An auteur’s Rayspeak

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By By Satyajit Ray edited by Sandip Ray [2]

Rs 450

They flicker, they dim depressingly and brighten blindingly. The DVD prints of Jalsaghar, Charulata and Mahanagar — just to name a random threesome — aren’t exactly a collector’s possession come true. Yet, better to grab whatever is accessible on the store’s shelves than to miss out on the masterpieces which have lasted the test of time.
Stalwart efforts have been made to restore Satyajit Ray’s oeuvre, thanks to efforts initiated by the late Ismail Merchant and then supported by Martin Scorsese. Still, so far the prints in pristine conditions have to make it to the digital format. Meanwhile, here’s welcoming a collection of essays, notes and pen portraits written by the master for diverse publications from 1949 to the 1980s.

On the disappointing side, the shorter pieces are sketchy, the caricatures of other filmmakers done by Ray are shabbily strewn through the copy like dry raisins, and the layout design is conspicuous by its absence. On the location photographs and the film posters, conceived and designed by Ray, have an element of déja vu. Seen-them-marvelled-at-them.
The book looks simple — workmanlike — to a fault. Indeed time, in a pejorative sense of the word, seems to have stood still since the publication of Our Films Their Films, Ray’s first collection of essays way back in 1976. It looked better, felt better. Yet to be absolutely honest, none of the stylisation nitpickings can take away from the sheer brilliance of candid Rayspeak. No Indian filmmaker has ever written as perceptively and frankly as him. Above all, quite often he would be a put-down artiste, darting poison pellets at his own shortcomings.
Alternately humorous and flabbergasted, the account of his first trip to Russia talks of Yeena, the interpreter who did not show up at the airport because she was sure the flight from India would be late. And when Ray suggested that his wife and he could get some dinner, after a long-haul-flight, a single bar of chocolate was sent to his room with the luggage. Ray’s chauffeur from the airport, by the way, happened to be the chief cinematographer on Sergei Bondarchuk’s The Fate of a Man. Technicians in the USSR were treated as a multi-tasking labour force.
The opening essay written for The Statesman (1949) — National Styles in Cinema — is a must-devour for any film student who wishes to evolve a personal signature. While assisting the French filmmaker Jean Renoir on The River, his disciple learnt to differentiate between the “obvious” and the “hidden visual”. Flowers look beautiful in Bengal, but then so do they in London or Paris. “But look at the clump of bananas, and the golden pond at its foot. You won’t find that beauty anywhere else,” Renoir had said casually. That moment on, Ray knew he could see hidden visuals only in his own Bengal — “in the full awareness of the past heritage and present environment”.
In the 1959 essay for Filmfare, Ray addresses the contentious question, “Should a filmmaker be original?”, answering it to a degree by stating that material can be borrowed but it must be coloured with the filmmaker’s own experience of the medium. In literature, Shakespeare and Kalidasa have borrowed; the great operas and ballets have been based on existing ideas. With the possible exception of Charlie Chaplin, all other filmmakers have pilfered ideas. That’s an untenable argument, stemming evidently from the fact that Ray adapted stories (notably the Apu trilogy from Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay). Not quite convincing.
Such defensive takes by the master apart, he’s on firmer ground on the topics of technique and the complex art of recreating reality. On criticism, he has rather one-sided over-generalised comments to make: “Those on the dailies will be the first to admit that they are not always free to write what they feel about a film, and
this applies to most critics on most of the daily newspapers of the world. At any rate, in the limited time and space at
their disposal, they can scarcely hope to do justice to a serious work of art.” Arguable, arguable.
The book’s coup de grace is none other than Ray’s controversial convocation address at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, 1974. Straight off he had said that in India many films have been made with virtually no contribution from the director, or at least nothing of a positive nature. Quote, “He does nothing because he knows nothing... The moment the shooting is over, he washes his hands of the film and leaves the rest to the cutter,” unquote. Ignoramuses, he went on to say, win critical applause and even National Awards. Graduates squirmed with the master’s relentless assault, as he concluded, “I wish I could say that the Institute holds promise of changing the state of affairs. But it doesn’t. What it holds is the promise of a parallel cinema — signs of which are already in evidence.”
The convocation address is a classic. It upset a section of purist filmmakers who went on to practise their art for an exclusive audience: themselves. Parallel cinema, alas, gave way to TV serials and now medium-wave stuff. On reading Ray’s reflections today, you are taken back to his abundant strengths and some weaknesses — a distinct preference for acclaim from the West and arrogance vis-a-vis his peers.
Can’t blame him at all. Can he be blamed at all for recoiling at some of the absurd charges levelled against his work? He sold India’s poverty to the world, it seems! Neither can you blame a great master for longing for a wider exposure of his cinema in his own country, but never finding it.
The essays, in a way, still reflect cinema as it is. Nothing changes except that the master has gone — irrepleaceable in his cinema and writing.

Khalid Mohamed is a journalist, film critic and film director