Page 194 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

Epilogue: Ray Talks about the Apu Trilogy 181

photography, and the fact that he was using available light
as far as possible, occasionally using reflectors to boost

the shadows. That is unavoidable. Otherwise you have
extreme contrasts, which is not very pleasing. But using
reflectors in a way that people would not be conscious of.

Pather Panchali was largely confined to day scenes shot on

location – of course, the night scenes had nothing to do
with Cartier-Bresson.
AR: With all the obstacles, how did you keep up your morale
while making the fi lm?

SR: I think I was pretty confident that I was doing something
fairly important – certainly from the point of view of

Indian films. I didn’t yet think in terms of world cinema,
or making a mark internationally. But definitely I was

convinced that this was going to be a milestone in Indian

films. Because I was using methods which nobody had
used before and they were proving successful. Th e rushes

told us that. The rushes told us that the children were
behaving marvellously and the old woman was an abso-
lute stunner. Nobody had ever seen such an old woman
in an Indian film before. So this kept me going. Th ere

was a big break of a year after we had edited about 4,000

feet of film. In fact, people were told that this is the end.
So everyone was very unhappy. But I kept hoping that
something would turn up, somebody with some money
would come forward. So the morale came from the fact
that I was able to keep up my interest in the fi lm because

of my confidence in what I had already shot. And I knew
that there were many more exciting scenes to come.
AR: When the government took over as producer, you say you
had to account to them by instalments. What did that
mean?
SR: It meant long delays I’m afraid, and it was very unpleas-
ant. It meant, for one thing, that we missed the rainy
season, and we had to shoot the rain scenes in October.

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