Satyajit Ray

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Satyajit Ray

Ray in 1967
Born 2 May 1921
Calcutta, Bengal Presidency,India
Died 23 April 1992 (aged 70)
Kolkata, West Bengal
Occupation Filmdirector, producer, screenwriter,
writer, music director, lyricist
Years active 195092
Spouse(s) Bijoya Das (m. 194992)
Signature

Satyajit Ray (Shtjit Rae, listen (helpinfo); 2 May 1921 23 April 1992) was an Indian filmmaker, regarded as one of the
greatest auteurs of world cinema. Ray was born in the city of Calcutta into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and
literature. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker J ean
Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist 1948 filmBicycle Thieves during a visit to London.
Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. He was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator,
calligrapher, graphic designer and film critic. He authored several short stories and novels, primarily aimed at children and
adolescents. Feluda, the sleuth, and Professor Shonku, the scientist in his science fiction stories, are popular fictional characters
created by him.
Ray's first film, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven international prizes, including Best Human Documentary at the Cannes Film
Festival. This film,Aparajito (1956), and Apur Sansar (1959) formThe Apu Trilogy. Ray did thescripting, casting, scoring, and
editing, and designed his own credit titles and publicity material. Ray received many major awards in his career, including 32
Indian National Film Awards, a number of awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies, and an Academy Award in
1992. The Government of India honoured him with the Bharat Ratna in 1992.
Contents
[hide]
1 Life and career
o 1.1 Early life and background
o 1.2 The Apu years (195059)
o 1.3 From Devi to Charulata (195964)
o 1.4 New directions (196582)
o 1.5 The last phase (198392)
2 Film craft
3 Literary works
4 Ray as Calligrapher
5 Critical and popular response
6 Legacy
7 Awards, honours and recognitions
8 The Ray family
9 Filmography
10 See also
11 Notes
12 References
13 External links
Life and career[edit]
Early life and background[edit]
Satyajit Ray's ancestry can be traced back for at least ten generations.
[1]
Ray's grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury was a
writer, illustrator, philosopher, publisher, amateur astronomer and a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, a religious and social movement in
nineteenth century Bengal. He also set up a printing press by the name of U. Ray and Sons, which formed a crucial backdrop to
Satyajit's life. Sukumar Ray, Upendrakishore's son and father of Satyajit, was a pioneering Bengali writer of nonsense rhyme and
children's literature, an illustrator and a critic. Ray was born to Sukumar and Suprabha Ray in Calcutta.
Sukumar Ray died when Satyajit was barely three, and the family survived on Suprabha Ray's meager income. Ray studied
at Ballygunge Government High School, Calcutta, and completed his BA in economics at Presidency College, Calcutta, though his
interest was always in fine arts. In 1940, his mother insisted that he study at the Visva-Bharati University atSantiniketan, founded
by Rabindranath Tagore. Ray was reluctant due to his love of Calcutta, and the low opinion of the intellectual life at
Santiniketan
[2]
His mother's persuasion and his respect for Tagore finally convinced him to try. In Santiniketan, Ray came to
appreciate Oriental art. He later admitted that he learned much from the famous paintersNandalal Bose
[3]
and Benode Behari
Mukherjee. Later he produced a documentary film, The Inner Eye, about Mukherjee. His visits
to Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta stimulated his admiration for Indian art.
[4]

In 1943, Ray started work at D.J . Keymer, a British-run advertising agency, as a "junior visualiser," earning eighty rupees a month.
Although he liked visual design (graphic design) and he was mostly treated well, there was tension between the British and Indian
employees of the firm. The British were better paid, and Ray felt that "the clients were generally stupid."
[5]
Later, Ray also worked
for Signet Press, a new publishing house started by D. K. Gupta. Gupta asked Ray to create cover designs for books to be published by
Signet Press and gave him complete artistic freedom. Ray designed covers for many books, including J ibanananda Das's Banalata
Sen, and Rupasi Bangla, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's Chander Pahar,J imCorbett's Maneaters of Kumaon, and J awaharlal
Nehru's Discovery of India. He worked on a children's version of Pather Panchali, a classic Bengali novel by Bibhutibhushan
Bandyopadhyay, renamed as Aam Antir Bhepu (The mango-seed whistle). Designing the cover and illustrating the book, Ray was
deeply influenced by the work. He used it as the subject of his first film, and featured his illustrations as shots in his ground-breaking
film.
[6]

Along with Chidananda Dasgupta and others, Ray founded the Calcutta FilmSociety in 1947. They screened many foreign films,
many of which Ray watched and seriously studied. He befriended the American GIs stationed in Calcutta during World War II, who
kept him informed about the latest American films showing in the city. He came to know a RAF employee, Norman Clare, who shared
Ray's passion for films, chess and western classical music.
[7]

In 1949, Ray married Bijoya Das, his first cousin and long-time sweetheart.
[8]
The couple had a son, Sandip, who is now a film
director. In the same year, French director J ean Renoir came to Calcutta to shoot his filmThe River. Ray helped him to find locations
in the countryside. Ray told Renoir about his idea of filming Pather Panchali, which had long been on his mind, and Renoir
encouraged him in the project.
[9]
In 1950, D.J . Keymer sent Ray to London to work at its headquarters office. During his three months
in London, Ray watched 99 films. Among these was the neorealist filmLadri di biciclette (Bicycle Thief) (1948) by Vittorio De Sica,
which had a profound impact on him. Ray later said that he came out of the theatre determined to become a film-maker.
[10]

The Apu years (195059)[edit]
See also: The Apu Trilogy and Satyajit Ray filmography
Ray decided to use Pather Panchali (1928), the classic bildungsroman of Bengali literature, as the basis for his first film. The semi-
autobiographical novel describes the maturation of Apu, a small boy in a Bengal village.
Ray gathered an inexperienced crew, although both his cameraman Subrata Mitra and art director Bansi Chandraguptawent on to
achieve great acclaim. The cast consisted of mostly amateur actors. He started shooting in late 1952 with his personal savings and
hoped to raise more money once he had some passages shot, but did not succeed on his terms.
[11]
As a result, Ray shot Pather
Panchali over three years, an unusually long period, based on when he or his production manager Anil Chowdhury could raise
additional funds.
[11]
He refused funding from sources who wanted a change in script or supervision over production. He also ignored
advice from the government to incorporate a happy ending, but he did receive funding that allowed him to complete the film.
[12]
Ray
showed an early film passage to Anglo-Irish director J ohn Huston, who was in India scouting locations for The Man Who Would Be
King. The passage was of the vision which Apu and his sister have of the train running through the countryside, the only sequence
which Ray had yet filmed due to his small budget. Huston notified Monroe Wheeler at the New York Museum of Modern
Art (MOMA) that a major talent was on the horizon.
With a loan from the West Bengal government, Ray finally completed the film. It was released in 1955 to great critical and popular
success. It earned numerous prizes and had long runs in both India and abroad. 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."
[13]
In the
United Kingdom, Lindsay Anderson wrote a glowing review of the film.
[13]
But, the reaction was not uniformly positive. After
watching the movie, Franois Truffaut is reported to have said, "I don't want to see a movie of peasants eating with their
hands."
[14]
Bosley Crowther, then the most influential critic of The New York Times, wrote a scathing review of the film. Its American
distributor Ed Harrison was worried Crowther's review would dissuade audiences, but the film had an exceptionally long run when
released in the United States.
Ray's international career started in earnest after the success of his next film, Aparajito (The Unvanquished).
[15]
This film shows the
eternal struggle between the ambitions of a young man, Apu, and the mother who loves him.
[15]
Critics such asMrinal Sen and Ritwik
Ghatak rank it higher than Ray's first film.
[15]
Aparajito won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, bringing Ray considerable
acclaim. Before completing The Apu Trilogy, Ray directed and released two other films: the comic Parash Pathar (The Philosopher's
Stone), and Jalsaghar (The Music Room), a filmabout the decadence of theZamindars, considered one of his most important works.
[16]

While making Aparajito, Ray had not planned a trilogy, but after he was asked about the idea in Venice, it appealed to him.
[17]
He
finished the last of the trilogy, Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) in 1959. Critics Robin Wood and Aparna Senfound this to be the
supreme achievement of the trilogy. Ray introduced two of his favourite actors, Soumitra Chatterjee andSharmila Tagore, in this film.
It opens with Apu living in a Calcutta house in near-poverty. He becomes involved in an unusual marriage with Aparna. The scenes of
their life together form "one of the cinema's classic affirmative depictions of married life."
[18]
They suffer tragedy. After Apur
Sansar was harshly criticised by a Bengali critic, Ray wrote an article defending it. He rarely responded to critics during his
filmmaking career, but also later defended his filmCharulata, his personal favourite.
[19]

Ray's film successes had little influence on his personal life in the years to come. He continued to live with his wife and children in a
rented house, with his mother, uncle and other members of his extended family.
[20]

From Devi to Charulata (195964)[edit]
See also: Satyajit Ray filmography
During this period, Ray composed films on the British Raj period (such as Devi), a documentary on Tagore, a comic film
(Mahapurush) and his first film from an original screenplay (Kanchenjungha). He also made a series of films that, taken together, are
considered by critics among the most deeply felt portrayals of Indian women on screen.
[21]

Ray followed Apur Sansar with Devi (The Goddess), a film in which he examined the superstitions in Hindu society. Sharmila Tagore
starred as Doyamoyee, a young wife who is deified by her father-in-law. Ray was worried that the censor board might block his film,
or at least make him re-cut it, but Devi was spared. In 1961, on the insistence of Prime ministerJ awaharlal Nehru, Ray was
commissioned to make a documentary on Rabindranath Tagore, on the occasion of the poet's birth centennial, a tribute to the person
who likely most influenced Ray. Due to limited footage of Tagore, Ray faced the challenge of making a film out of mainly static
material. He said that it took as much work as three feature films.
[22]

In the same year, together with Subhas Mukhopadhyay and others, Ray was able to revive Sandesh, the children's magazine which his
grandfather once published. Ray had been saving money for some years to make this possible.
[23]
A duality in the name
(Sandesh means both "news" in Bengali and also a sweet popular dessert) set the tone of the magazine (both educational and
entertaining). Ray began to make illustrations for it, as well as to write stories and essays for children. Writing became his major
source of income in the years to come.
In 1962, Ray directed Kanchenjungha. Based on his first original screenplay, it was his first film in colour. The film tells of an upper-
class family spending an afternoon in Darjeeling, a picturesque hill town in West Bengal. They try to arrange the engagement of their
youngest daughter to a highly paid engineer educated in London. He had first conceived shooting the film in a large mansion, but later
decided to film it in the famous hill town. He used the many shades of light and mist to reflect the tension in the drama. Ray noted that
while his script allowed shooting to be possible under any lighting conditions, a commercial film contingent present at the same time
in Darjeeling failed to shoot a single scene, as they only wanted to do so in sunshine.
[24]

In the sixties, Ray visited J apan and took particular pleasure in meeting the filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, for whom he had very high
regard. While at home, he would take an occasional break from the hectic city life by going to places such as Darjeeling or Puri to
complete a script in isolation.
In 1964 Ray made Charulata (The Lonely Wife); it was the culmination of this period of work, and regarded by many critics as his
most accomplished film.
[25]
Based on "Nastanirh", a short story of Tagore, the film tells of a lonely wife, Charu, in 19th-century
Bengal, and her growing feelings for her brother-in-law Amal. Critics have referred to this as Ray's Mozartianmasterpiece. He said the
film contained the fewest flaws among his work, and it was his only work which, given a chance, he would make exactly the same
way.
[26]
Madhabi Mukherjee's performance as Charu, and the work of both Subrata Mitra and Bansi Chandragupta in the film, have
been highly praised. Other films in this period include Mahanagar (The Big City), Teen Kanya (Three Daughters), Abhijan (The
Expedition) and Kapurush o Mahapurush (The Coward and the Holy Man).
New directions (196582)[edit]
See also: Satyajit Ray filmography
In the post-Charulata period, Ray took on projects of increasing variety, ranging from fantasy to science fiction to detective
films to historical drama. Ray also made considerable formal experimentation during this period. He expressed contemporary issues of
Indian life, responding to a perceived lack of these issues in his films. The first major film in this period is Nayak(The Hero), the story
of a screen hero travelling in a train and meeting a young, sympathetic female journalist. StarringUttam Kumar and Sharmila Tagore,
in the twenty-four hours of the journey, the film explores the inner conflict of the apparently highly successful matine idol. In spite of
the film's receiving a "Critics prize" at the Berlin Festival, it had a generally muted reception.
[27]

In 1967, Ray wrote a script for a filmto be called The Alien, based on his short story "Bankubabur Bandhu" ("Banku Babu's Friend")
which he wrote in 1962 for Sandesh, the Ray family magazine. Columbia Pictures was the producer for what was a planned US-India
co-production, and Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando were cast as the leading actors. Ray found that his script had been copyrighted
and the fee appropriated by Mike Wilson. Wilson had initially approached Ray through their mutual friend, Arthur C. Clarke, to
represent him in Hollywood. Wilson copyrighted the script credited to Mike Wilson & Satyajit Ray, although he contributed only one
word. Ray later said that he never received a penny for the script.
[28]
After Brando dropped out of the project, the project tried to
replace him with J ames Coburn, but Ray became disillusioned and returned to Calcutta.
[28]
Columbia expressed interest in reviving the
project several times in the 1970s and 1980s, but nothing came of it. When E.T. was released in 1982, Clarke and Ray saw similarities
in the film to his earlier Alien script. The Indian director Satyajit Ray claimed that this film plagiarized his script. Ray said that Steven
Spielberg's movie "would not have been possible without my script of 'The Alien' being available throughout America in
mimeographed copies." Spielberg denied any plagiarism by saying, "I was a kid in high school when this script was circulating in
Hollywood." (Spielberg actually graduated high school in 1965 and released his first film in 1968.
[29]
Besides The Alien, two other
unrealised projects which Ray had intended to direct were adaptations of the ancient Indian epic, the Mahbhrata, and E. M. Forster's
1924 novel A Passage to India.
[30]

In 1969, Ray released what would be commercially the most successful of his films. Based on a children's story written by his
grandfather, Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha), it is a musical fantasy. Goopy the singer and Bagha the
drummer, endowed with three gifts by the King of Ghosts, set out on a fantastic journey. They try to stop an impending war between
two neighbouring kingdoms. Among his most expensive enterprises, the film project was difficult to finance. Ray abandoned his
desire to shoot it in colour, as he turned down an offer that would have forced him to cast a certain Hindi filmactor as the lead.
[31]

Ray made a film from a novel by the young poet and writer, Sunil Gangopadhyay. Featuring a musical motif structure acclaimed as
more complex than Charulata,
[32]
Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) traces four urban young men going to the forests
for a vacation. They try to leave their daily lives behind. All but one of them become involved in encounters with women, which
becomes a deep study of the Indian middle class. According to Robin Wood, "a single sequence [of the film] ... would offer material
for a short essay".
[32]

After Aranyer, 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
thematic connections.
[33]
Pratidwandi (The Adversary) is about an idealist young graduate; if disillusioned at the end of film, he is still
uncorrupted. Jana Aranya (The Middleman) showed a young man giving in to the culture of corruption to make a
living. Seemabaddha (Company Limited) portrayed an already successful man giving up his morality for further gains. In the first
film, Pratidwandi, Ray introduces a new, elliptical narrative style, such as scenes in negative, dream sequences, and abrupt
flashbacks.
[33]
In the 1970s, Ray adapted two of his popular stories as detective films. Though mainly addressed to children and young
adults, both Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress) and Joy Baba Felunath (The Elephant God) found some critical following.
[34]

Ray considered making a film on the Bangladesh Liberation War but later abandoned the idea. He said that, as a filmmaker, he was
more interested in the travails of the refugees and not the politics.
[35]
In 1977, Ray completed Shatranj Ke Khiladi(The Chess Players),
a Hindi film based on a story by Munshi Premchand. It was set in Lucknow in the state of Oudh, a year before the Indian rebellion of
1857. A commentary on issues related to the colonisation of India by the British, this was Ray's first feature film in a language other
than Bengali. It is his most expensive and star-studded film, featuring Sanjeev Kumar,Saeed J affrey, Amjad Khan, Shabana
Azmi, Victor Bannerjee and Richard Attenborough.
In 1980, Ray made a sequel to Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, a somewhat political Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds). The
kingdomof the evil Diamond King, or Hirok Raj, is an allusion to India during Indira Gandhi's emergency period.
[36]
Along with his
acclaimed short filmPikoo (Pikoo's Diary) and hour-long Hindi film, Sadgati, this was the culmination of his work in this period.
The last phase (198392)[edit]
See also: Satyajit Ray filmography


Satyajit Ray became the first Indian to receive an Honorary Academy Award in 1992.
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 9 years of his life. Ghare Baire was completed in 1984 with the help of Ray's son (who operated the camera from then
on) because of his health condition. He had wanted to film this Tagore novel on the dangers of fervent nationalism for a long time, and
wrote a first draft of a script for it in the 1940s.
[37]
In spite of rough patches due to Ray's illness, the film did receive some critical
acclaim. It had the first kiss fully portrayed in Ray's films. In 1987, he made a documentary on his father, Sukumar Ray.
Ray's last three films, made after his recovery and with medical strictures in place, were shot mostly indoors, and have a distinctive
style. They have more dialogue than his earlier films and are often regarded as inferior to his earlier body of work.
[38]
The
first,Ganashatru (An Enemy of the People) is an adaptation of the famous Ibsen play, and considered the weakest of the three.
[39]
Ray
recovered some of his form in his 1990 film Shakha Proshakha (Branches of the Tree).
[40]
In it, an old man, who has lived a life of
honesty, comes to learn 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. Ray's last film, Agantuk (The Stranger), is lighter in mood but
not in theme. When a long-lost uncle arrives to visit his niece in Calcutta, he arouses suspicion as to his motive. This provokes far-
ranging questions in the film about civilisation.
[41]

In 1992, Ray's health deteriorated due to heart complications. He was admitted to a hospital, but never recovered. TheAcademy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him an Honorary Academy Award. Ray became the first Indian to receive the honor.
Twenty-four days before his death, Ray accepted the award in a gravely ill condition, saying that it is the "Best achievement of [his]
movie-making career."
[42]
He died on 23 April 1992 at the age of 70.
Film craft[edit]
Satyajit Ray considered script-writing to be an integral part of direction. Initially he refused to make a filmin any language other
than Bengali. In his two non-Bengali feature films, he wrote the script in English; translators interpreted it in Hindi or Urdu under
Ray's supervision. Ray's eye for detail was matched by that of his art director Bansi Chandragupta. His influence on the early films
was so important that Ray would always write scripts in English before creating a Bengali version, so that the non-Bengali
Chandragupta would be able to read it. The craft of Subrata Mitra garnered praise for the cinematography of Ray's films. A number of
critics thought that his departure from Ray's crew lowered the quality of cinematography in the following films.
[27]
Though Ray
openly praised Mitra, his single-mindedness in taking over operation of the camera afterCharulata caused Mitra to stop working for
him after 1966. Mitra developed "bounce lighting", a technique to reflect light from cloth to create a diffused, realistic light even on a
set. Ray acknowledged his debts to J ean-Luc Godard and Franois Truffaut of the French New Wave for introducing new technical
and cinematic innovations.
[43]

Ray's regular film editor was Dulal Datta, but the director usually dictated the editing while Datta did the actual work. Because of
financial reasons and Ray's meticulous planning, his films were mostly cut "on the camera" (apart fromPather Panchali). At the
beginning of his career, Ray worked with Indian classical musicians, including Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khanand Ali Akbar Khan. He
found that their first loyalty was to musical traditions, and not to his film. He had a greater understanding of western classical forms,
which he wanted to use for his films set in an urban milieu.
[44]
Starting with Teen Kanya, Ray began to compose his own scores.
He used actors of diverse backgrounds, from famous film stars to people who had never seen a film (as in Aparajito).
[45]
Robin
Wood and others have lauded him as the best director of children, pointing out memorable performances in the roles of Apu and
Durga (Pather Panchali), Ratan (Postmaster) and Mukul (Sonar Kella). Depending on the talent or experience of the actor, Ray varied
the intensity of his direction, from virtually nothing with actors such as Utpal Dutt, to using the actor as "a puppet"
[46]
(Subir
Banerjee as young Apu or Sharmila Tagore as Aparna). Actors who had worked for Ray praised his customary trust but said he could
also treat incompetence with "total contempt".
[47]

Literary works[edit]
Main article: Literary creations of Satyajit Ray
Ray created two popular fictional characters in Bengali children's literatureFeluda, a detective, and Professor Shonku, a scientist.
The Feluda stories are narrated by Topshe, his teenage cousin, something of a Watson to Feluda's Holmes. The science fictions of
Shonku are presented as a diary discovered after the scientist had mysteriously disappeared. Ray also wrote a collection of nonsense
verse named Today Bandha Ghorar Dim, which includes a translation of Lewis Carroll's "J abberwocky". He wrote a collection of
humorous stories of Mullah Nasiruddin in Bengali.
His short stories were published as collections of 12 stories, in which the overall title played with the word twelve (for exampleAker
pitthe dui, or literally "Two on top of one"). Ray's interest in puzzles and puns is reflected in his stories. Ray's short stories give full
rein to his interest in the macabre, in suspense and other aspects that he avoided in film, making for an interesting psychological
study.
[48]
Most of his writings have been translated into English. Most of his screenplays have been published in Bengali in the literary
journal Eksan. Ray wrote an autobiography about his childhood years, Jakhan Choto Chilam (1982).
He also wrote essays on film, published as the collections: Our Films, Their Films (1976), Bishoy Chalachchitra (1976), andEkei Bole
Shooting (1979). During the mid-1990s, Ray's film essays and an anthology of short stories were also published in English in the
West. Our Films, Their Films is an anthology of film criticism by Ray. The book contains articles and personal journal excerpts. The
book is presented in two sections: Ray first discusses Indian film, before turning his attention toward Hollywood, specific filmmakers
(Charlie Chaplin and Akira Kurosawa), and movements such as Italian neorealism. His bookBishoy Chalachchitra was published in
translation in 2006 as Speaking of Films. It contains a compact description of his philosophy of different aspects of the cinema.
Ray as Calligrapher[edit]
Satyajit Ray designed four typefaces for roman script named Ray Roman, Ray Bizarre, Daphnis, and Holiday Script, apart from
numerous Bengali ones for the Sandesh magazine.
[49][50]
Ray Roman and Ray Bizarre won an international competition in 1971.
[51]
In
certain circles of Calcutta, Ray continued to be known as an eminent graphic designer, well into his film career. Ray illustrated all his
books and designed covers for them, as well as creating all publicity material for his films, i.e., Ray's artistic playing with the Bangla
graphemes was also revealed in the cine posters and cine promo-brochures' covers. He also designed covers of several books by other
authors.
[52]
In his calligraphic technique there are deep impacts of: (a) Artistic pattern of European musical staff notation in the
graphemic syntagms; (b) alpana ("ritual painting" mainly practised by Bengali women at the time of religious festival; the term
denotes 'to coat with'. Generally categorised as "Folk"-Art cf. in Ray's graphemic representations.
Thus, so-called division between classical and folk art is blurred in Ray's representation of Bangla graphemes. The three-tier X-height
of Bangla graphemes was presented in a manner of musical map and the contours, curves in between horizontal and vertical meeting-
point, follow the patterns of alpana. It is also noticed that the metamorphosis of graphemes (This might be designated as
"Archewriting") as a living object/subject in Ray's positive manipulation of Bangla graphemes.
[53]

Critical and popular response[edit]
Ray's work has been described as full of humanism and universality, and of a deceptive simplicity with deep underlying
complexity.
[54][55]
The J apanese director Akira Kurosawa said, "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world
without seeing the sun or the moon."
[56]
But his detractors find his films glacially slow, moving like a "majestic snail."
[25]
Some find his
humanism simple-minded, and his work anti-modern; they criticize him for lacking the new modes of expression or experimentation
found in works of Ray's contemporaries, such as J ean-Luc Godard.
[57]
As Stanley Kauffman wrote, some critics believe that Ray
assumes that viewers "can be interested in a film that simply dwells in its characters, rather than one that imposes dramatic patterns on
their lives."
[58]
Ray said he could do nothing about the slow pace. Kurosawa defended him by saying that Ray's films were not slow,
"His work can be described as flowing composedly, like a big river".
[59]

Critics have often compared Ray to artists in the cinema and other media, such as Chekhov, Renoir, De Sica, Hawks orMozart. The
writer V. S. Naipaul compared a scene in Shatranj Ki Khiladi (The Chess Players) to a Shakespearean play; he wrote, "only three
hundred words are spoken but goodness! terrific things happen."
[18][60][61]
Even critics who did not like the aesthetics of Ray's films
generally acknowledged his ability to encompass a whole culture with all its nuances. Ray's obituary in The Independent included the
question, "Who else can compete?"
[62]

Political ideologues took issue with Ray's work. In a public debate during the 1960s, Ray and the Marxist filmmaker Mrinal
Sen engaged in an argument. Sen criticised him for casting a matine idol such as UttamKumar, whom he considered a
compromise.
[63]
Ray said that Sen only attacked "easy targets", i.e. the Bengali middle-classes. Advocates of socialism said that Ray
was not "committed" to the cause of the nation's downtrodden classes; some critics accused him of glorifying poverty in Pather
Panchali and Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder) through lyricismand aesthetics. They said he provided no solution to conflicts in the
stories, and was unable to overcome his bourgeois background. During the naxalite movements in the 1970s, agitators once came
close to causing physical harmto his son, Sandip.
[64]
Early in 1980, Ray was criticised by an Indian M.P. and former actress Nargis
Dutt, who accused Ray of "exporting poverty." She wanted him to make films to represent "Modern India."
[65]

Legacy[edit]
Satyajit Ray is a cultural icon in India and in Bengali communities worldwide.
[66]
Following his death, the city of Calcutta came to a
virtual standstill, as hundreds of thousands of people gathered around his house to pay their last respects.
[67]
Satyajit Ray's influence
has been widespread and deep in Bengali cinema; a number of Bengali directors, including Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh and Gautam
Ghose in India, Tareq Masud and Tanvir Mokammel in Bangladesh, and Aneel Ahmad in England, have been influenced by his film
craft. Across the spectrum, filmmakers such as Budhdhadeb Dasgupta, Mrinal Sen
[68]
and Adoor Gopalakrishnan have acknowledged
his seminal contribution to Indian cinema. Beyond India, filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese,
[69][70]
J ames Ivory,
[71]
Abbas
Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, Franois Truffaut,
[72]
Carlos Saura,
[73]
Isao Takahata
[74]
and Danny Boyle
[75]
have been influenced by his
cinematic style, with many others such as Akira Kurosawapraising his work.
[56]
Gregory Nava's 1995 film My Family had a final scene
that repeated that of Apur Sansar. Ira Sachs's 2005 work Forty Shades of Blue was a loose remake of Charulata. Other references to
Ray films are found, for example, in recent works such as Sacred Evil,
[76]
the Elements trilogy of Deepa Mehta and even in films of
J ean-Luc Godard.
[77]
According to Michael Sragow of The Atlantic Monthly, the "youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art
houses since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy".
[78]
The trilogy also introduced the bounce
lightingtechnique.
[79]
Kanchenjungha (1962) introduced a narrative structure that resembles later hyperlink
cinema.
[80]
Pratidwandi(1972) helped pioneer photo-negative flashback and X-ray digression techniques.
[81]
Together with Madhabi
Mukherjee, Ray was the first Indian film figure to be featured on a foreign stamp (Dominica).
Many literary works include references to Ray or his work, including Saul Bellow's Herzog and J . M. Coetzee's Youth. Salman
Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories contains fish characters named Goopy and Bagha, a tribute to Ray's fantasy film. In 1993, UC
Santa Cruz established the Satyajit Ray Film and Study collection, and in 1995, the Government of India set upSatyajit Ray Film and
Television Institute for studies related to film. In 2007, the BBC declared that two Feluda stories would be made into radio
programs.
[82]
During the London Film Festival, a regular "Satyajit Ray Award" is given to a first-time feature director whose film best
captures "the artistry, compassion and humanity of Ray's vision". Wes Anderson has claimed Ray as an influence on his work; his
2007 film, The Darjeeling Limited, set in India, is dedicated to Ray.
Awards, honours and recognitions[edit]
Further information: List of awards conferred on Satyajit Ray
Ray received many awards, including 32 National Film Awards by the Government of India, and awards at international film festivals.
At the 11th Moscow International Film Festival in 1979, he was awarded with the Honorable Prize for the contribution to
cinema.
[83]
At the Berlin Film Festival, he was one of only three filmmakers to win the Silver Bear for Best Director more than
once
[84]
and holds the record for the most number of Golden Bear nominations, with seven. At theVenice Film Festival, where he had
previously won a Golden Lion for Aparajito (1956), he was awarded the Golden Lion Honorary Award in 1982. That same year, he
received an honorary "Hommage Satyajit Ray" award at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.
[85]

Ray is the second film personality after Chaplin to have been awarded honorary doctorates by Oxford University.
[86]
He was awarded
the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1985 and the Legion of Honor by the President of France in 1987.
[87]
TheGovernment of
India awarded him the highest civilian honour, Bharat Ratna shortly before his death.
[87]
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences awarded Ray an Honorary Oscar in 1992 for Lifetime Achievement. It was one of his favourite actresses, Audrey Hepburn,
who represented the Academy on that day in Calcutta. Ray, unable to attend the ceremony due to his illness, gave his acceptance
speech to the Academy via live video feed from the hospital bed. In 1992 he was posthumously awarded the Akira Kurosawa Award
for Lifetime Achievement in Directing at the San Francisco International Film Festival; it was accepted on his behalf by
actress Sharmila Tagore.
[88]

In 1992, the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll ranked Ray at No. 7 in its list of "Top 10 Directors" of all time, making him the
highest-ranking Asian filmmaker in the poll.
[89]
In 2002, the Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll ranked Ray at No. 22 in its list of
all-time greatest directors,
[90]
thus making him the fourth highest-ranking Asian filmmaker in the poll.
[90]
In 1996, Entertainment
Weekly magazine ranked Ray at No. 25 in its "50 Greatest Directors" list.
[91]
In 2007, Total Filmmagazine included Ray in its "100
Greatest FilmDirectors Ever" list.
[92]


The Ray family[edit]

Upendrakishor
e Ray
Chowdhury

Bidhumukhi











Sukumar
Ray

Suprabha
Ray

Sukhalat
a Rao

Subino
y Ray

Subima
l Ray

Punyalata
Chakrabar
ti

Shantilat
a






Satyaji
t Ray

Bijoya
Ray







Sandip Ray

Lalita
Ray







Souradee
p Ray