Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for Pather Panchali (1955) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Chunibala Devi, Uma Das Gupta, Subir Banerjee, Runki Banerjee DIRECTOR: Satyajit Ray CINEMATOGRAPHY: Subrata Mitra MUSIC: Ravi Shankar PRODUCTION: Government of West Bengal

Box Office Performance

Pather Panchali earned $134,241 domestically and $402,123 internationally, for a worldwide total of $536,364. International markets drove the majority of revenue (75%), indicating strong global appeal.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

Franchise: Pather Panchali is part of the Apu Collection.

was followed by two films that continued the tale of Apu's life—Aparajito (The Unvanquished) in 1956 and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) in 1959. Together, the three films constitute the Apu trilogy. Aparajito portrays the adolescent Apu, his education in a rural school and a Calcutta college. Its central theme is the poignant relationship between a doting mother and her ambitious young son. Apur Sansar depicts Apu's adult life, his reaction to his wife's premature death, and his final bonding with his son whom he abandoned as an infant. The sequels also won many national and international awards. Ray did not initially plan to make a trilogy: he decided to make the third film only after being asked about the possibility of a trilogy at the 1957 Venice Film Festival, where Aparajito won the Golden Lion. Apur Panchali (2014) is a Bengali film directed by Kaushik Ganguly, which depicts the real-life story of Subir Bannerjee, the actor who portrayed Apu in . Aparajito, a 2022 Bengali film directed by Anik Dutta, tells the story of the making of .

was the first film made in independent India to receive major critical attention internationally, placing India on the world cinema map. It was one of the first examples of Parallel Cinema, a new tradition of Indian film-making in which authenticity and social realism were key themes, breaking the rule of the Indian film establishment.

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Casting

Kanu Banerjee (who plays Harihar) was an established Bengali film actor. Karuna Banerjee (Sarbajaya) was an amateur actress from the Indian People's Theatre Association, and the wife of Ray's friend. Uma Dasgupta, who successfully auditioned for the part of Durga, also had prior theatre experience.

For the role of Apu, Ray advertised in newspapers for boys of ages five to seven. None of the candidates who auditioned fulfilled Ray's expectations, but his wife spotted a boy in their neighbourhood, and this boy, Subir Banerjee, was cast as Apu. The surname of three of the main actors and two supporting actors happened to be Banerjee, but they were not related to each other. The hardest role to fill was the wizened old Indir. Ray eventually found Chunibala Devi, a retired stage actress living in Calcutta's Pike-Para Lane, as the ideal candidate. Several minor roles were played by the villagers of Boral, where was filmed.

▸ Filming & Locations

Shooting started on 27 October 1952. Boral, a village near Calcutta, was selected in early 1953 as the main location for principal photography, and night scenes were shot in-studio. The technical team included several first-timers, including Ray himself and cinematographer Subrata Mitra, who had never operated a film camera. Art director Bansi Chandragupta had professional experience, having worked with Jean Renoir on The River (1951). Both Mitra and Chandragupta went on to establish themselves as respected professionals.

Mitra had met Ray on the set of The River, where Mitra was allowed to observe the production, take photographs and make notes about lighting for personal reference. Having become friends, Mitra kept Ray informed about the production and showed his photographs. Ray was impressed enough by them to promise him an assistant's position on , and when production neared, invited him to shoot the film. As the 21-year-old Mitra had no prior filmmaking experience, the choice was met with scepticism by those who knew of the production. Mitra himself later speculated that Ray was nervous about working with an established crew.

Funding was a problem from the outset. No producer was willing to finance the film, as it lacked stars, songs and action scenes. On learning of Ray's plan, one producer, Mr Bhattacharya of Kalpana Movies, contacted author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's widow to request the filming rights and get the film made by Debaki Bose, a well-established director. The widow declined as she had already permitted Ray to make the film. The estimated budget for the production was 70,000 (about US$14,613 in 1955). One producer, Rana Dutta, gave money to continue shooting, but had to stop after some of his films flopped.

Ray thus had to borrow money to shoot enough footage to persuade prospective producers to finance the whole film.

▸ Music & Score

The soundtrack of the film was composed by the sitar player Ravi Shankar, who was at an early stage of his career, having debuted in 1939. The background scores feature pieces based on several ragas of Indian classical music, played mostly on the sitar. The soundtrack, described in a 1995 issue of The Village Voice as "at once plaintive and exhilarating", is featured in The Guardians 2007 list of 50 greatest film soundtracks. It has also been cited as an influence on The Beatles, specifically George Harrison.

Shankar saw about half the film in a roughly edited version before composing the background score, but he was already familiar with the story. According to Robinson, when Ray met Shankar the latter hummed a tune that was folk-based but had "a certain sophistication". This tune, usually played on a bamboo flute, became the main theme for the film. The majority of the score was composed within the duration of a single night, in a session that lasted for about eleven hours. Shankar also composed two solo sitar pieces—one based on the raga Desh (traditionally associated with rain), and one sombre piece based on the raga Todi. He created a piece based on the raga Patdeep, played on the tar shehnai, by Dakshina Mohan Tagore to accompany the scene in which Harihar learns of Durga's death. The film's cinematographer, Subrata Mitra, performed on the sitar for parts of the soundtrack.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: Nominated for 1 BAFTA Award11 wins & 3 nominations total

Awards Won: ★ Bodil Award for Best American Film — Satyajit Ray ★ BAFTA Award for Best Film — Satyajit Ray ★ National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film — Satyajit Ray ★ National Film Award for Best Feature Film — Satyajit Ray ★ National Film Award for Best Bengali Feature Film — Satyajit Ray

Nominations: ○ BAFTA Award for Best Film

Additional Recognition: has won many national and international awards. At India's 3rd National Film Awards in 1955, it was named Best Feature Film and Best Bengali Feature Film. The next year, it competed for the at Cannes, where it won Best Human Document It also won several awards for best foreign-language film: at the National Board of Review Awards 1958; at the Afro Arts Theater, New York, 1959; the Kinema Jumpo Award in Japan, 1966; and the Bodil Award in Denmark, 1969. In 1958 it had been nominated for Best Film at the 11th British Academy Film Awards.

Sight & Sound, the British Film Institute's (BFI) magazine, has included several times in its Critics' Polls of the greatest-ever films. In 1962, it ranked 11th; in 1992, 6th; and in 2002, 22nd. It also topped the British Film Institute's user poll of "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time in 2002. The magazine ranked the film 42nd in its 2012 critics' poll of "Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time" and 48th in its 2012 directors' poll. In the most recent 2022 edition of BFI's Greatest films of all time list the film ranked 35th in the critics poll and 22nd in the director's poll. In 1998, in a similar critics' poll from Asian film magazine Cinemaya, was ranked the second-greatest film of all time. The Village Voice ranked the film at number 12 (tied with The Godfather) in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics.