The Apu Trilogy

The Apu Trilogy is a celebrated series of three Indian Bengali-language drama films directed by Satyajit Ray: Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and The World of Apu (1959). The trilogy's score was composed by Ravi Shankar.

Adapted from two Bengali novels by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay—Pather Panchali (1929) and Aparajito (1932)—these films are widely regarded as a cornerstone of Indian and world cinema and have been widely acclaimed as masterpieces. Produced on a modest shoestring budget using an amateur cast and crew, the trilogy garnered widespread critical acclaim and won numerous prestigious awards, including three National Film Awards and multiple honours at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals. Notably, Pather Panchali was made with a budget of roughly 150,000, approximately $45,300 at the time.

Plot summaries

The three films comprise a "coming of age" narrative in the vein of a bildungsroman; they describe the childhood, education and early maturity of a young Bengali named Apu (Apurba Kumar Roy) in the early part of the 20th century.

Pather Panchali (English, "Song of the Little Road")

Apu's early experiences in rural Bengal as the son of a poor but high caste family are presented. Apu's father Harihar, a Brahmin, has difficulty in supporting his family. After the death of Apu's sister, Durga, the family moves to the holy city of Benares.

Aparajito (English, "The Unvanquished")

The family's finances are still precarious. After his father dies there, Apu and his mother Sarbajaya come back to a village in Bengal. Despite unrelenting poverty, Apu manages to get formal schooling and turns out to be a brilliant student. He moves to Calcutta to pursue his education. He slowly distanced himself from his rural roots and his mother who was not keeping well at the time. In the process the growing Apu comes into conflict with his mother. Later he is informed that, when his mother dies too, he has to learn to live alone.

Apur Sansar (English, "The World of Apu")

Attempting to become a writer, Apu unexpectedly finds himself pressured to marry a girl whose mother rejected her mentally ill bridegroom on the day of their wedding. Their blossoming marriage ends in her death in childbirth, after which the despairing Apu abandons his child, but eventually returns to accept his responsibilities.

Production

In 1950, Ray had decided that Pather Panchali, the classic coming of age story (bildungsroman) of Bengali literature, published in 1928 by Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhyay, would be the subject matter for his first film. This semi-autobiographical novel describes the growing up of Apu, a small boy in a Bengal village. He went ahead with the film after meeting Jean Renoir during filming of The River (1951) and after watching the Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948) while he was in London. Besides the influence of European cinema and Bengali literature, Ray is also indebted to the Indian theatrical tradition, particularly the rasa theory of classical Sanskrit drama. The complicated doctrine of rasa centers predominantly on feelings experienced not only by the characters but also conveyed in a certain artistic way to the spectator. The duality of rasa representation shows in The Apu Trilogy.

Ray gathered an inexperienced crew, although both his cameraman Subrata Mitra and art director Bansi Chandragupta went on to achieve great acclaim. The cast consisted of mostly amateur artists. Shooting started in late 1952, using Ray's personal savings. He had hoped that once the initial shots had been completed, he would be able to obtain funds to support the project, but such funding was not forthcoming. Pather Panchali was shot over the unusually long period of three years, because shooting was possible only from time to time, when Ray or production manager Anil Chowdhury could arrange further money. Even greater help than Renoir's encouragement occurred when Ray showed a sequence to John Huston who was in India scouting locations for The Man Who Would Be King. The sequence is the remarkable vision Apu and his sister have of the train running through the countryside. It was the only sequence Ray had filmed due to his small budget. Huston praised Ray to Monroe Wheeler at the New York Museum of Modern Art, saying that a major talent was on the horizon.

In India, the reaction to the film was enthusiastic; The Times of India wrote that "it is absurd to compare it with any other Indian cinema [...]. Pather Panchali is pure cinema". In the United Kingdom, Lindsay Anderson wrote a glowing review of the film. Bosley Crowther, then the most influential critic of The New York Times, wrote a mixed review of the film that its distributor Ed Harrison thought would kill off the film when it got released in the United States, but it enjoyed an exceptionally long run.

Ray's international career started in earnest after the success of his next film, Aparajito (The Unvanquished). Some critics, notably Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak, rank it even higher than the first film.

Ray had not thought about a trilogy while making Aparajito, and it occurred to him only after being asked about the idea in Venice. The final installation of the series, Apur Sansar (The World of Apu), was made in 1959. A number of critics find this to be the supreme achievement of the trilogy (Robin Wood, Aparna Sen). Ray introduced two of his favourite actors, Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore, in this film. The film finds Apu living in a nondescript Kolkata house in near-poverty. He becomes involved in an unusual marriage with Aparna, the scenes of their life together forming "one of the cinema's classic affirmative depiction of married life", but tragedy ensues. After Apur Sansar was harshly criticised by a Bengali critic, Ray wrote an article defending it—a rare event in Ray's filmmaking career (the other major instance involved the film Charulata, Ray's personal favourite). His success had little influence on his personal life in the years to come. Ray continued to live with his mother, uncle and other members of his extended family in a rented house.

Cast and characters

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; width:100%;"

! rowspan="2" | Character

! colspan="3" | Film

! width:10%;"| Pather Panchali (1955)

! width:10%;"| Aparajito (1956)

! width:10%;"| The World of Apu (1959)

! Apurba "Apu" Roy

| Subir Banerjee

| Pinaki Sen Gupta (boy) Smaran Ghosal (adolescent)

| Soumitra Chatterjee

! Durga Roy

| Runki Banerjee (child) Uma Dasgupta (teenager)

| colspan="2" style="background:#d3d3d3;" |

! Harihar Roy

| colspan="2" | Kanu Banerjee

| style="background:#d3d3d3;" |

! Sarbajaya Roy

| colspan="2" | Karuna Banerjee

| style="background:#d3d3d3;" |

! Indir Thakrun

| Chunibala Devi

| colspan="2" style="background:#d3d3d3;" |

! Prasanna

| Tulsi Chakraborty

| colspan="2" style="background:#d3d3d3;" |

! Bhabataran

| style="background:#d3d3d3;"|

| Ramani Ranjan Sen

| style="background:#d3d3d3;" |

! Nanda Babu

| style="background:#d3d3d3;"|

| Charu Prakash Ghosh

| style="background:#d3d3d3;" |

! Headmaster

| style="background:#d3d3d3;"|

| Subodh Ganguly

| style="background:#d3d3d3;" |

! Aparna