Memorial Lectures
The Honest Actor
This is a Ray Memorial Lecture delivered by Naseeruddin Shah in Kolkata on 2 May 2014. The lecture was organized by Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives
The dictionary meaning of the word ‘act’ is not ‘to pretend’ or ‘to play different characters’ or to ‘disguise oneself’ or to ‘emote’ but quite simply, ‘to do’. Those who have never bothered to check that (and that includes an astonishingly large number of actors I have met) will perhaps consider talking of honesty in connection with a thing that is, by its very nature, false to be a paradox; yet it is the very elusive search for truth that is the holy grail of every thinking actor’s journey as a performer.
The most apt description of an actor’s job I have encountered is the title of the great Dr. Shreeram Lagu’s autobiography, Lamaan—the carrier of goods.
An actor is a messenger entrusted with delivering the goods without distorting or damaging them, and if he does that he has done well. An actor’s job is to get across and if he does, it is futile to be judgmental about the approach and to label it as honest or otherwise. In other words, whether he carries the goods on his shoulder or his head or under his arm is immaterial provided he delivers them safely and completely. I am not at all sure, by the way, that there can be any such thing as a ‘dishonest’ actor, for the simple reason that an actor cannot plagiarize the way a writer or a musician can; he cannot get someone else to act for him either and thus cannot garner the credit for another’s effort. An actor can perhaps mimic or steal ideas from another but unless he ‘mimics’ and ‘steals’ ideas from life as well, his output remains in the realm of mimicry or theft.
Then, there are no tricks by which an actor can cheat and improve a bad performance---the kind of grand standing not infrequently resorted to by film-stars who believe trumping everyone else to be a vindication of their own skill, does not deserve to even be included in any definition of ‘acting’, because though considering oneself more important than the film is offensive, it’s not dishonest it is indulgent—the star does it because he can, like the school bully.
The one really dishonest thing actors often do is to refuse through indolent unwillingness to live up to potential, but in that case they themselves are the only one harmed. The conclusion should not be drawn, however, that all actors are scrupulously honest in every way, rather it should be said that, in their work, neither the actor (as against star) nor the work he is in, stand to gain in any way by dishonesty of whatever kind.
Without going into the merits or shortcomings of the various schools of acting, I can say with certainty that lumping all actors into either the “good” or the “bad” category is unjust; though doubtless there are some who should not be in the profession at all and even to call them bad would be a compliment, but we really shouldn’t concern ourselves with them.
I am fully convinced there is no such thing as a basically ‘bad’ or basically ‘good’ actor. There are lethargic actors and industrious actors, there are confident actors and anxious actors, there are selfish actors and generous actors, there are modest actors and showy actors, there are enthusiastic actors and reluctant actors, there are clever actors and plodding actors, just as there are all these categories of people in any profession and indeedin the world. Anyone at any time can be transcendently wonderful or irredeemably rotten depending on many factors, not necessarily talent or intentions alone, and, in any case, acquiring and nurturing the qualities that an honest craftsman should have is neither an end in itself nor a great achievement. But we live in times when an actor being punctual and speaking on cue is considered good acting and mastering the use of glycerine of course can put you into the league of ‘great’.
Badal Sarkar
However, being somewhat unsure what it is that defines honesty or dishonesty in a craft I will pose some questions which I myself have been chewing upon for a while and they concern the craft of acting as well; I must underline that I consider acting a craft, not an art and I am convinced there is absolutely nothing even remotely metaphysical about it.
Is an honest craftsman someone who makes a public display of worshipping the tools of his trade? One who is dutiful and punctual but creates predictable, time-tested stuff, expending only conditioned reflexes and investing a minimum of himself? Or one who makes a statement, perhaps going against the grain to create what he considers significant? Or one who tries to imbue his creation with beauty while retaining its functionality? Or is an honest craftsman one for whom creation is all that matters? I do not know and I cannot with any certainty claim to have the answers, so I will try instead to dwell on what exactly I feel the responsibility of the actorin the larger scheme of things is and what it is possible for the actor to do.
Whether an actor acts merely to showcase his entertaining abilities or there is another less specious dimension to his work and whether an actor can be assessed independently of the quality of the work he chooses to do, are questions that, I think, answer themselves. Why an actor who performs splendidly in one job can be disastrous in another, is quite simply because, his output being largely dependent on factors over which he has no control, an actor can never be better than the work he is in. So, is submitting to the conditions he finds himself in, the quality of honesty in an actor or is an attempt to guide them the way he feels they should go the honest thing to do? I suppose that would vary according to the respective statures of the people involved.
So, is a call taken on the integrity or otherwise of a person who is conveying another’s ideas likely to be an objective one? The assessment obviously must hinge upon the actor’s choice of work and the conviction with which he conveys those ideas, but if those ideas are reactionary and regressive then is the actor’s honesty to be judged by his mastery of the craft, or by his willingness or otherwise to become a mouthpiece for such ideas?
Crying is infectious just as laughter and yawning is; in any case the audience does not care to distinguish between real tears and glycerin-induced weeping and thus whether the actor is emotionally honest is somethingthe audience cannot judge. Even fake tears can produce an emotional resonance in the listener andthus unabashed weeping is always mistaken for good acting. Mr. Ray, some 40 years ago, expressed the wish that “our audiences should be more demanding” but the sad fact is that our audiences today seem even more dumbed down, and fully satisfied with the brain-dead efforts that pass off as movies in our country most of the time.And I am not blaming the audiences, I am laying the blame squarely on the people who make films, because this state of affairs is the result of a concerted effort put in by very determined speculators whose only purpose in making films is to multiply their own investments a hundred-fold by milking the audiences’ gullibility and forgiving nature--a fact that they are at last openly acknowledging, by vulgarly bandying the number of zeroes in their films’ respective box-office collections.
Having managed to bring general tastes down to their levels, they would, I daresay, be hit by a crisis of Kejriwalian proportions if the audiences one day realized that the recycled rubbish they have so far been happily swallowing no longer satisfies, and began demanding fresh and original films. However, that is just the kind of Utopian thinking Mr. Kejriwal himself indulges in.
So where does an honest approach by an actor come in, in all of this? In this kind of scenario is it not honest of the actor to simply take the money and run and think nothing of his participation in what may prove subversive? Or would it be honest to continue being taken to the cleaners by people making a “different sort of film”? It has long been understood among the Acting fraternity, by the way, that that this nebulous term “different” in the context of a film is shorthand for “you are not going to be paid!” So is an Actor who does not give priority to the money, who rigorously does his ‘riyaz’ and continues attempting all his life to hone his craft an honest actor, or should we call the transparent faces and guileless behavior of Bresson’s actors or Falconetti, or the people in “Bicycle Thief” (who had never acted before and never did again) or the kind of acting required by Brecht where characters are consciously represented, ‘honest Acting?’
The most winning performances in film, by the way, invariably come from children or animals, neither of which species, while Acting, generally have a clue as to what is happening—the performances are tricked out of them; and yet they almost always appear natural. So is that what honest Acting is? I must confess I do not know.
It is perhaps worth going into the origins of theatre here and pondering whether there is a still a connection between what we understand as theatre and that ritual which according to a fascinating theory, originated with primeval man’s need to plan the hunt. Those early attempts at communication would gradually out of necessity,with people and animals being mock-killed, have started to include in them something of an emotional and dramatic element as well, and surely there were some who played the ‘hunter’ or the ‘hunted’ better than others. The Actor was born. Religious connotations and an awed reverence attached itself to him centuries later when the idea of religion was being aggressively marketed and complex texts in order to be elucidated had to be enacted in temples, for the benefit of largely illiterate congregations.
Here again there must have originated the concept of not only the ‘stock character’ but also of who was better than whom. Actors at that time must surely have been judged by their ability to communicate, not entertain. Gradually, the better communicators would have acquired more celebrity and, taking certain human characteristics for granted, competitiveness between Actors would have resulted. Actors’ pay packets, one assumes, started becoming proportionate with their ability to hold peoples’ attention. And thus was born the Star.
Being the most visible component of the presentation, it was the actor who garnered the bouquets as well the brickbats. He became the face of this activity known as ’theatre’, became synonymous with it,a representative of it and unwittingly was held responsible for it as well. Even today it’s the actor who most often receives the “Vah Vahs” or has to endure the taunts of “Kya bundle pitcher banaya” and not the people who are really responsible for either, and sometimes one hears the very same things said alternately about the same work. I will not dwell even for a second on the absurd notion that the Actor is responsible for the quality of the work he finds himself in, I will try instead to explain what I think are the reasons for this by and large abysmal output by film Actors in India and try and get at the cause; maybe that way also lies a remedy of some kind.
When I say ‘abysmal’ I am not knocking only the popular genre here; very many films getting by with a reputation of being ‘serious’ suffer massively from this flaw as well. And before someone here,succumbing to nostalgia starts off with “In the old days we made better films…” let me pre-empt that by saying thatthis dreadful acting and writing is not a new phenomenon, and the argument that “this was the style of Acting then” cannot be trotted out I am afraid. If this was indeed the style of acting then, how on earth did some of the central actors achieve the refined restraint needed in cinema the way they did? We don’t need to have magnifying glasses on our noses to notice the vast gulf between the acting in “Our films and Their films”. So let’s be done with the nostalgia and admit that it was the sensibility of the people who backed films then that was responsible for our by and large shoddy output and it sensibility sadly still holds sway and exerts an inexorable control over the making of most movies in our country.
Iconoclastic as it may sound, it has to be said that even the, by and large, wonderful filmic works made in our country contain some supporting performances that are on the verge of grotesque. What bothers me is that “Do Bigha Zameen” “Kabuliwala” and “Kaagaz ke Phool” were made at more or less the same time or even later than “Bicycle Thief”, “Citizen Kane” and “Rashomon” were made in other countries, and I need scarcely issue a testimonial to the level of performance achieved by the actors in the latter three.
Apologies if I ruffle feathers by saying this, but I do think that too long have we put our heroes on a pedestal, they’ve gotten lonely up there! I think it’s time we got to know them for what they truly were, and started to learn from their strengths and weaknesses, not just swagger in the glory they reflect or continue to stoutly defend their flaws; maybe that way instead of just worshipping, we can begin to engage with them, and even prevent the pigeons from defecating on their heads, or at least wipe it off when it happens, but let us not prostrate ourselves at their feet without learning the right things from them.
Vijay Tendulkar
Even a casual glance at the history of film making in the country informs us that it was Bengali, Maharashtrian and Parsi entrepreneurs who first ventured into it, no doubt for different reasons, but all three communities with more than a passing acquaintance with the theatre. Most of the earliest male stars in these silent ventures were either light-eyed, fair-complexioned Maharashtrian, or Parsi gentlemen; whose possibly Aryan or Caucasian origins helped them pass off as “Western” looking, cinema then being considered a western medium we had embraced; similarly, on the distaff side, there were either European or Saraswat Brahmin ladies not only because of their white-skin but also because a woman performing on stage was by then no longer a taboo in Maharashtra. So one would not be wrong in saying that our earliest cinema was an amalgam of myth and Western films.
Then came the talkies and the large-scale plundering of theatre, precious little of which was original in the first place, began. Despite the hangover of aspiring to being white being then at its zenith, what we neglected to borrow from the West was an indigenous form for making films, something which despite the efforts of an intrepid few, we have still not really brought about in our country. Instead of treating cinema as a new medium with new rules, a different aesthetic and different possibilities, we resorted from the beginning to what was immediately available: the folk theatre, the Parsi theatre, the Nautanki, and of course Mythology which lent itself beautifully to the illusion cinema creates. It would probably be difficult to distinguish those films from Theatre performances filmed around the same time. In fact many of them were plays filmed. Thus these so-called “pioneering” efforts were not only creating what would become (over 100 years, as we keep Tom-Toming) an irreversible cinema language but an incurable malaise besetting our films even today.
What the early talkies also did was suck out from the Urdu theatre all the talent that had made it a somewhat viable proposition. No one from the theatre; whether actor, singer, writer, dancer, musician, poet, choreographer, set designer, could resist the lure of better money and bigger audiences through cinema. Unfortunately what all these people also brought with them was a sensibility marinated in mythology, or plagiarized Shakespeare, or musical melodrama, or broad comedy of the folk theatre, or supposedly magnificent productions from the Arabian nights if nothing else. It was a sensibility completely at variance with what was to become the nature of cinema in the future but we started with it and remained stuck with itbecause it was the balm that kept the audiences on “familiar ground”.
Theatre audiences began in the ‘30s to flock to the cinema instead, and our early film-makers made sure they were kept happy there as well, by peddling stuff as close to what the audiences were used to seeing in the theatre. Those unfamiliar with the theatre were fed a steady diet of mythological stories. If such was indeed to be the setting against which our films were to be made then what was one to expect from the Actors but that they should thoroughly conform?
The Parsi, European, Maharashtrian actors went out of fashion, probably due to their inability to speak Urdu, which then became de rigueur for film actors henceforth, many of the early talkies being, not so surprisingly, in the Urdu language. That was also a time when there wasn’t such a sharp distinction and rivalry between Hindi and Urdu, nor was Urdu considered a Muslim language and Hindi a Hindu one, but that is a whole other story.
What is an actor searching for truth supposed to do if surrounded on all sides by falseness? In our film making or our play writing we either turn incomprehensibly arcane or adhere unabashedly to formulae which were already fossilized when used by 19thcentury playwrights in India; Betab, Ahsan, and Agha Hashr, all of whose writing is described as “scrawled in greasepaint”, by Zia Mohyeddin who, in his wonderfully concise book ‘Theatrics’, says:
“These plays were heightened, melodramatic pieces with crude appeals to the emotions and usually a happy ending…. actors were not afraid to project themselves, there was no mumbling…no attempt at psychological probing…..actors acted to the hilt and nobody called them ‘hams’, the word had not arrived yet……the conventions of melodrama were rigorously followed: disguised husbands remain unrecognized by their wives, reprobate heroes repent in the end, characters burst into song every now and then, villains meet their dastardly comeuppance.
“The theatre in which Hashr’s capabilities were sharpened grew almost entirely in imitation of the decadent Victorian theatre of the mid-nineteenth century. The only difference being that in the West by the close of the 19th century the theatrical theatre found itself embattled by the theatre of ideas, whereas the spectacular Urdu theatre in Bombay had no such challenge to contend with. It is ironic that when the Urdu theatre was wallowing in the bombast and bluster of Ruritanian surroundings, Moscow was producing ‘Seagull’.”I assume I may bring this analogy to a close by applying it to the once and future state of film making in our country.
The poor quality of acting in our films and theatre is a reflection of the quality of the writing and the quality of the vision surrounding it. Stanislavsky’s experiments would have perhaps yielded no result had Anton Chekov not been around to put that vision into the right words. What kind of actor would Brando have been had hechosen to do bedroom comedies instead of engaging with Tennessee Williams’ writing? Some of his later films give us some idea. Would Mifune have been the same actor he was without Kurosawa, or Kinski without Herzhog, or Soumitra Chatterjee without Satyajit Ray, or Waheeda Rehman without Guru Dutt?
In fact, the American actors involved during the quantum leap that occurred in film acting in America in the ‘50’s, highly proficient though they were, are perhaps given more credit than they are due. It was really the tradition of writing passed on by the Eugene O’Neills and Clifford Odets, to the generation of Arthur Miller and Edward Albee and the perceptiveness of the directors then, the Kazans, the Capras, the Wilders; and strange as it may sound, television, which had begun to frame the world for people in America, thatmade that quantum leap possible. Apart from the usual confection; interviews, real-life incidents and conversations, arguments, came right into their bedrooms. The difference between false and real behavior on screen began to become apparent. This had to have a huge impact on the future of acting and writing in that country.
That many of the more celebrated actors of the naturalist school became known, and delivered arguably their careers’ finest performances in the ‘50’s American cinema was a lucky coincidence - the actors do not deserve sole credit, they got to work with written material that blended with, and embellished their psychologically–driven style of performing and they were being guided by people to whom form in presentation mattered as much as the dynamics that go into creating a moment of acting truth. Those wonderful actors, for all their originality, would have been ineffective had they had to engage with inferior writing or faulty guidance. The need to communicate, which much American writing seemed to feel strongly at that time, blended with technical wizardry and genuine performing skill, to generate a creative energy which resulted in great innovations in theatre and film writing, acting and presentation.
Sreeram Lagu
Whereas we in India are still regurgitating stories from 100 years and more ago long after the arrival of TV. The viewers’ ability to distinguish between real and fake, instead of getting sharper, is blurring. A real life calamity is observed with as much impassivity as a Bollywood film is. Values that should be vehemently opposed are being reinforced and a style of acting and writing and presentation that should be defunct by now,is flourishing and being celebrated. We just can’t seem to break free of the proscenium tradition, and the ‘theatre as illusion’ conviction in both our theatre and cinema.
While the output of a screenplay writer is often guided by external factors, the reason for such sparse output by competent playwrights in India is puzzling. The total number of performable new plays in any language except Marathi, and perhaps Kannada, almost escape notice and the past efforts of Badal babu in Bengal or a Tendulkar or Alekar in Maharashtra,or a Karnad in Karnataka notwithstanding, there seem to be very few others capable or willing enough to follow their example. Actors therefore have a Hobson’s choice of either working in plays written by people who would rather write films and end up writing neither, or working in films written by writers who look down on the theatre and wish to write bigger films and while everyone is busy worrying about the lowest common denominator, the actor’s outputs expected to be truthful. If it is perceived as being not so, no time is wasted in impaling him and roasting him over a fire!
A couple of final questions which bother me quite a bit: Is it not a shame that the capability and contribution of Marathi theatre giants Shreeram Lagoo and Nilu Phule will, in the future, be assessed only by the films they acted in, most of which were thoroughly unworthy of them?
Similarly should the great Utpal Dutt despite his prolific and committed theatre output be labeled asnot honest, simply because he simultaneously also chose to act in some of the worst films ever made? There are many other examples but I think I will rest my case by leaving these questions hanging in the air.
Manikda, My Mentor
This is a Ray Memorial Lecture delivered by Smt Sharmila Tagore on 28 April 2018 in Kolkata. The lecture was organized by Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives
I am delighted to be here today in our dynamic and culturally aware Kolkata, amongst so many Ray admirers who truly appreciate and value his work. It’s always a pleasure to interact with such an audience and when I do so, it is so difficult to stop. There is so much to say, and even after all these years something is new to discover. I am deeply grateful to Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives for inviting me to deliver today’s lecture and allowing me yet another opportunity to pay tribute to the great master. It’s indeed a great honour. But I can’t help wondering what Manikda would have had to say about this. I am sure he would have been amused, with that familiar twinkle in his eyes, but also as was his wont would have been very supportive and proud. I was just thirteen when he introduced me to the magical world of cinema; he was my mentor, and what a privilege it has been both professionally and personally.
That over sixty years after he made his first film, and almost thirty years after his death, his films continue to be part of our discourse, our consciousness, seen and admired in other countries and cultures, is a tribute not only to the artistic merits of the films but also to the essential humanism of Ray, which lives on across time and space.
This evening we are also celebrating another aspect of his creative oeuvre – his work in the sphere of science fiction with the book, Travails with the Alien, a collector’s item with so many insightful letters and comments, which I think is a must for everyone’s library.
Today, Indian cinema, particularly Bollywood, has found a global market. But it may be useful to remember that if anyone can be credited with putting Indian cinema on the world map, it is Satyajit Ray. Among the many accolades he won was also the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. The journey began with Pather Panchali – a cinema utterly unlike what international audiences and film critics had so far associated Indian cinema with. I remember the New Statesman writing: ‘Now and then the wholly captivating film does arrive, the film we could sit through again immediately, and again. Such is Pather Panchali. It is the kind of masterpiece that, despite the imitation goods that poured for so long from the second biggest film industry in the world, one always felt that India should and must produce.’ Over the next forty years, Ray was India’s flag-bearer in the international film scene. That too in an era not marked by the hype and hoopla we see and read about these days; an era where ‘India rising’ or ‘shining’ wasn’t part of anyone’s lexicon. Here I would add, if I may, he still remains the most credible Indian film-maker abroad and as you well know, the Trilogy remains among the best hundred films ever made in the world.
I am sure all of you are only too aware the legacy of Ray far exceeds the films and documentaries he made. In fact, he arrived with formidable inheritance. His grandfather Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury was a writer, publisher who invented halftone printing in India. His father Sukumar Ray was a writer, illustrator and author of nonsense verse that almost all Bengali children knew by heart. Ray inherited their talent and some more. He was a writer whose books sold in millions and continue to do so. He was an illustrator, designer, artist, music composer, and film-maker. Soumitra Chatterjee says in his book, Manikda and I, when asked specifically why despite being exceptionally gifted in so many disciplines, he chose to be a filmmaker, Ray had answered and I quote: ‘It seemed to me that there was no opportunity any more to climb to the pinnacle of excellence in these fields. So I chose a medium where there is room for fresh work. We haven’t made much progress in cinema in our country. That is why I am a film-maker.’ And true to his words, he pioneered a whole new sensibility about films and filmmaking in India that compelled the world to reshape its perception of Indian cinema.
The most enduring and endearing legacy of Ray I feel are characters he created through his films. Unlike the popular cinema of his time he did not paint his characters in extremes of black and white; his characters lived in an instantly recognizable middle ground. As Ray has himself said, ‘I feel that an ordinary person is a more challenging subject for cinematic exploration than persons cast in heroic moulds. It is these half-shades, the hardly audible notes that I want to explore and capture.’ Thus, there are no heroes in his films; instead, you have the brave heroism of the ordinary individual battling with the problems of their day-to-day lives. Their human predicament and dilemmas continue to resonate for us even today. As Pauline Kael said, ‘There is no one more than Ray who makes us re-evaluate the commonplace.’
Ray will be particularly remembered for the array of complex women characters that peopled his films. I have often been asked to speak about the depiction of women in Indian cinema, Hindi cinema in particular. Barring a few remarkable exceptions like Kahani, Piku, Queen, Dum Laga Ke Haishya and some others, women continue to play a secondary role, primarily as the hero’s wife, love interest or mother who exist only in relation to the hero. Ray’s women, in contrast, were primary protagonists in their own right. They exuded a restrained energy; perhaps best described by the expression that Ray used to describe the cinema of Kurosawa – ‘Fire Within, Calm Without’; a metaphor inspired by Mount Fujiyama. Ray didn’t deny his woman the right of choice. His women characters had agency. His understanding and portrayal of women were not contrived. This perhaps can be understood in the context of the presence of two strong women in Ray’s life – his mother, a single parent who brought him up, and his wife, who was a constant companion and critic through his creative pursuits. Ray’s grandfather as you know embraced Brahmoism – a movement where woman had a nodal role. His upbringing shaped his perception of women.
Out of all Ray’s screen women, Sarabjaya comes to mind immediately, a woman battered by the ravages of poverty, stoically bearing what fate hurls at her. This was the era of Mother India, Mughal-e-Azam and Pyaasa in Hindi cinema – all considered epitomes of iconic women characters. Or Meghe Dhaka Tara, which was released around the same time. While Ghatak raises melodrama to an art, there is no denying that Ghatak’s women, much like the iconic women in Hindi cinema, were essentially ‘mother goddesses’. The difference with Ray is stark: in Sarbajaya, there is neither a hint of self-pityor victimhood nor glorification of her fortitude. In contrast to the world-weary Sarbajaya is the impish Durga – forever curious, with a sense of adventure, always courting trouble, and sometimes wanting to escape to another world – maybe that’s why she hides that necklace (a secret Apu so memorably lets go in the film’s ending sequences). Protective about Apu, she dies before she can live any of her dreams but I feel her absence seems to resonate in Apu’s life with a plangent wistfulness all through the trilogy.
Then there’s Indir Thakrun, wrinkled, bent double with age. We remember almost every nuance of her performance: how hungrily she looks on as Sarbajaya eats, her complete absorption with self-preservation, how she is immune to all insults and is ready to go door to door in order to survive, how she gobbles her food and how she still has the urge to nurture a plant, her bond with Durga and Apu – these are images that have lingered with all of us. One of the most heartbreaking aspects of the trilogy is the relationship between Apu and his mother. As celebrated film critic Roger Ebert has pointed out, it is symbolic of the ‘truths that must exist in all cultures: how the parent makes sacrifices for years, only to see the child turn aside and move thoughtlessly away into adulthood. When Apu comes to visit during a school vacation, he sleeps or loses himself in his books, answering her with monosyllables. He seems in a hurry to leave, but has second thoughts at the train station, and returns for one more day only to find her dead. The way the film records his stay, his departure and his return says whatever can be said about lonely parents and heedless children.’
Ray’s women characters struggle with countless odds: tradition-bound, young Doya’s capitulation before the fanatic will of the family patriarch (in Devi), economic freedom as in Mahanagar, the freedom of choice in marriage (Kapurush, Samapti), transgressive erotic desires (in Charulata, Seemabaddha, Aranyer Din Ratri) and her struggle to retain her dignity in an unequal and patriarchal world (Aranyer Din Ratri, Mahanagar, Nayak). These women are exceptional in the way they articulate their emotional, sexual and intellectual longings. In a gesture that predates the women’s movement in India, the protagonist in Mahanagar stands up to her husband and his family and refuses to give up working simply because her identity of being a working woman has hurt the husband’s ego. Similarly, when she resigns from her job, it is to protest against the wrongful dismissal of a woman colleague with whom she chooses to stand in solidarity. In the closing scene, as Aarti and Subrata walk uninhibitedly hand in hand through the crowded streets of Kolkata, it is almost as if Ray is heralding a new era of gender parity.The quiet revolution wrought by the daughter and the mother in Kanchenjungha, where they emerge out of years of being dominated by the family patriarch to stand up for their own desires, is without doubt one of the most stirring onscreen statements on the overthrow of the deadwood of tradition, more powerful because it is understated. In Charulata, the protagonist does not have a crisis of conscience. She is not apologetic about her passion. This in itself was a dramatic departure from a majority of the films that were being made at the time.Ray gifted his women protagonists the liberty of the female gaze which defied the cliché that the male desire is visual whereas the woman’s is sensory. His cinema broke away from the patriarchal status quo where the male gaze was dominant and the woman was treated as an object.
As Writija Samsal, a researcher, says that while society then was not yet able to fathom a separate existence for women other than in relation to men, or the struggle inherent in such dynamic existences, Satyajit Ray actually recognized and depicted women as sexual beings with the same desires and needs as that of men — something patriarchy still can’t quite come to terms with — without ever filming overtly sexual scenes. In film after film, he explores the issue of women’s rights and the need to push the patriarchal envelope. In this, his films lend themselves to contemporary reading and yet they are not aggressively women-centric or anti-men or anti-society… After all, it is Nikhil who encourages his wife to step out of the world outside in Ghare Baire. It is only through this exposure that she confronts herself and her emotions, evolving from a housewife to a woman with a mind of her own – even if that evolution comes at a price.
It is impossible to do justice to the many shades of the women in his films in the course of a forty-minute lecture. From Sarbojaya to Bimala, they trace an arc that encompasses the entire gamut of the feminine experience. Even the secondary women characters speak so eloquently of the time in which his films were made. Dolon of Seemabaddha is the typical wife of a boxwallah who probably does not even realize how far away she has moved emotionally from her husband, immersed as she is in her worldly aspirations. The suppressed sexuality and tension that Jaya brings to the screen in that one scene with Sanjoy in Aranyer Din Ratri says more than a hundred explicit expressions in mainstream Hindi cinema then or now. Ray communicates her desire and her need for love and her sense of humiliation when her overture is rejected. Gulabi in Abhijan and Duli in Aranyer Din Ratri are marginalized women and yet in the hands of Ray, they never become the stereotypical sex worker or an exotic tribal girl we have been used to seeing. Pikoo unapologetically depicts the many shades of a woman’s desire. The adulterous wife is nonchalant and uninhibited about her liaison with her husband’s friend. But Ray’s women are never unidimensional, and Seema finds herself oddly shaken in the face of her little son’s innocence. One could go on and on, of course. But as a member of the female audience, it is at once humbling and empowering to see such enduring portrayals of real womanhood on screen.
Ray did not share the popular film industry’s preoccupation with stars and preferred to cast newcomers in his films. On the odd occasion when he did cast stars, he cast them against the grain like Amjad Khan in Shatranj Ke Khiladi and Waheeda Rehman in Abhijaan. Take, for instance, Uttam Kumar in Nayak. Since it was the story of a matinee idol, Ray felt that Uttam would trigger immediate identification, but he expected a different kind of performance, not the usual Uttam Kumar star vehicle. Ray directing Uttam Kumar in Nayak – especially in regard to speaking his lines and using his voice – left a lasting impression on me.
While directing actors he offered unlimited freedom to some while strictly controlling others. If anything, he tended to direct professionals more than newcomers. Although we were given these magnificent handwritten scripts well before the shooting started, we were discouraged to memorize our dialogues. Ray never over-instructed – and the way he read out the scene was enough for all of us actors to understand how to play the character. His praise was equally brief – usually a happy ‘Excellent – next shot’ was all he said. But it energized and inspired all of us.
There were no extensive workshops or rehearsals.Even on the set, there were one or two takes at the most – multiple takes were a drain on the budget,a luxury he couldn’t afford. He had the actors’ complete trust – as Soumitra says about him quoting Brando on Chaplin, ‘Even if he gave us a telephone directory as the script – we would agree to do it.’ Sir Richard Attenborough said as much to him when he was offered the role in Shatranj Ke Khiladi.
Ray also had the cinematic ability to transform spaces into protagonists. Let me recall here a personal experience. Thirty years after Apur Sansar was shot, I revisited that terrace tenement one more time. I was accompanied by Catherine Berge who made a documentary on Soumitra Chatterjee. The house had remained exactly the same and seemed untouched by the passage of time. That is when I got an insight into Apu the writer and what this terrace room must have meant to him. Apu’s house is nested in a crowded area and is a beehive of people and activity. When he walks up the stairs, he is aware of inquisitive, prying eyes. Nowhere in the city can he afford any privacy. But once he enters through the door into the terrace he encounters the open sky. When after so many years, I returned to the terrace with Catherine, I heard the cacophony of the city recede and the only sound that remained was that of the passing train – a sound that he loved and that probably reminded him of Durga and his childhood. I began to understand what Apu must have felt each time he came in through the door and saw the open sky. It was a space that would have appealed to the poet, the dreamer, in him. I realized then – more than when I had shot for the film – how evocative this location had been to the delineation of Apu’s character.
Like the spaces that he chose to locate his stories and characters in, sound too was used to give depth and texture to his films. The soundtrack in Ray’s films celebrates the ordinary by using familiar everyday sounds: radio music, the barking of dogs or the passing of trucks are all used to heighten the emotive register of his films. Very often music would be used as a sound-effect as in the famous scene in Pather Panchali when Harihar gets to know that his daughter has died. I am sure most of you know that he could read and write music but I wonder how many of you know that he could also whistle beautifully – Brahms, Beethoven and everything else. A discussion on the soundscape that Ray created would be incomplete if we did not talk about how economical he was with dialogues. In a film culture that is heavily reliant on words, Ray introduced restraint. Very few film-makers can liberate themselves from words like Ray did and it was this very quality that he admired in Kurosawa. Sometimes he created the most eloquent scenes with just sound, music and images. Apu and Durga caught in a thunderstorm, Aparna’s death in Apur Sansar, the culminating scenes in Seemabaddha and Sadgati are all examples of pure cinema. But when he does use words it has a momentous cinematic impact.
Most importantly, Ray could reflect upon his own work with a certain detachment – at least during the making of it. His style was never allowed to override content. If he felt a scene even after shooting it that it wasn’t wholly integrated in the narrative he had no hesitation in deleting it. His work was more important than his ego. He came to the studio totally prepared – whether outdoors or indoors he seemed in complete control of his surroundings.
Ray’s films were created despite the many material constraints he had to face throughout his career – budget, technology, marketing and distribution. His was the pre-multiplex era.Ray’s was a perennial struggle to procure funds to finance his art. The conditions in which he made his films are unimaginable now. Studio floors were full of potholes which made a simple trolley shot a challenge. Those were the days of load shedding in Calcutta and the erratic power situation cost him dearly; he didn’t have the right equipment – and had to improvise continuously. And sometimes these improvisations brought out the best, like the invention of the bounce light, the back projection in Nayak (which was quite flawless). All this was achieved with a minimalist team – his cameraman Subroto Mitra and his art director Bansi Chandragupta. The trio’s contribution to cinema has been phenomenal. Charulata epitomizes this excellence. With such poor working conditions, they managed to compete with the best in the world and won international acclaim. But after Nayak, Ray went solo. He started doing everything himself. Screenplay, camera operation (the memory game in Aranyer Din Ratri is a testimony to his superb handling of the camera), set design, in Hirok Rajar Deshe he even chose the fabric himself, his musicals needed such elaborate work. He did the wardrobe, music, title credits, publicity posters, everything. But typically, he took money for just two things: screenplay and direction. I don’t think there has been another director quite so versatile and quite so hardworking. But I think this budgetary constraint added to the overall stress of film-making, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this wasn’t the cause of his poor heart condition. I remember him sitting next to the camera, chewing his handkerchief. He ruined one handkerchief daily, much to his wife’s dismay. The commitment to his art despite the conditions in which he worked, the steadfastness, the refusal to compromise for any consideration whatsoever is ultimately at the heart of his legacy.
Ray was often accused of being non-political by several contemporaries as well sections of the audience. To say that Ray’s films were not political would be to take a very narrow definition of politics. He was political but his approach was different. A secular impulse ran through his films and he often made courageous forays into the domain of blind faith, superstition and religious bigotry. His films were not about political stances; it was about how politics affected people and altered their moral and ethical values. His protagonists are not political demagogues – except perhaps the malevolent Hirok Raja – but characters who are caught on the hinges of historical transformations. Like the protagonists of Pratidwandi and Jana Aranya. These films are conversation with the shifting sands of the times through which he lived and which, in turn, shaped his films.
The first phase of his career – coinciding with the hope and idealism of the newly emergent nation – saw him make what in effect are his finest films reflecting the spirit of the times. They reflected also his own upbringing, his education in music and the arts and his belief in the confluence of the East and the West. This vision was both Tagorean and Nehruvian. The political and economic ideals of the Nehruvian era, however, began to disintegrate around the mid-1960s.
The uncertainties of the era, the economic, political and social upheavals of the 1970s, found their way into Ray’s films: the alienation and waywardness of the urban youth in Pratidwandi and Jana Aranya and the collapse of the middle-class moral order in Seemabaddha. The grim portrayal of the 1943 Bengal famine in Ashani Sanket showed politics of that time while Ghare Baire was a very contemporary critique of a Hindu majoritarian nationalism. Gone was the lyricism that marked his films in the first era, replaced by an edginess that probably reflected Ray’s personal crisis. The crisis only deepens in the last phase and is reflected in his last trilogy of films—Ganashatru, Shakha Proshakha and Agantuk—family dramas which, unlike his early works, were almost didactic in the way they railed against the mix of religion and politics, corruption and its impact on family values which seem to have gone on a downward spiral buffeted by crony capitalism. In Agantuk, Ray literally plants his own voice to articulate human concerns in a rapidly changing world order. Through the protagonist Manmohan Mitra, surely Ray’s alter ego, he questions the primacy of art and the artist, what the terms mean in the context of the world, what is civilization and indeed who defines what is civilized and what is not. Before passing on the baton to a new generation of film-makers and viewers, Ray uses his beloved medium to leave behind his message as a citizen of the world, decrying narrow confines of passport- and prejudice-induced boundaries, and extolling the new generation, represented by his young grandnephew, to refrain from being a ‘kupamanduk’, a frog in the well. Surely, this can also be seen as a call to the next generation of film-makers to look beyond the obsession with the market so as to create art that outlives the creator. Reminding them that extraordinary films are made not by extraordinary technology or budget but by extraordinary imagination, intuitiveness and insight.
Ray had his share of critics. Some defied him, while for others, he became an art-house figure who was distant, unreachable and obscure. This combined with differences in regional sensibilities and of course the Bengali language has continued to impede a more wide-spread engagement with Ray’s films within the country. Few will disagree that language is an important part of Ray’s films. Those who know the Bengali language will inevitably get more out of his films and for the rest, much will be lost in translation. Contrary to popular perception, his films were not confined to the elite intelligentsia but have been enjoyed by a large cross-section of audiences belonging to both the Bengals. The reason why Ray has been labelled obscure and difficult is probably because he challenged extant notions of film-making, and by extensions film viewing. Ray believed firmly that audiences can be entertained even without the traditional elements of the box office. And he was right, barring Aparajita, Devi and perhaps Kapurush, all his films ran to packed houses.
Then there are those who thought that his international fame was undeserved; and that he got his international acclaim ‘by peddling Indian poverty abroad’. One would have thought that such an absurd viewpoint would by now have been dismissed with the contempt it deserves. But it keeps cropping up every now and then and this is certainly a lie that needs to be nailed. Except for the trilogy and Ashani Sanket, his other films really don’t deal with poverty. The implication seems to be that to be a true nationalist one must sweep uncomfortable truths about India under the carpet. This is precisely what Ray’s cinema stood against. As Ray most eloquently put it, and I quote, ‘Cinema has its own way of telling the truth and it must be left free to function in its own right. This story (Pather Panchali) says true things about India. That was enough for me. It had the quality of truth, the quality that always impresses me.’
Today, we talk of the world shrinking thanks to technological innovations. Yet, we are witness to a world that is increasingly fragmented along a number of fault lines. I feel that under such conditions, it is to the art of masters like Ray we can turn for answers, for an understanding of our fellow men, for lessons on empathy for the universe and for mankind. How well Ray understood and valued the relations between his own culture and that of the world outside. In his films he constantly sought the larger vision – reach out to the entire world, and those of you who have followed his films will agree that he succeeded. That he was appreciated across cultures despite being firmly rooted in his own reinforces our belief that the commonalities we share transcend our differences. That it is possible to maintain and respect each other’s individuality and yet become part of the bigger dialogue. I believe we have much to learn from Ray’s vision of critical openness.
Long after his films are over, the viewer is left with an unshakeable optimism that is paramount in Ray’s outlook, investing his films with a poet’s universality. You will agree his films have remained timeless. I have no doubt that Ray’s films will remain relevant for times to come. Satyajit Ray with his rich legacy meant many things to many people. I will end with the huge personal debts that I owe him. He taught me how to appreciate cinema, how to be in front of the camera, how to think in character, how to enjoy a language. And he taught me the importance of the moment. He led by example and from him I learnt the value of commitment to one’s work. Sixty years ago, a very young girl, as a young bride Aparna, crossed the threshold on that first day’s shooting at the technician’s studio. Her life changed forever as she entered the enchanting world of cinema. Thank you, Manikda.
To bring this address to an end, I would like to quote Roger Ebert’s observation on the Apu Trilogy, which I think holds true to Manikda’s entire oeuvre. He says, ‘The great, sad, gentle sweep of The Apu Trilogy remains in the mind of the moviegoer as a promise of what film can be. Standing above fashion, it creates a world so convincing that it becomes, for a time, another life we might have lived … Never before had one man had such a decisive impact on the films of his culture. I watched The Apu Trilogy recently over a period of three nights, and found my thoughts returning to it during the days. It is about a time, place and culture far removed from our own, and yet it connects directly and deeply with our human feelings. It is like a prayer, affirming that this is what cinema can be, no matter how far in our cynicism we may stray.’
back to top
© Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives
Best viewed at 1366 x 768 pixels