"The first half, in particular, was full of blemishes-abrupt transitions from shot to shot, scene to scene, destroying the mood, the rhythm, the continuity; imperfect fades and dissolves; uneven print quality, and at least one scene-the stormy night-ruined by inadequate sound.... I was so depressed I couldn't even write and tell you how sorry I was that such a print should have been sent to NY."
***
How had the premiere come about? Some 30 years after the event, Ray, in an article titled 'Under Western Eyes' for British film journal Sight and Sound (Vol 51, No. 4, Autumn 1982), recalled that Monroe Wheeler, a senior official of the museum, had seen a few stills of the film during a visit to Calcutta in 1954, and immediately wanted to screen the film at the museum. Hollywood director John Huston, who saw the rough cut a few months later, had enthusiastically endorsed Wheeler's idea and that, wrote Ray, was how Pather Panchali had its debut in New York. Andrew Robinson, in his biography Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye, provided some additional information, but generally followed Ray's own account. I, too, had taken Ray's version as canonical until chancing upon a file containing the correspondence of Ray and Wheeler at the MoMA archives. These letters, unavailable to researchers until early 2008, revealed how incomplete Ray's later account was.
Wheeler was in Calcutta in 1954 in the course of a trip to raise the museum's profile, and met Ray when the shooting of Pather Panchali was stalled because of lack of funds. He saw a few stills and was impressed enough to tell his colleague Richard Griffith, the curator of the museum's film library, that Ray's film might be "something to look forward to". One still from the film was also selected for 'The Family of Man', Edward Steichen's legendary exhibition of photographs at MoMA. But nobody as yet thought of holding the film's premiere at MoMA. Huston, on a visit to Calcutta, did see "seven reels" of the film and although he liked what he saw, he had nothing to do with the premiere.
It is Edgar Kaufmann Jr, a major figure in MoMA's design department, who deserves the credit Ray gave to Huston. Kaufmann visited Calcutta to collect material for an exhibition of Indian textiles and, at Wheeler's request, saw substantial portions of Ray's film. Bowled over by the photography and the acting, he urged the museum to buy a print of this "most remarkable film" and include it with the music and dance programmes that would accompany the textile exhibition. Now, Wheeler pulled various strings to raise the money for a print and to pay for transporting it to the US. The museum's interest in the film was so deep that when Ray could not get raw film stock in Calcutta because of a strike, they arranged to have it purchased in London and delivered to Ray in Calcutta. Rushing to meet the museum's schedule, Ray and his team worked "on a 20-hour-a-day schedule". They did not even have the time to see the complete film before the print was put on the plane. It arrived barely in time for the screening—there had been no time for subtitling either, and the American audience saw The Story of Apu and Durga (as the film was then called) with the aid of a detailed synopsis.
Sheer luminosity: Durga with Apu
When Ray finally saw his film, he was appalled. "The first half, in particular, was full of blemishes—abrupt transitions from shot to shot, scene to scene, destroying the mood, the rhythm, the continuity; imperfect fades and dissolves; uneven print quality, and at least one scene—the stormy night—completely ruined by inadequate sound," he wrote to Wheeler. "I was so depressed that I couldn't even write and tell you how sorry I was that such a print should have been sent to NY." When a cable had come from Wheeler praising the film as "a triumph of sensitive photography", Ray, already depressed, had assumed that the film, except for the photography, had "flopped completely at the preview". He even asked Wheeler to suggest improvements: "Monroe, you would be doing me a great service if you told me quite frankly what you felt to be the defects of my film—and what cuts and technical improvements I should make."
In fact, however, Ray's film, despite the lack of subtitles, had had an astonishing debut. Wheeler hailed it as "the finest example of creative film-making in India". Richard Griffith was also captivated. "I begin to think," he wrote, "that we have stumbled onto a picture destined to become a sensation." Eager to ensure that the film was released in America, Griffith took it upon himself to screen it for distributors, one of whom, Edward Harrison, fell in love with it. The cinema-owners of Manhattan, however, had no wish to screen such an exotic product. "These peasants live in huts," sneered one of them. "My customers live on Park Avenue."
Over the two years that Harrison struggled to find an exhibitor, Pather Panchali won several international prizes, including a special award at Cannes, and had a very successful release in Calcutta. Even the perfectionist Ray had finally realised what he and his team had accomplished. "What is most surprising," he wrote exultantly to Wheeler, "is that it seems to have pleased the man in the street as much as it has pleased the highbrow intellectual!" But one more surprise awaited him. In September 1958, Harrison finally got the film released at the Fifth Avenue Cinema in New York after, it is rumoured, putting up a guarantee.
Ray and Harrison waited in suspense in the lobby of the cinema after the first show; words could not describe their joy when, as Ray recalled later, they saw the audience "surge out of the theatre bleary-eyed and visibly shaken". Pather Panchali ran for a record seven months at the Fifth Avenue Cinema, winning accolades from every quarter. Few foreign films had ever done that well in the US. Ray's directorial talent, Subrata Mitra's photography, Ravi Shankar's music, Bibhutibhusan's magnificent novel, and the superb work of the actors were, of course, essential to that success. But not sufficient. Pather Panchali might never have reached America had it not been for the enthusiasm and hard work of four almost forgotten figures: Monroe Wheeler, Edgar Kaufmann Jr, Richard Griffith and Edward Harrison.
