Modern Indian Cinema Draws from Work of Satyajit Ray

New York, NY —

What Kurosawa is to Japan, and Fellini is to Italy, director Satyajit Ray is to India. The filmmaker is getting a major retrospective at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, as well as an academic conference devoted to his work. WNYC's Arun Venugopal sat down with one of Ray's more prominent fans, director Mira Nair. Nair made Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake, and explains how she sought out Ray as a mentor, and how she continues to draw from his work.

AMBI: Sound of film in the Apu Trilogy

NAIR: I can remember it, as if it were yesterday...

REPORTER: In 1977, Mira Nair was an international student at Harvard when she first encountered Ray's work.

NAIR: In terms of the drinking in of the images. Of the sense of his rhythm in cinema, like the rhythm of nature. Of his extraordinarily visual delicacy he had, like the fireflies dancing in the night, and these totally dark Bengal landscapes and then these pinpoints of light that would create such enchantment.

REPORTER: By the time Nair saw his work Ray was already considered one of the world's great filmmakers. Encouraged by Jean Renoir and John Huston, Satyajit Ray became an international star in the 1950s, with a series known as the Apu Trilogy. The three films, starting with Pather Panchali, follow a young boy out of rural poverty, and into adulthood.

NAIR: They have nothing to do with what we think of as the Bollywood film. Because they are not about escape and fantasy and high kitsch, and big lurid canvasses with song and dance.

REPORTER: By 1983, Nair had graduated and was back in India, trying to generate interest in a 16-millimeter documentary she'd made. It was about an Indian newsstand vendor on the Upper West Side. So she took a train from New Delhi to Calcutta, introduced herself to Ray, and made a lasting impression. Eventually, she found herself joining the salons at his home.

NAIR: There were inevitably other people there, very much like the Bengali cronies from Teen Kanya and his movies. Old librarians saying, "But have you seen this 1957 review in Sight and Sound - it calls Pather Panchali the classic of all cinema!"

REPORTER: Nair's emerged on the world stage in the late 80s, with her film Salaam Bombay. Ray wrote a glowing tribute to the film, and when Salaam Bombay competed for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, his words featured prominently in the marketing campaign. Nair walks over to a shelf and reads Ray's words off a promotional poster:

NAIR: "I cannot recall ever being so impressed with a first feature. It is completely unlike any other film ever made in India, and shows complete command over every aspect of the medium." Ha ha, so when I'm down, that's what I read occasionally - okay, Mr. Ray wrote that!

REPORTER: For Salaam Bombay, set in the slums of Bombay, she cast non-actors, as Ray had in his early films. She's also been influenced by his use of sound.

NAIR: When the husband dies in the Apu trilogy and the wife hears the news, and she's in the village and she literally opens the mouth to sob, but nothing emerges except the deepest sound of the sarod...

AMBI: Music from Pather Panchali

NAIR: That is the most... It's like a well of grief that opens.

REPORTER: When Nair adapted Jhumpa Lahiri's bestselling novel "The Namesake" to the big screen she faced a challenge: How do you portray romance within an arranged marriage, between a man and woman who don't know each other?

NAIR: It was to the Apu trilogy that I turned, as I do many times when I think of the real sweetness, the unfolding of love between 2 strangers. It's so beautiful. The way two people who don't know each other but who are attracted to each other slowly reveal themselves to each other through real, small, simple gorgeous episodes of romance and believability.

REPORTER: The Ray retrospective at Lincoln Center will showcase 20 of the director's works, including 6 new prints. The series includes the Apu Trilogy, as well as a popular children's film he made, The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha. Others, such as the Music Room, deal with slow but traumatic shifts in Indian society - the decadent landlord giving one last party, even as his estate crumbles. Or the Sixties housewife from Mahanagar - The Big City - who discovers she's pretty good at door-to-door sales. In that film, as well as Devi and Charulata, the action revolves around women, all of them vividly drawn.

NAIR: They surrendered to the larger whole, as we were raised. But at the same time they were strong and sultry and sensual and fashionable and wearing the latest batiks of the day and the big glasses.

REPORTER: Nair is scrambling to finish her latest film, about Amelia Earhart, starring Hillary Swank. But she'll be at the festival.

NAIR: "In terms of what human beings long for and how they make their way, and how they negotiate an extended family and a private love, professional ambition, and how to equate everything. Those are the dramas that Ray brought us into. And those are still the dramas of today.

For WNYC, I'm Arun Venugopal.