Page 75 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

62 The Apu Trilogy

film. You have to choose a master-angle, which you keep repeat-
ing so that people get their bearings. If you keep changing the
camera angle, it becomes very confusing. In your mind the plan
is very clear but to make it clear on the screen you have to use
certain devices which we didn’t know at that time.’
Throughout the protracted production process of Pather
Panchali, the shooting was a mixture of the premeditated and the
improvised. It is quite clear from Ray’s initial sheaf of sketches
done in 1952 how much he improved his scenario by his long
exposure to the locations themselves. All the elements in the
opening sequence of the film – little Durga picking up fruit and
skipping home to Indir Thakrun, Sarbajaya drawing water wea-
rily from the well with her suspicious neighbour Sejbou watch-
ing her and then ticking off Durga for stealing – are there in the
initial sketches, but in the film the human inter-relationships are
made more graphic and the scene richer, because the neighbour
actually sees Durga take a fruit and the girl’s mother Sarbajaya is
forced to overhear her caustic comments.
One of the premeditated sequences was the passing away of
Indir. Her solitary death, followed by the children discover-
ing her corpse, was entirely Ray’s invention; as Durga playfully
shakes her squatting form, it crashes over and her head hits the
ground with a sickening thud. This is the only scene at which
Chunibala demurred – not because of the potential injury but
because she felt Indir’s death at the village shrine, as it is in the
novel, to be more appropriate. Ray persuaded her both to do the
scene his way and not to worry about hurting herself. He would
always remember the mixture of elation and exhaustion on her
face after taking this shot.
For her funeral, which is not described in the novel, Ray again
decided to be unconventional by avoiding the usual Hindu chant;
in his experience there were always some people in an Indian
audience who would feel obliged to join in. His aim was to invest
the scene with beauty as well as sadness, rather than just making
it grim. So he decided to have Indir’s body carried out on a bier

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