Satyajit Ray: Truth and Trivia

Some Trivia

During Tagore’s days it seems many mother would go to Tagore and get their newborns named by him. He would give them a name and dedicate a one liner to the kid.

Satyajit Ray was one of the people he had named. (Parikshti Sahani is other name I remember). The dedication that was given to him was (as translated by greatbong)

” I have been gone everywhere, spent a lot of money—travelled to the mountains, seen the sea…….trying always to find beauty. I now realize that all the time I wandered the earth, I missed seeing the splendour that lay before me, just 2 steps from my door—–a dewdrop glistening on a blade of grass”.

Satyajit Ray could complete his movie Pather Panchali because The Chief Minister of Bengal finaced him. It seems like all other politicians he too had no sense for art. He asked Public works department to finance the movie because the title of the movie was “Song of the Road” pather Panchali.

After watching the movie CM suggested Satyajit Ray that he should chaneg the sad ending of the movie and show that the family participates in a government housing scheme and gets a house. Thankfully Satyajit Ray did not take him seriously.

However poor family struggling to get finance to build a house from government would certainly have become a good script for a movie (obviously it would have been a tragedy).

The train scene was the only Scene SatyaJit could shoot with his own finance. Director of the movie “The man who would be King” was in Bengal to search for appropriate locations. Ray showed him this footage and he immediately recognised his talent.

Most of the films that he made had the same crew. He had asked each one of them to perfect their own skills.

The three films of Apu Trilogy have Train in their theme. It is showed only for a few socnds but is one of the most important scenes in all those films.

Before the first scene Ray had never directed anything, cameraman an cenematographer had never shot a film and child actors were never screentested.