Page 167 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic
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154                    The Apu Trilogy

                of the Game in London, that: ‘The entire conventional approach
                (as exemplified by even the best American and British films) is
                wrong’ – as explained in chapter 1. Pather Panchali’s technical
                inadequacies aside, to an American critic like Crowther schooled
                in Hollywood films of the period, Ray’s European inspiration,
                combined with his wholly unfamiliar Bengali setting, rendered
                Pather Panchali almost incomprehensible.
                   Here is Crowther’s 500-word New York Times review,  published
                on 23 September, in its entirety:


                   The Indian fi lm,  Pather Panchali (Song of the Road), which

                   opened at the Fifth Avenue Cinema yesterday, is one of
                   those rare exotic items, remote in idiom from the usual

                   Hollywood film, that should offer some subtle compensations

                   to anyone who has the patience to sit through its almost two
                   hours.
                     Chief among the delicate revelations that emerge from its
                   loosely formed account of the pathetic little joys and sorrows
                   of a poor Indian family in Bengal is the touching indication
                   that poverty does not always nullify love and that even the


                   most affl icted people can find some modest pleasures in their
                   worlds. This theme, which is not as insistent or  sentimental

                   as it may sound, barely begins to be evident after the picture
                   has run at least an hour. And, in that time, the most the
                   camera shows us in a rambling and random tour of an Indian
                   village is a baffl ing mosaic of candid and crude domestic

                   scenes.
                     There are shots of a creaky old woman, a harassed mother,

                   her lively little girl and a cheerful husband and father who

                   plainly cannot provide for his small brood. There are scenes,
                   as familiar as next-door neighbours, of the mother trying to
                   get the child to eat, washing clothes, quarrelling with the hus-
                   band or pushing the child towards school.
                     Satyajit Ray, Indian artist, who wrote the screenplay and
                   directed this film, provides ample indication that this is his








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