Page 193 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

180 The Apu Trilogy

a film, with people arriving. The young people were very

excited, however. Nobody had heard of me or of any of
the actors except for Kanu Banerji. We saw the house. We
discussed among ourselves if this might do, if Bansi was
able to do things to it like reconstructing it and removing
all its undergrowth. I was particularly struck by the pond
and the house, and the surroundings were fairly quiet.
Once we’d found the house, we had to find the owner

of the house, who was living in Kalighat. So we met the
owner in Calcutta and he was a nasty old man coming out
with four-letter words all the time, bed-ridden. He said
we’d have to pay him 50 rupees a month. That was the

rent that we paid every month for two and a half years to

this man. The house was completely ruined and we had a
really tough job of reconstructing the whole thing, clean-
ing it up, building a compound wall and fi xing doors to

it. We built a kitchen. The old woman’s house was already
there: the little cottage. By that time, of course, we had
got to know the village people quite well.
AR: Who was your first choice of cameraman?

SR: Nemai Ghosh, I think. I don’t recall this, but Subrata
[Mitra] has mentioned this in several interviews, with
himself as assistant to Nemai Ghosh. I defi nitely recall
sending for Subrata and announcing that I had decided
to make him the cameraman. At the same time I told
him that if you’ve done still photography, you know your

exposures, it’s not as difficult as they make it sound.
AR: Did Cartier-Bresson’s photographs help you?
SR: His available light attitude to photography, yes. I don’t
think a still photographer really infl uences a fi lm to that
extent, but Cartier-Bresson’s feeling for light, the fact that
he never used flashes ... We decided that we would not be

using the Hollywood style of photography, which goes for

the use of lots of big lights and a kind of artificial kind of
look. It was the spontaneous quality of Cartier-Bresson’s

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