Page 140 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

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The World of Apu:

Critique

When India’s prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru saw Aparajito at
a private screening, just before its general release in Calcutta in
1956, he came over and congratulated Ray, and unexpectedly
asked him: ‘What happens to Apu now?’ Ray answered that he
did not have a third film in mind. Then, at the Venice Film
Festival in 1957, during a press conference before the screening
of Aparajito (and before it won the top prize), Ray found himself,
when asked the same question by a journalist, giving a different
answer – without really meaning it – to the effect that he did
have a trilogy in mind. Nevertheless, it took him a fair while
to get around to making the third film. After the completion
of two other films in 1957–58 (The Philosopher’s Stone and The
Music Room), The World of Apu was eventually shot in 1958–59.
No trace of this hesitation appears on the screen. Whereas
Pather Panchali has some obvious technical flaws (of which Ray
was only too acutely aware, as we know), and Aparajito has sig-
nificant weaknesses in its Calcutta scenes, The World of Apu is a
wonderfully fluent film, well-nigh faultless in every department
of its production, from the performances of the principals –
Soumitra Chatterji as Apu and Sharmila Tagore as Aparna – and

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