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To coincide with the tenth anniversary of Satyajit Ray's death, a re-release of the late director's acclaimed debut feature, which back in the 1950s helped give Indian art-house cinema an international profile.
The first in the Apu trilogy - it was followed by "Aparajito" and "The World of Apu" - "Pather Panchali" was an adaptation of a popular 1920s novel by Bibhuti Bhushan, although the material was considered so uncommercial that Ray was forced to pawn his wife's jewellery in a four-year struggle to raise the necessary funds.
A patiently and poetically observed account of the life of a struggling family in a Bengali village, "Pather Panchali" is an ensemble drama, which isn't hemmed in by the restrictions of a conventional plot.
The father (Kanu Bannerjee) is a struggling writer and sometime priest, who disappears off to the city for months at a time in the quest for paid work. His wife Sarbojaya (Karuna Bannerjee) scrimps and saves and struggles to bring up their offspring, Durga (Das Gupta) and Apu (Subir Bannerjee), whilst keeping eye on the troublesome, senile Auntie (Devi).
Favouring visual symbols, Ray, who hitherto had never shot a single foot of film, captures both the onerousness of daily routines and the fleeting moments of magic experienced by the children, such as the arrival of the candy seller, the performance of the travelling players, or their racing through fields to see a train for the very first time.
Sentimentality is effectively kept in check by the way Ray presents the material deprivations of his characters, constantly eking out their meagre food supplies, and the manner in which the film maker acknowledges the inevitability of death.
Plaintively scored by Ravi Shankar, and with Subrata Mitra's masterful cinematography conveying the beauty and the destructiveness of the natural world, this remains a generous, humane work.
