Satyajit Ray birth anniversary: A look at the auteur’s 5 all-time classics

Satyajit Ray - no words are enough to mention the legacy left by him. The man who almost spearheaded a new wave in Indian cinema and guided it to the global arena, the man who made several spectacular works of cultural creations is Satyajit Ray. Be it movies and literary creations for children or visionary and thought-provoking films, filmmakers all around the world bow down to this genius even today.

On the auteur’s 101^st birth anniversary today, let’s remember the cinematic legend with our heartfelt gratitude and utmost respect. Here are five cult classics made by Ray which are essential for any true cine lover.

One of world cinema’s great directorial debuts, ‘Pather Panchali’ not only announced the arrival of a new filmmaking talent, but it was also credited by western critics with putting Indian cinema on the map.

‘Pather Panchali’ is an adaptation of a 1929 novel about a young boy, Apu, growing up in rural Bengal, where the abject poverty of his family does little to suppress his youthful inquisitiveness and awakening sensibilities. Ray followed Apu’s progress in two further films – ‘Aparajito’ (1956) and ‘Apur Sansar’ (1959) – in which the maturing boy moves to Calcutta to take up studies and find his place in the adult world. The Apu trilogy remains Ray’s most famous achievement.

Set in the 1920s, after the Indian government had abolished the feudal zamindari system, it stars Chhabi Biswas as a landed aristocrat, Roy, who sequesters himself in his grand home, taking refuge in his beloved classical music while the winds of change rage through the outside world. Ray brings Roy’s perfumed world to life with glittering images of fireworks, gleaming chandeliers and the cavernous extravagance of his music room, where he invites sitarists and dancers to entertain him and his guests. But there are also portentous images of doom – a lightning storm, an insect drowning in a goblet, a spider crawling across the portrait of one of his illustrious ancestors – that suggest these musicians are merely fiddling while Roy’s Rome burns.

There’s a moment partway into ‘Mahanagar’ when Arati Mazumdar (Madhabi Mukherjee) turns to her husband, Subrata (Anil Chatterjee), saying, “If you saw me at work you wouldn’t recognise me.” Her eyes are bright with pride, widened by new experiences.

“And at home?” comes Subrata’s forlorn reply, his own pride injured. He’s envious of his wife’s professional prowess, and struggling to adapt to these changes in the subservient housewife he loves.

Finding it hard to support a large, extended family on his bank-clerk salary alone, she has persuaded him to let her take a job as a saleswoman. To her surprise, and the consternation of her hidebound, traditionalist family, Arati, who has never known much outside cooking and cleaning at home, takes to the world of work like a duck to water. She finds herself surprisingly adept at earning money, and laps up her newfound independence in the city, the camaraderie of her colleagues, and glowing praise from her boss. With this 1963 drama, Ray found himself railing against the ‘a woman’s place is in the home’ mentality, making a sassy, nuanced and deeply moving film about the gathering speed of modernity and feminism in his home city of Calcutta.

Ray’s 1964 film ‘Charulata’ is a perfect example of this more concentrated approach, a closeted, short story-like drama set almost entirely within a house and its grounds in 1880s Calcutta. While her wealthy husband, Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee), busies himself with running his own newspaper, The Sentinel, his bored wife, Charu (Madhabi Mukherjee), occupies her time reading, relaxing and spying on passers-by through her field glasses. But the arrival of her husband’s young cousin not only sends ripples of adulterous desire through her pinned-butterfly existence, but also sets Charu along her own path towards an artistic awakening as a writer.

Mentored by the great French filmmaker Jean Renoir in his early career, Ray created a tribute to Renoir’s classic ‘Partie de campagne (1936) with this film, transplanting the scene from pastoral France to the forests of north-eastern India.

Like the Renoir film, it’s a story about middle-class city folk taking a holiday to the countryside. Four male friends from Calcutta go on a road trip to rural Bihar, where they lodge at a forest guest house despite the protestations of its caretaker. They’re from the big city: brash, confident, careerist, and ready to lord it over the more ‘backward’ tribal communities living on their new doorstep. They vow not to shave, but that goes out of the window when they come across two beautiful women staying nearby, and an elegant game of flirtation and embarrassment ensues.