Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 1 October

Pather Panchali (Ray, 1955)

Working my way down the Sight & Sound list of the best 50 films ever made, I get to num­ber 35 and a film I wrote about for RNZ the first time I tried this quest, back in 2019.

Then, Ray’s debut mas­ter­piece was #41 (equal with Rosselini’s Journey to Italy) but over the years of the sur­vey it has been as high as #6 and as low as #79.

Ray was a graph­ic design­er by trade who had spent time in London and watched over 100 films while he was there, being espe­cially taken with the Italian neo-realism exem­pli­fied by Bicycle Thieves . He believed that Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s 1929 clas­sic Bengali nov­el about a young boy grow­ing up impov­er­ished in a remote vil­lage would be per­fect for that kind of groun­ded and real­ist­ic treat­ment but he struggled to raise the fin­an­cing – groun­ded and real­ist­ic nev­er being a pop­u­lar char­ac­ter­ist­ic of Indian cinema.

Eventually, after selling his gramo­phone record col­lec­tion, he had enough money to com­mence and he found his Apu (Subir Bannerjee) in the loc­al neigh­bour­hood. He soon ran out of money, though, and had to pause film­ing for a year until the influ­ence of the great dir­ect­or John Huston (who had seen some of the foot­age while loc­a­tion scout­ing in India) recom­men­ded that he be supported.

Apu is a small boy of about 7 or 8, liv­ing with his fam­ily in a rur­al Bengali vil­lage before World War 1. His fath­er is a priest but dreams of becom­ing a poet and leaves the vil­lage to fol­low that dream – big city poet was a more luc­rat­ive career than coun­try priest in those days. Without his income, the fam­ily struggles and a feud with a neigh­bour over a ‘stolen’ neck­lace only makes things worse. Tragedy ensues and the fam­ily is forced to leave the village.

Refer a friend

The whole story is told through Apu’s eyes and what beau­ti­ful, soul­ful, sens­it­ive eyes they are. Pather Panchali is the arche­type of the cinema ‘coming-of-age’ story as our hero learns how the world works – usu­ally before they are ready.

Other not­able fea­tures of the film are the soundtrack by India’s mas­ter musi­cian Ravi Shankar – his first film score and music that would help intro­duce him to west­ern audi­ences and even­tu­ally The Beatles – and the lumin­ous blank and white cine­ma­to­graphy by Subrata Mitra. This cine­ma­to­graphy was almost lost when the neg­at­ive was thought to be lost in a fire but a glob­al search for replace­ment mater­i­als and a painstak­ing 2015 res­tor­a­tion means we can now see Pather Panchali – and its two sequels – in close to the best format imaginable.

Next on this list is Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante (1934) which I haven’t seen before. Look for it some­time in November.

Where to watch Pather Panchali

Aotearoa: Streaming on Kanopy and Prime Video

Australia, Ireland and UK: Streaming on Prime Video

Canada: Streaming on Criterion Channel

USA: Streaming on Max and Criterion Channel

Favourite comment

Reader Ros C reached out on the week­end to thank me for the Pig recommendation:

Hat-tip Dan, we watched Pig on NZ Netflix last night and were happy we did so. Wish there were more 92 minute movies!

And so say all of us!