Books

An Intimate Decor

Ray, mostly aware of his mastery, but introspective and often assailed by self-doubt

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An Intimate Decor
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Not many professional film-makers, let alone those with an international reputation, could have made that statement with such unselfconscious simplicity. Film-making is a risky, time-consuming business and few of the practitioners of that enterprise have time for any other involvement. But Satyajit Ray, who makes the above remark in his article, My Life, My Work, was not only continuously engaged in directing films during the last 40 years of his life but also wrote several full-length books for children.

It would, however, be wrong to be misled by the simplicity of his tone into concluding that Ray was not conscious of his importance as a film-maker. For the remark is preceded by the following qualification: "Of all the major directors in the world, only one—Sergei Eisenstein—lectured and theorised on cinema, and described his own creative process at length." By the collocation, Ray is as simply stating his awareness that he is in the same league as Eisenstein.

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Ray also wrote extensively on films and film-making. Every student of Ray’s works has read his collection of essays in English, Our Films, Their Films. And now Gopa Majumdar has brought together in Speaking of Films several of his Bengali essays.

One is immediately struck by the difference between the English and the Bengali writings. The English essays are magisterial, carefully modulated, obviously the work of a master holding forth to a listening and adoring world. The Bengali pieces, on the other hand, are endearing in the way they reveal the private Satyajit Ray, keen to teach and convert, hungry for affection, quick to hurt, almost childish in his exasperation at those who would not understand his work. And one must commend the sensitivity with which Majumdar catches these shifting moods.

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Which film-maker of his stature would, for instance, admit to being asked: "Since no other film of mine has received the same accolade, acclaim and awards as Pather Panchali, have I really improved or developed as a film-maker in the last twenty-five years?"

Yet, he could hit back with a childlike fury: "I opened the October issue of Parichay and discovered that Mr Rudra is after me again. The problem is that cinema has become an art for all and sundry.... There is nothing of course that one can do about it.... But if every Tom, Dick and Harry starts to reveal his little, and therefore, dangerous knowledge...."

The very English term of contempt, ‘Tom, Dick and Harry’, obviously the translator’s choice, makes one yearn to find what phrase Ray might have used in the original. For, his is a demand that every film-maker will immediately recognise and empathise with.

But Ray does not stop there. He proceeds to analyse for the benefit of Mr Rudra in fascinating detail how in fact his script of Charulata is faithful to Tagore’s original tale, Nastaneer, and how the changes he has introduced are in fact inevitable as the cinematic equivalents for the nuances of the literary text.

It must be admitted that when Ray is theorising about films in general, he does not display much more subtlety than most writers of pedestrian textbooks on film appreciation. He is capable of statements like, "Cinema speaks a language that belongs essentially to our age of machines. If a gadget called a camera had not been invented, such a language would certainly not have come into being." It’s only when he begins to describe why he does what he does (which, thank heavens, he does quite often, despite the earlier disclaimer) that one sees in practical detail a master craftsman at his moments of inspired creation.

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The last few lines of the book are deeply moving for the foreboding Ray expresses for the future of his own career. "In the mid-1960s," he writes, "a time came when I began to think that there was no reason why an established and creative director could not find enough work; there was no obstacle in the way of experimenting with new subjects and new styles. But over the last five years I have started to feel—with growing conviction—that such a situation cannot last indefinitely...(and) to wonder how long I shall be able to apply all that I have learnt in the last twenty-five years."

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When one looks at the 1970s, one is amazed at the number of unknown names that suddenly emerged on the horizon of Indian cinema by making small-budget films. Ray’s poignant lines sum up what was to happen to this unprecedented—and unrepeated—blossoming, which he had helped create single-handedly.

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