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‘The Universal Film for all of us, everywhere in the world’: Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali (1955) and the Shadow of Robert Flaherty

2009; Routledge; Volume: 29; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439680903145520

1465-3451

Chandak Sengoopta,

South Asian Studies and Conflicts

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements My thanks to Mackenzie Bennett, Charles Silver, Ron Magliozzi, and their colleagues at the Museum of Modern Art Archives and Film Study Center for allowing me access to the Monroe Wheeler and the Richard Griffith Papers; to International Film Seminars, Inc. and Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library for permitting access to the Robert Flaherty Papers; to the Leverhulme Trust, UK for funding the larger project from which this paper is drawn; and to Sunil Amrith, David Arnold, Indira Chowdhury, David Culbert, Pam Cullen, Ramachandra Guha, Jane Henderson, Tamara Mann, Mark Mazower, Partha Mitter, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Gaston Roberge and Andrew Robinson for help, advice and information. Notes Notes 1. Generally on Flaherty, see Paul Rotha, Robert J Flaherty: a biography, edited by Jay Ruby (Philadelphia, 1983); Richard Barsam, The Vision of Robert Flaherty: the artist as myth and filmmaker (Bloomington, IN, 1988); and Robert J. Christopher, Robert and Frances Flaherty: a documentary life, 1883–1922 (Montreal, 2005). For a guide to the extensive literature on Flaherty and his work, see William T. Murphy, Robert Flaherty: a guide to references and resources (Boston, 1978). 2. Jay Ruby, The aggie must come first: Robert Flaherty's place in ethnographic film history, in: Jay Ruby, Picturing Culture: explorations of film and anthropology (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000), 67–93, at 77; and Bert Cardullo, Vittorio De Sica: director, actor, screenwriter (Jefferson, NC, 2002), 174. 3. Jay Ruby, Introduction, in Rotha, Robert J Flaherty, 1–4, at 3. 4. See Richard Corliss, Robert Flaherty: the man in the iron myth [1973], in: Richard Meran Barsam (ed.), Nonfiction Film Theory and Criticism (New York, 1973), 230–238; Brian Winston, The white man's burden: the example of Robert Flaherty, Sight and Sound, 54(1) (1984–85), 58–60; and Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye: race, cinema, and ethnographic spectacle (Durham, NC, 1996). 5. On Ray's life and career, see Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: the inner eye (2nd edn) (London, 2004); and Marie Seton, Portrait of a Director: Satyajit Ray (revised edn) (Delhi, 2003). For an excellent brief overview, see the introductory essay by Andrew Robinson, in: Nemai Ghosh and Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: a vision of cinema (London, 2005), 13–63. 6. Pather Panchali and Aparajito were released in the United States under the original Bengali titles and continue to be known by them. Apur Sansar, however, has always been known in the United States as The World of Apu. 7. Apart from the biographies by Seton and Robinson, see Satyajit Ray, My Years with Apu (London, 1994); Ray, The education of a film-maker, New Left Review, September–October (1983), 79–94; Ray, Pather Panchali: chitranatya prasangey [Pather Panchali: about the screenplay], Ekshan, 16(3–4) (1390 [1983]), 293–296; and Anil Choudhury, Pather Panchalir Nepathhye [Pather Panchali: behind the scenes], ibid., 297–317. For the screenplays, see Satyajit Ray, The Apu Trilogy: Pather Panchali, Aparajito, Apur Sansar, translated by Shampa Banerjee (Calcutta, 1985). 8. Chidananda Das Gupta, Talking about Films (Delhi, 1981), vii, 97–98. 9. On Ghosh, see Moinak Biswas, The city and the real: Chhinnamul and the left cultural movement in the 1940s, in: Preben Kaarsholm (ed.), City Flicks: Indian cinema and the urban experience (Calcutta, 2004), 40–59; and on Abbas, see Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, I Am Not An Island: an experiment in autobiography (Delhi, 1977). On realism in Indian cinema, see also Sumita S. Chakravarty, National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, 1947–1987 (Delhi, 1996), 81–86, 117–118. 10. Benegal on Ray—Satyajit Ray, a film by Shyam Benegal, script reconstructed by Alakananda Datta and Samik Bandyopadhyay (Calcutta, 1988), 27–28. 11. Satyajit Ray, Some Italian films I have seen [1951], in: Satyajit Ray, Our Films, Their Films (Delhi, 1976), 120–127, at 127. 12. Folke Isaksson, Conversation with Satyajit Ray [1970], reprinted in Bert Cardullo (ed.) Satyajit Ray: interviews (Jackson, MI, 2007), 35–52, at 38; and Robinson, Satyajit Ray: the inner eye, 68–69. On the background of Renoir's The River, see Alexander Sesonske, The river runs, the round world spins, New Review of Film and Television Studies, 3(2) (2005), 105–131. 13. See Ray's interview with Lindsay Anderson, in Cardullo (ed.), Satyajit Ray: interviews, 94–114, at 97; and Ray, Some Italian films I have seen, 123. 14. The novel is available in an incomplete English translation by T.W. Clark and Tarapada Mukherji: Pather Panchali: song of the road (London, 1968). 15. T. W. Clark, Introduction, in Banerji, Pather Panchali: song of the road, 11–19, at 12–13. 16. Ray, A long time on the little road [1957], in Ray, Our Films, Their Films, 30–37, at 33. 17. Generally on the complex relationship between the novels and films, see Rushati Sen, Satyajiter Bibhutibhushan [Satyajit Ray's Bibhutibhusan] (2nd edn) (Calcutta, 2006). 18. Meenakshi Mukherjee, Realism and Reality: the novel and society in India (Delhi, 1985), 128–130. See also Gaston Roberge, Satyajit Ray: essays (1970–2005) (Delhi, 2007), 38–41. 19. Bibhuti Banerji was a voracious reader of Western literary, historical and scientific works and despite his rural background, spent many years in an urban, cultivated environment (see Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch! India, 1921–1952 (Reading, MA, 1988), 87–89). Banerji's understanding of Indian tradition or sense of time may well have been shaped by Western ethnographic or Orientalist accounts. 20. See Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Satyajit Ray, Ray's films, and Ray-Movie, Journal of Arts and Ideas, 23–24 (1993), 7–16; Suranjan Ganguly, Satyajit Ray: in search of the modern (Lanham, MD, 2000), 4; and Geeta Kapur, When was Modernism: essays on contemporary cultural practice in India (Delhi, 2000), 204. 21. On Ray's personal relationship with Nehru, see Seton, Portrait of a Director, 88, 142, 235–236; and Isaksson, Conversation with Satyajit Ray [1970], in Cardullo (ed.), Satyajit Ray: interviews, 50. 22. On Nehru's vision of India, see Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (London, 2003). For a compact and perceptive biography, see Benjamin Zachariah, Nehru (London, 2004). 23. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India [1946] (Delhi, 2004), 579. 24. See, for example, Robin Wood's completely ahistorical comments on Ray's attitude to ‘progress,’ in Wood, The Apu Trilogy (New York, 1971), 17. 25. Bernard Taper, At home in Calcutta, Harper's Magazine, December 1969, 40–44, at 40. 26. See Wheeler's Report to the Museum's Trustees, Monroe Wheeler Papers, I.95, Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York (hereafter MW, ) 27. Wheeler's itinerary is available in MW, I.95, MoMA Archives, NY. 28. The photograph, credited to Ray but with no reference to the film, appeared in The Family of Man: the greatest photographic exhibition of all time (New York, 1955), 30. 29. Russell Lynes, Good Old Modern: an intimate portrait of the Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1973), 162–163, 219. 30. See Wheeler's memo to Griffith dated June 8, 1954, in MW, I.97, MoMA Archives, New York (emphasis added). 31. On Griffith's expertise in documentary film, see Murphy, Robert Flaherty, 76, and on his links with the Flaherty family, see Richard Griffith, The World of Robert Flaherty (London, 1953), vii; and Cecile Starr, Recollections of Frances Flaherty and the early Flaherty Seminars, Wide Angle, 17(1–4) (1995), 167–172. Griffith's World of Robert Flaherty was written in close collaboration with Flaherty and Griffith insisted on sharing his royalties with the film-maker. See Griffith's letter to Flaherty dated November 21, 1950, enclosing a three-page outline of the proposed book, in Robert Flaherty Papers, Uncataloged Correspondence, Box 10, Reel 5, Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library (hereafter Flaherty Papers, ) 32. On Kaufmann, see Lynes, Good Old Modern, 319–320. 33. Memo from Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., to Richard Griffith dated November 20, 1954, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Film Study Center, Richard Griffith Papers, File 13–11 (Griffith, Richard. Pather Panchali), emphases added (hereafter Griffith Papers, ) 34. These cultural evenings (called ‘The Living Arts of India’) comprised, apart from the film, music recitals by Ali Akbar Khan and Bharatnatyam dance performances by Shanta Rao. Khan and Rao were the first Indian classical artists to appear on television in the United States and a recording of Khan's sarod recital was the first long-play record of Indian classical music ever produced. See Peter Lavezzoli, The Dawn of Indian Music in the West (New York, 2006), 1–3, 5, 58–61. 35. For an idea of the post-production difficulties Ray had to face, see his letter to Wheeler dated June 15, 1955, in MW, I.97, MoMA Archives, NY. For a short account of the events behind the premiere at MoMA, see Chandak Sengoopta, Park Av. panchali, Outlook [Delhi], December 8, 2008, 70–72. Ray's own account of the premiere and its antecedents (Satyajit Ray, Under Western eyes, Sight and Sound, 51(4) [1982], 268–274) is seriously incomplete. 36. See Wheeler's letter to Ray dated June 3, 1955, in MW, I.97, MoMA Archives, NY. 37. See memo from Griffith to Ann Resor dated June 6, 1955, in ibid. There is little evidence in Griffith's papers of strong interest among other distributors. For one exception, see the letter dated December 30, 1955 to Olga Gramaglia from Johanna Grant, Director of Public Relations of Continental Distributing Inc., enclosing excerpts from a letter from George T Walsh, in Griffith Papers, 13–11. 38. A. H. Weiler, View from a local vantage point, New York Times, September 11, 1960, X15; Edward Harrison, 64, is dead; distributor of foreign movies, ibid., October 18, 1967, 47. 39. Mosk [Gene Moskowitz], Pather Panchali, Variety, June 13, 1956, reprinted in Variety Film Reviews 1954–58 (New York, 1983), n.p. 40. See Griffith's memo to Jim White dated April 4, 1958, Griffith Papers, 13–11. 41. See, for instance, The gold standard, Time, February 17, 1958, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862942,00.html (accessed April 27, 2009). 42. ‘Damn Scandal,’ undated clipping from New York in Griffith Papers, 13–11, emphasis added. 43. Jerzy Toeplitz, The Indian cinema and the West, Close-Up [Bombay], 5–6 (1970), 73–86, at 75. 44. See Ray's letter to Wheeler dated September 17, 1955, MW, I.97, MoMA Archives, NY. 45. Toeplitz, The Indian cinema and the West, 78. 46. Robert Steele, Satyajit Ray takes the measure of Americans, Montage [Bombay], (5/6) (1966), 81–86, at 82. Harrison's deep commitment to the film was widely praised at the time. As a letter in the New York Times put it, ‘he gambled financially and … chose to distribute the film before Cannes chose it for a prize. It was no Indian rope trick that got the film to the Fifth Avenue Cinema.’ See Irving Hoffman, undated letter to the Screen Editor, New York Times, clipping in Griffith Papers, 13–11. 47. Although Pather Panchali had a record run, there is some evidence that it did not run to packed houses all through. Ray's friend Bidyut Sarkar, then living in New York, recalled that he received a ‘call from Ed Harrison one wintry Sunday evening. He said that the box-office receipts that week were falling below the level required to carry it over for another week. Would I phone my friends and request them to gather in or bring together their friends to see the film that crucial evening of inclement weather? He offered to refund the price of every ticket.’ See Bidyut Sarkar, The World of Satyajit Ray (Delhi, 1992), 19–20. 48. Arlene Croce, Pather Panchali and Aparajito, Film Culture, 19 (1959), 44–50, at 44. 49. See http://cinematreasures.org/theater/6379/, accessed September 19, 2008. 50. Archer Winsten, Pather Panchali’ bows at 5th Ave., New York Post, September 23, 1958, 13. 51. Time, October 20, 1958 (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,863985-1,00.html, accessed May 7, 2007). 52. Stanley Kauffmann, A World on Film: criticism and comment (New York, 1966), 367. The review first appeared in New Republic, September 1958. 53. Frances H. Flaherty, letter to Edward Harrison, dated January 23, 1957, in Flaherty Papers, Box 72, Reel 1939 (Personal names—Harrison, Edward). 54. Seminar Newsletter, 1, no 1 (March 1958), Robert Flaherty Foundation Inc.; James F Cronin, Inside view of a film seminar: documentary producers carry on Flaherty tradition, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 1, 1957, both in Flaherty Papers, Box 77, Reel 1941. 55. David Flaherty, letter to Edward Harrison, Flaherty Papers, Box 72, Reel 1939 (Personal names—Harrison, Edward). 56. Frances H. Flaherty, letter to Satyajit Ray dated December 6, 1957, Flaherty Papers, Box 73, Reel 1939 (Personal names—Ray, Satyajit). 57. See Frances Flaherty, letter to Ellsworth Bunker dated December 11, 1957, Flaherty Papers, Box 73, Reel 1939 (Personal names—Ray, Satyajit). 58. Ellsworth Bunker, cablegram to Frances Flaherty dated July 7, 1958; and David Flaherty, letters to Satyajit Ray dated April 9, 1958 and May 14, 1958, Flaherty Papers, Box 73, Reel 1939 (Personal names—Ray, Satyajit). 59. See Roy Little, Robert Flaherty seminar—1958, Toronto Film Society Newsletter, copy in Flaherty Papers, Box 77, Reel 1941. Harrison later presented the Flaherty Foundation with an unsubtitled print of Pather Panchali—the original print imported by the Museum of Modern Art that still carried the title ‘Apu and Durga.’ See Edward Harrison, letter to David Flaherty, dated September 8, 1958, Flaherty Papers, Box 72, Reel 1939 (Personal names—Harrison, Edward). In 1961, at the Flaherty seminar in Puerto Rico, this unsubtitled print was screened again. Dorothy Olson, who programmed that seminar, recalled: ‘There were no subtitles to distract us … At the end there was absolute silence. Nobody could say a word. We cried. It was one of the major film experiences of my life.’ See Laura U. Marks, The audience is revolting: coalition and transformation at the Flaherty Seminar, Wide Angle, 17(1–4) (1995), 277–291, at 278–291. 60. Erik Barnouw, Media Marathon: a twentieth-century memoir (Durham, NC, 1996), 155. Barnouw would later co-author what is still the best single-volume history of Indian cinema: Erik Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy, Indian Film (New York, 1963; 2nd edn: New York, 1980). On Barnouw's life and work, see David Culbert, Barnouw, Erik, American National Biography Online, October 2007 update (http://www.anb.org/articles/14/14-01149.html, accessed June 22, 2009). 61. Erik Barnouw, Dummerston days, Wide Angle, 17(1–4) (1995), 173–176, at 173. See also Hugh Gray, The growing edge: Satyajit Ray, Film Quarterly (Winter 1958), 4–7. 62. Barnouw, Dummerston days, 173. 63. See Melanie McGrath, The Long Exile: a true story of deception and survival in the Canadian Arctic (London, 2006). 64. Satyajit Ray, Film making [1965], in Ray, Our Films, Their Films, 48–56, at 55–56. 65. Satyajit Ray, Education of a film-maker, 90. 66. See Culbert, Barnouw, Erik. Barnouw's personal interest in Ray's work did not abate after Pather Panchali. See Erik Barnouw, Lives of a Bengal filmmaker: Satyajit Ray of Calcutta, in E. Barnouw, Media Lost and Found (New York, 2001), 135–147. 67. Works screened at the Flaherty: 1955–1994, Wide Angle, 17(1–4) (1995), 431–462; and L. Somi Roy, Mani Kaul at Flaherty, ibid., 331–337. On Ray's last film, see Satyajit Ray, The Stranger: the filmscript of ‘Agantuk,’ translated by Antara Dev Sen (Delhi, 2003); and Robinson, Satyajit Ray: the inner eye, 353–359. 68. On Nanook's distribution difficulties, see Griffith, World of Robert Flaherty, 47–49. 69. Robinson, Satyajit Ray: the inner eye, 63–66. 70. Vinay Lal, Satyajit Ray, in http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/Cinema/SRay.html (accessed April 18, 2009). 71. On this project, which Ray finally realized towards the end of his career, see Robinson, Satyajit Ray: the inner eye, 66–67, 263–273. 72. Ray, A long time on the little road, 33–34. 73. Dialogue on film: Satyajit Ray, American Film, 3(9) (July–August 1978), 39–50, at 42. 74. Ray, who admitted that he did not have ‘any confidence as a dialogue writer at that point,’ had initially asked an associate to write new dialogue, who came up with pages of ‘loud literary speech.’ Fortunately, Bibhuti Banerji had written such life-like speech that Ray could simply ‘lift the dialogue from the books and use in the films.’ See Ray, My Years with Apu, 54; and Benegal on Ray, 33, 66. 75. Barnouw, Media Marathon, 158. 76. Griffith, World of Robert Flaherty, 165. 77. On Ray's insistence on a detailed ‘master plan’ and his relative openness to occasional improvisations, see Cardullo (ed.), Satyajit Ray: interviews, 202–204. 78. Karl G. Heider, Ethnographic Film (Austin, TX, 1976), 27. 79. Ian Christie and David Thompson (eds), Scorsese on Scorsese (revised edn) (London, 2003), 220, emphasis added. 80. David MacDougall, Prospects of the ethnographic film, Film Quarterly, 23(2) (1969–70), 16–30, at 18. 81. Ritwik Ghatak, Cinema and I (Calcutta, 1987), 15–16. 82. Andrew Sartori, Bengal in Global Concept History: culturalism in the age of capital (Chicago, IL, 2008), 5. 83. Croce, Pather Panchali and Aparajito, 48. 84. Ibid., 49. 85. On arthouse cinema in the United States, see Barbara Willinsky, Sure Seaters: the emergence of art house cinema (Minneapolis, MN, 2001); on American ideas and stereotypes of India, see Harold Isaacs, Scratches on our Minds: American images of China and India (Armonk, NY, 1980); on American interest in Asian cultures during the Cold War, see Rebecca Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the middlebrow imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley, CA, 2003). 86. Steele, Satyajit Ray takes the measure of Americans, 82. 87. Howard Thompson, By way of report, New York Times, August 20, 1961, X5. 88. Penelope Gilliatt, The great Ray, New Yorker, July 8, 1974, clipping in British Film Institute Library (Micro-Jacket: Charulata). 89. A jewel from India, Newsweek, September 26, 1960, 118. 90. William S. Pechter, India's Chekhov, Commonweal, October 16, 1970, 71–72, at 71. 91. Richard Schickel, Days and nights in the arthouse, Film Comment, 28 (1992), 32–34. 92. See Peter M. Nichols, For the tapes of a master, it's worth the wait, New York Times, October 19, 1997, 75; and Lisa Hirsch, Archive a safe haven for restored cinematic gems, Variety, November 13, 2002, A3. Current availability information from www.amazon.com (accessed April 21, 2009). 93. See Nicholas Rapold, Master of the House, Film Comment, March–April 2009 (http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/ma09/satyajit.htm, accessed August 13, 2009); and Terrence Rafferty, Satyajit Ray's world of restless watchfulness and nuance, New York Times, April 10, 2009, C9.