Page 83 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

70 The Apu Trilogy

In the last week of April 1955, they worked on a 20-hour-a-
day schedule. At one point, the editor Dulal Dutta clasped Ray’s
feet and said he could bear the strain no longer. Production con-
troller Chowdhury recalled that they were living in the Bengal
Film Laboratories – not bathing, shaving, or sleeping for six or
seven days. At one point, Ray’s legs simply gave way beneath
him as he stood up. The owner of the laboratory too stayed up all
night to help them. Printing began on the evening of 29 April.
On the morning of the day of despatch, 30 April, Ray had to
go out to find a suitable trunk and make official arrangements for
its sending. Ray’s relative and coffee-house companion Subhash
Ghosal had persuaded his employer J. Walter Thompson to send
the film free to New York via Pan Am. While waiting, Ray fell
asleep in a chair, so that people thought he must be ill. When
he returned to the laboratory, the trunk was already packed and
ready to go. The team gathered round as if it were a bride about
to leave her parents’ home forever and go to her husband’s home.
The trunk was taken to the airport, and that evening departed
safely for the Museum of Modern Art.
The film had no subtitles for lack of time, and Ray had not had
a chance to view it, even once. The following day he had to go to
Bombay on office work for Keymer’s. Not until a fortnight later
was he back in Calcutta and able to view the finished film in a
second copy for the first time. ‘It was then that I realized what a
disaster it was from the sound and editing point of view’, he wrote
to Monroe Wheeler on 15 June. ‘The first half, in particular, was
full of blemishes – abrupt transitions from shot to shot, scene to
scene, destroying the mood, the rhythm, the continuity; imperfect
fades and dissolves; uneven print quality, and at least one scene –
the stormy night – completely ruined by inadequate sound. I was
so depressed that I couldn’t even write and tell you how sorry I
was that such a print should have been sent to New York.’
In fact, Ray’s apprehensions proved groundless. The world
premiere of his maiden film in May 1955 had gone down well at
the Museum of Modern Art. Its artistic qualities had triumphed

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