Page 190 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

Epilogue

Ray Talks about the Apu Trilogy

This discussion between Satyajit Ray and the author is taken from
interviews that took place at various times in the 1980s, during
the research for my biography Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye. It is
intended to give a general impression of Ray’s ideas and personal-
ity, rather than to cover all of the important aspects of the Apu
Trilogy that are discussed in the main text. His own delightful
account of the making of Pather Panchali was published as an
article, ‘A long time on the little road’, in Sight and Sound, in 1957,
and appears in his collection of articles, Our Films Their Films.

AR: I have a feeling Pather Panchali is still your most popular

film in India?

SR: There’s no question. It’s a phenomenon that never ceases
to surprise me.
AR: Why do you think that is?
SR: I don’t know. New generations coming up. And Calcutta
being such a populous city – there are still obviously lots
of people left who haven’t seen the fi lm.
AR: Is there an element of nostalgia creeping in? All the
changes of the past 30 years?
SR: Well, the change is not so apparent in a village as in a
city. If it had been a city story, like Apur Sansar, which

doesn’t have traffic jams, population growth and so on ...

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Robinson_Appendix.indd 177 9/16/2010 9:07:13 PM