Page 9 - THE CHANGING WORLD OF RAY

while carrying the collective education and in British and

hopes and painful disillu- American institutions.

sionment of an entire nation.

Ray’s unique In his trips inside

artistic au- and outside India, he came

thority was in contact with various intel-

the result of lectuals, including the film
his cosmo- director Jean Renoir, son

politan up- of the famous Impression-

bringing. His ist painter, and Jean Luc

family was Goddard, who was a major

relatively influence on Ray’s politi-

wealthy, with cal films in the 1970s. His
a reputation in the arts and debut ‘Apu trilogy’ (Pather

literature, going back to fif- Panchali filmed in 1955, fol-

teen generations (Banerjee lowed by Aparajito in 1956,

1996: 6, 7-9). His grandfa- and concluding with Apur

ther Upendra Kishore Ray- Sansar in 1959) acknowl-

chowdhury, and his father edged the influence of Eu-
Sukumar Ray were illus- ropean neorealist cinema

trators of children’s stories of Jean Renoir and Vittorio

in their magazine Sandesh. de Sica, using amateur ac-

From an early age, the tors, long semi-improvised

young Ray came in contact takes, a multi-vocal and

with Indian mythology, as multi-layered script shot on

well as, various different location, and using natural
forms of narration (epic light when possible, while

stories, biographies, and also introducing the cinema-

comedy). He was well-edu- tographer Subrata Mitra’s

cated, with studies in arts bouncing light: the use of

and music, as well as, a de- white sheets and mirrors to

gree in Economics from the imitate natural light (Ba-

Presidency College in Cal- nerjee 1996: 14, Ganguly
cutta, followed by further 2000: 3, among others). The