At the Fifth Avenue Cinema, Fifth Avenue, south of Twelfth Street. PATHER PANCHALI, screen play by Satyajit Roy based on the novel by B. It's a film that takes patience to be enjoyed. But there are lovely little threads in the strange fabric. English subtitles barely make some sense. The dialogue often sounds like a Gramophone record going at high speed. Chunibala Devi is fantastically realistic and effective as the aging crone and Subir Banerji is wistful and beguiling as the small son of the family.As we say, it is quite exotic. And a finely conceived and sympathetic original musical score, composed by Ravi Shankar, in which native instruments are employed, sets the whole sad story in the frame of a melancholy mood.Karuna Banerji is touching as the mother who is most distressed by poverty and Uma Das Gupta is lovely and sensitive as the girl. By the time it comes to its sad end, it has the substance of a tender threnody.Much of the effect is accomplished by some stunningly composed domestic scenes, well performed-or pictured-by an excellent Indian cast, and exquisitely photographed by Subrata Mitra in tastefully filtered blacks and whites. Any picture as loose in structure or as listless in tempo as this one is would barely pass as a "rough cut" with the editors in Hollywood.But, oddly enough, as it continues-as the bits in the mosaic increase and a couple of basically human and dramatic incidents are dropped in, such as the pitiful death of the old woman and the sickness and death of the little girl-the poignant theme emerges and the whole thing-takes a slim poetic form. There are scenes, as familiar as next-door neighbors, of the mother trying to get the child to eat, washing clothes, quarreling with the husband or pushing the child toward school.Satyajit Roy, Indian artist, who wrote the screen play and directed this film, provides ample indication that this is his first professional motion picture job. And, in that time, the most the camera shows us in a rambling and random tour of an Indian village is a baffling mosaic of candid and crude domestic scenes.There are shots of a creaky old woman, a harassed mother, her lively little girl and a cheerful husband and father who plainly cannot provide for his small brood. His mother (the marvellous Karuna Bannerjee) is mired in daily tasks – looking after Apu and his sister Durga, struggling with the demands of her ageing sister-in-law and her impractical husband.THE Indian film, "Pather Panchali" ("Song of the Road"), which opened at the Fifth Avenue Cinema yesterday, is one of those rare exotic items, remote in idiom from the usual Hollywood film, that should offer some subtle compensations to anyone who has the patience to sit through its almost two hours.Chief among the delicate revelations that emerge from its loosely formed account of the pathetic little joys and sorrows of a poor Indian family in Bengal is the touching indication that poverty does not always nullify love and that even the most afflicted people can find some modest pleasures in their worlds.This theme, which is not as insistent or sentimental as it may sound, barely begins to be evident after the picture has run at least an hour. His father, a priest lost in dreams of writing plays and poetry, is so weak he won't even ask his employer for his back-pay. ![]() A small boy, Apu (Subir Bannergee), is living with his impoverished Brahmin family in rural west Bengal. The story seems superficially insubstantial. Certainly director Satyajit Ray and cinematographer Subrata Mitra showed a miraculous gift for lighting scenes, coaxing intimate and utterly convincing performances from children and other non-professional actors, and allowing narrative to grow seamlessly – just as happened in the best of the films by Ray's western mentor, Jean Renoir. The film was in the tradition of neo-realist cinema with natural acting (though using professional actors. Perhaps this inexperience gave everyone involved the freedom to create something new. It was about the struggle of a peasant family. On the first day of the shoot, the director had never directed, the cameraman had never shot a scene, the children in the leading roles hadn't been tested and the soundtrack was composed by a then obscure sitarist (the great Ravi Shankar). I t was the birth of a cinema, certainly the birth of a new kind of Indian cinema.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |