Page 73 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

60 The Apu Trilogy

share in these, should the film be sold abroad, as Ray now sus-
pected might happen. This was later overlooked by the govern-
ment – which meant that Ray received no income whatsoever
from Pather Panchali. ‘They get the money but I got the fame,’
he told his first biographer Marie Seton a few years later.
The most tiresome aspect of this relationship was that Ray’s
team had to render accounts for each stage of the shooting,
before the government would release the next instalment of
money. ‘It was very unpleasant,’ he remembered. ‘It meant, for
one thing, that we missed the rainy season, and we had to shoot
the rain scenes in October. Throughout the rainy season we had
no money. It meant going to the location every day with the
entire crew and cast and just waiting. There were days and days
of waiting and doing nothing ... It was a kind of picnic, but not
a very pleasant picnic. We would keep looking at the sky and at
little patches of cloud which wouldn’t produce any rain.’
If it is amazing that they were able to make such an authentic
film under these conditions, it is a miracle that they did not fall
foul of other, totally intransigent obstacles. Three miracles to be
precise, according to Ray: ‘One, Apu’s voice did not break. Two,
Durga did not grow up. Three, Indir Thakrun did not die.’
With hindsight, Ray came to see some advantages in the
delays. First, he learnt to assess the length of a scene in scenario
form, and secondly, to edit a film in sections, as it was shot,
thus saving time later. This way of editing soon became a habit
with him, even after he could afford to wait until he had fin-
ished shooting. More important, he learnt a lot about technique
from a severe scrutiny of the material he had shot before being
forced to stop, which was about half the film, and he applied
this hard-won knowledge in shooting the second half. Until the
end of his days he would feel, justifiably, that the first half of
Pather Panchali needed cutting, because ‘the pace sometimes
falters ... And there are certain things we couldn’t do anything
about, like camera placements. I don’t think the relationship of
the three little cottages [in Harihar’s house] is very clear in the

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