Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali is among the most assured filmmaking debuts in the annals of cinema. Ray’s adaptation of a portion of Bhib...
Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali is among the most assured filmmaking debuts in the annals of cinema. Ray’s adaptation of a portion of Bhibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel of the same name was released in 1955. Sixty-six years later, the spell cast by the chronicle of a family in rural Bengal is intact.
Pather Panchali revolves around the hardscrabble lives of Harihar, his wife Sarbajaya and their children Durga and Apu. Harihar’s elderly cousin Indir Thakrun also lives with the family and is particularly close to Durga. Sarbajaya, weighted down by poverty, is often rude to Indir, causing her to temporarily seek shelter with another relative in the village.
Bent, toothless and playful, Indir is the movie’s scene-stealer. In My Years with Apu, Ray’s memoir about the making of the Apu Trilogy – comprising Pather Pachali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar – he wrote, “The most outstanding performance was of course Chunibala’s… She felt already at home in the part and never gave us trouble, as long as she had her dollop of opium with her afternoon tea. The day she didn’t have it, she nearly fainted.”
Chunibala Devi won an award for Best Actress at the Manila Film Festival, but didn’t live to see Pather Panchali’s remarkable journey. She broke her hip and died shortly before...
