In 1992, Satyajit Ray received an honorary Academy Award for an extensive career of soulful, thoughtful realist dramas that included films like The Music Room, An Enemy of the People, and Devi, as well as his most celebrated contribution to the fabric of world cinema, his beloved Apu trilogy (1954 – 1959). When the Apu films (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, and Apur Sansar) were shown, in clips, at the Oscar telecast, the producers winced at their poor quality. The prints of the Apu trilogy were shipped to London shortly after the broadcast for immediate restoration. There was, in London, a nitrate fire in the film vault (older nitrate prints are notorious for how fragile and immensely combustible they are), and the only known prints of the Apu trilogy were severely damaged. At the time, the Academy deemed the prints to be unsalvageable, and we would have to content ourselves to watch Ray’s masterpieces on old VHS tapes. For decades, it seemed like the films were more or less lost.
In 2013, the venerable Criterion Collection and the Academy Archive, armed with updated technology and a fervent obsession with cinema and posterity – not to mention the cooperation of an Italian restoration house – began the epic project of meticulously restoring the Apu trilogy to its original glory. Years later, after reconstructing 40% of the first film and over 60% of the second, the films were finally re-released in a 4K presentation. They played in theaters in May of 2015 to the great laud and relief of cinephiles everywhere. Finally, these towering masterpieces were available again.
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The work that was done is nothing short of miraculous. The films are clean and gorgeous and do not show a single sign that they had ever been damaged. Only an errant scratch here or there marks their age. Otherwise, they have every last shimmering black-and-white image hoisted intact and beautiful. And now, having been recently released on Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection, we now have a box set of The Apu Trilogy awaiting the public. This was a set that was recently recommended by CraveOnline in our home video gift guide.
The three films in The Apu Trilogy are, not to put too fine a point on it, among the best films ever made. They are a biography of a young boy who grows into a man, but free of the grandiose narrative histrionics or obscene melodrama that dominated Indian cinema at the time (Bollywood is often known for overwrought romantic musicals). They are quiet and realistic. they feel intimate and personable, as if we’re spending time with a friend, or perhaps even living in this world ourselves. They ache with sadness and loss, as when the young Apu loses his elderly aunt, his sister, his father, his mother, his bride.
In the first film, Pather Panchali (1954), we meet the young Apu (Subir Bandopadhyay), a playful boy in the rural villages of Bengal in the 1920s, where neighbors are your entire universe, and a distant train represents a faraway and ineffable outside realm. His father (Kanu Bandyopadhyay) is a frequently absent priest who makes money abroad and seems to be living a fulfilling life on the road, leaving Apu’s poor mother (Karuna Bandopadhyay) to fret about bills and making a living. His older sister Durga (Uma Dasgupta) is his guide through the world. His ancient aunt (Chunibala Devi, 80 at the time of filming) is an ever smiling, ever weary deity in his life. The world of Apu is simple, yet palpable. We can taste the air he breathes, and we clutch our hearts at his losses.
In the second film, Aparajito (1956), a slightly older Apu (Smaran Ghosal) is now living by the Ganges in the city of Benares with his mourning mother and father. Father is making money preaching by the banks of the river and mother is fretting. Apu grows up and begins attending classes in Calcutta, where he begins to – ever so painfully – separate from his mother. By the end of the film, his mother – with deep, heavy eyes – accepts that her son is too preoccupied with his new life at school to acknowledge her. This is a painfully real drama for anyone who has left home, and Ray plays it deftly and respectfully. No one is in the wrong, but everyone mourns.
In the third film, Apur Sansar (1959), Apu is now a grown man (played by Soumitra Chatterji) and struggling to make it in the world as a writer. Through a bizarre set of circumstances, Apu finds himself having to take the place of an insane groom at a country wedding, and finds himself unexpectedly married to the vulnerable Aparna (Sharmila Tagore). A lasting happiness, however, ever eludes our hero a tragedy befalls his young bride. Eventually Apu finds himself debating whether or not to accept his young son into his life. The final scenes of Apur Sansar are heartbreaking and affirming and optimistic in ways few films ever are.
Neo-realism is often a term relegated to film school and discussion of Italian cinema. But neo-realism is no faraway, stuffy, intellectual technique. As it is wielded by Satyajit Ray, it becomes the ultimate key into a world that, for American audiences, may seem faraway at first glance, but slowly overwhelms our emotions as time passes. I am no expert on rural Indian life in the 1920s, but I feel like I’ve been there, thanks to the subtle insinuation of these movies. I feel like I’ve loved and lost and lived a life with Apu.
Have I heaped too much hyperbole on The Apu Trilogy? These are no exaggerations. These are quiet, sad, lovely, relatable, personal films that bank on a level of emotional intelligence rarely touched upon. The Criterion Collection has saved that for us. What a saga.
Photos: The Criterion Collection
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. He also contributes to Legion of Leia, The Robot’s Voice, and Blumhouse. You can follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
