden Bear, 2 Silver Bears, many additional awards at international film festivals and ceremonies, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1992. The Government of India honoured him with the Bharat Ratna, its highest civilian award, in 1992. Ray is also known for his written works, such as the Feluda Somogro, where he created one of the most famous detective characters for children, Feluda aka Pradosh Chandra Mitter. He is also known for his horror stories.In the post-Charulata period, Ray took on various projects, from fantasy, science fiction, and detective stories to historical dramas.

After being “deeply moved” by Pather Panchali, the 1928 classic Bildungsroman of Bengali literature, Ray decided to adapt it for his first film. Pather Panchali is a semi-autobiographical novel describing the maturation of Apu, a small boy in a Bengal village. The rest is history.

Ray also experimented during this period, exploring contemporary issues of Indian life in response to the perceived lack of these issues in his films. The first major film in this period is 1966’s Nayak (The Hero), In 1969, Ray directed one of his most commercially successful films; a musical fantasy based on a children’s story written by his grandfather, Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha). 

It is about the journey of Goopy the singer, and Bagha the drummer, endowed with three gifts by the King of Ghosts, to stop an impending war between two neighbouring kingdoms.

After Aranyer Din Ratri, Ray addressed contemporary Bengali life. He completed what became known as the Calcutta trilogy: Pratidwandi (1970), Seemabaddha (1971), and Jana Aranya (1975), three films that were conceived separately but had similar themes. The trilogy focuses on repression, with male protagonists encountering the forbidden. Pratidwandi (The Adversary) is about an idealist young graduate; while disillusioned by the end of the film, he is still uncorrupted. Seemabaddha (Company Limited) portrayed a successful man giving up his morality for further gains. 

Jana Aranya (The Middleman) depicted a young man giving in to the culture of corruption to earn a living.  In the 1970s, Ray adapted two of his popular stories as detective films. Although mainly aimed at children and young adults, both Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress) and Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God) became cult favourites. In 1980, Ray made a sequel to Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, a somewhat political Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds). The kingdom of the evil Diamond King, or Hirok Raj, is an allusion to India during Indira Gandhi’s emergency period. 

Along with his acclaimed short film Pikoo (Pikoo’s Diary) and hour-long Hindi film, Sadgati, this was the culmination of his work in this period. In 1983, while working on Ghare Baire (Home and the World), Ray suffered a heart attack; it would severely limit his productivity in the remaining nine years of his life. 

In 1987, Ray recovered to an extent to direct the 1990 film Shakha Proshakha (Branches of the Tree). It depicts an old man, who has lived a life of honesty, and learns of the corruption of three of his sons. The final scene shows the father finding solace only in the companionship of his fourth son, who is uncorrupted but mentally ill due to a head injury sustained while he was studying in England. Ray’s last film, Agantuk (The Stranger), is lighter in the mood but not in theme; when a long-lost uncle arrives to visit his niece in Calcutta, he arouses suspicion as to his motive. It provokes far-ranging questions in the film about civilization. 

Critic Hal Hinson was impressed, and thought Agantuk shows “all the virtues of a master artist in full maturity”. Ray spoke about the impact that American cinema had on his filmmaking journey. He said, “I have learnt everything about the craft of cinema from the making of American films. I’ve been watching American films very carefully over the years and I love them for how they entertain and then later, loved them for what they taught so I express my gratitude to the American cinema, towards the Motion Picture Association who has given me this award and who made me feel so proud.”

Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee is an academician and columnist. He can be reached at [email protected]