MARTIN SCORSESE on Satyajit Ray,s influence

         One of the great cinematic experiences of my life was in the very early sixties when I watched the complete Apu Trilogy in a New York theatre : Pather Panchali, Aparajito and The World of Apu. I was as totally absorbed as one would be reading a great epic novel. Satyajit Ray,s ability to turn the particular into the universal was a revelation to me. I was 18 or 19 years old and had grown up in a very parochial society of Italian-Americans and yet I was deeply moved by what Ray showed of people so far from my own experience. I was moved by how their society and their way of life echoed the same chords in all of us. I then sought out other Ray films like Devi, The Music Room, Two Daughters, and later Distant Thunder.

      I was very taken by the style of these films -- at first so much like the Italian neo-realist films, yet surprising the viewer with bursts of sheer poetry. Ray.s use of music impressed me so much that I sought out and eventually found sound-tracks to his films, such as Ravi Shankar,s music from Pather Panchali.

      Ray,s magic, the simple poetry of his images and their emotional impact will always stay with me.

Martin Scorsese

New York

SALMAN RUSHDIE on Satyajit Ray,s achievements

Salman Rushdie :

"I can never forget the excitement in my mind after seeing Pather Panchali," Akira Kurosawa said about Satyajit Ray,s first film, and it,s true : this movie, made for next to nothing, mostly with untrained actors, by a director who was learning (and making up) the rules as he went along, is a work of such lyrical and emotional force that it becomes, for its audiences, as potent as their own most deeply personal memories. To this day, the briefest snatch of Ravi Shankar,s wonderful theme music brings back a flood of feeling, and a crowd of images : the single eye of the little Apu, seen at the moment of waking, full of mischief and life; the insects dancing on the surface of the pond, prefiguring the coming monsoon rains; and above all the immortal scene, one of the most tragic in all cinema, in which Harihar the poor Brahmin comes home to the village from the city, bringing presents for his children, not knowing that his daughter has died in his absence. When he shows his wife, Sarbajaya, the sari he has brought for the dead girl, she begins to weep; and now he understands, and cries out too; but - and this is the stroke of genius - their voices are replaced by the high, high music of a single Tarshehnai, a sound like the scream of the soul.

Ray will complete many more movies, but his already-completed achievement is astonishing; you could say that the entire oeuvre is, like the very first film, "a song of the little road", because Ray has invariably preferred the intimate story to the grand epic, and is the poet par excellence of the human-scale, life-sized comedy and tragedy of ordinary men and women, journeying, as we all journey, down little, but unforgettable roads.


Salman Rushdie

Conversations with JAVED AKHTAR (by Nasreen Munni Kabir)

Nasreen Munni Kabir : What is the heart of a good conversation?


Javed Akhtar : Conversations have three levels : people, incidents and ideas. The lowest form of conversation is about people. When we go up one rung we reach incidents which have a slightly larger spectrum than talking about people. But the conversation which really matters is when we talk about ideas, because they are universal and live beyond time and space.


NMK : Could you tell me how you define the film dialogue and conversation?


JA : We must understand that a film has a time limit. We have to cover A to Z within say 90 min - so that,s a limitation. So you have to be economical with your words. Billy Wilder has aptly said, "Film dialogue should be like a poor man,s telegram". This is true of the way most scenes are written but sometimes you have to indulge in rethoric. Particularly in Indian cinema. But I consider film dialogue as edited and directed conversation. Good film dialogue is not conversation but a kind of representation of it.


NMK : When you were growing up, did films or books have a greater impact on you ?


JA : Books. Books. In my formative years, I hadn,t seen many films; books were more easily available. And there was a tradition of reading in the family, everybody read. There would be lots of books and magazines in the house and people would discuss them. So I read a lot. Films were expensive, one could see two films in a month, oh no, perhaps one film a month. But we could read as many books as we wanted.


NMK : Were these books in Urdu , English or Hindi ?


JA : Most of my reading was in Urdu. I remember I read my first English novel when I was 15.


NMK : Do you remember what it was ?


JA : The first English novel I ever read in my life was INQILAAB by K.A. Abbas.


NMK : That was a sophisticated choice for such a young person.


JA : I had read Gorki,s MOTHER in an Urdu translation when I was 13. All these writers - Gogol, Chekhov, or Pushkin - I had read them in Urdu by the time I was 15.


NMK : What about the other authors you read in your adolescence ? Which writer did you particularly like?


JA : Ibn - e - Safi. He was very good. His style of writing, his diction, his sense of humour. It is very unfortunate that Urdu literature and Urdu critics have not given him his due. It is a kind of cultural insecurity that we don,t have the guts to appreciate things which don,t fall in with conventional ideas of art. You need a Satyajit Ray to say that SHOLAY is a very good film. But an average film critic was hesitant to say so. In the same way, I don,t think Asia was or is capable of creating a Charlie Chaplin. They can,t.


NMK : Why not ?


JA : Because for that you have to accept that humour is respectable. Humour is a very serious thing. I don,t know why we have a strange high - brow attitude towards comedy in our country. We think humour is cheap and inferior. I think we have been deprived of happiness and pleasure for a very long time, so we think that anything that can make people happy or can provide pleasure is either a sin or taboo, or is of inferior quality. It,s believed that thins that are respectable have to be bitter, unpleasant, heavy and boring. i don,t know why.


NMK : But this writer, Ibn - e - Safi, what kind of humour did he have, was it ironic?


JA : No, he used to write thrillers like James Hadley or Earl Stanley. He was the first person who had a kind of western sophistication in his writing that was combined with all the richness of the Urdu language. He was Sherlock Holmes and James Bond rolled in one. He had big following.


NMK : What kind of impact do you feel a book has as compared to a film?


JA :  Most of the time when I,ve read a book, and then seen it adapted to the screen, i have been disappointed. It,s not because film is an inferior medium, it,s not that. But when you are reading a book, the reader is participating. The images that are being formed are somewhere between the description in the text and the imagination of the reader. The reader takes the information, the data from the novel, and creates his or her own pictures. So obviously they are perfect for him or her. While in films, you don,t participate, you are given everything. you are just a spectator.


NMK : Do you remember the first film you saw as a child ?


JA : I must have been 3 years old when I saw my first film. Later I discovered the film was Nagina with Nutan and Nasir Khan.


JA : Films in India have a huge influence on their audience. Was this true of the 1960s, people were tremendously involved with cinema and when they,d see a film, they would react very strongly. In those days films had more defined genres. We used to have stunt films with stars like Nadia, Kamran, Ranjan, Dara Singh. The audience for these films were very boisterous, they,d shout and jump as they,d watch the action and express extreme pleasure when the hero would beat the villain.   WILL CONTINUE .......