BackReview: The Pather Panchali Sketchbook
A book of sketches, essays and trivia on Satyajit Ray's famous first film
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“Writing an introduction to Pather Panchali is challenging," begins actor Sharmila Tagore in the introduction to The Pather Panchali Sketchbook—yet another book on the iconic 1955 Bengali film by Satyajit Ray, released last week by HarperCollins India in Kolkata. “What is there to say about the film that has not already been said?" she wonders.
Tagore, whose acting career started with Ray’s Apur Sansar in 1959, could well tire of recounting the cinematic brilliance she encountered, but this book offers a refreshing take on the film-maker and his epochal entry into world cinema with Pather Panchali. Hundreds of books, chapters, essays and articles have been written on the film, especially in Bengali. However, 61 years after its release, there is evidently enough unpublished material left to keep readers captivated.
At the heart of the 128-page coffee-table book are 58 pages dedicated to Ray’s sketchbook, the fabulously drawn and detailed storyboard that the perfectionist had created before shooting began. This isn’t Ray’s famous red notebook (kheror khata), but a generous collection of sketches in pen, brush and ink that the former illustrator at an advertising firm in Kolkata did as scenarios for Pather Panchali. He had later donated the sketchbook to the Cinematheque Francais in Paris—where it went missing. Luckily, in 2015, a scanned copy of the sketchbook was found; it has resulted in this unique facsimile edition.
While Ray’s talent with drawing is well-known to readers of his impressive body of fictional writing or fans familiar with his work with Kolkata-based publishers Signet, this collection of sketches underlines the discipline, devotion and artistic endowment of a man in his early 30s, dreaming of taking Indian cinema to the world stage. Many of the sketches are captioned in his own handwriting, while some bear technical terms such as “dissolve to" and “fade out" alongside. Seen together through the narrative thread of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s writing, on which Ray based the film, this could well have been an early instance of an Indian graphic novel had Ray not set his sights on cinema.
The middle section of the book is fringed by a carefully curated collection of essays, reviews, previews, statements, recommendations and reproductions of Pather Panchali memorabilia such as posters, booklets, draft scenarios, advertisements, commemorative stamps, legal contracts and photographs.
Actor Dhritiman Chatterjee and noted Malayalam director Adoor Gopalakrishnan come in with their take on the film. Gopalakrishnan writes that the film sharply split Indian cinema along a pre- and post-Pather Panchali line.
With Pather Panchali and Ray’s cinema backed by glowing reviews from intellectual stalwarts such as Akira Kurosawa, François Truffaut, Salman Rushdie, Ritwik Ghatak, Arthur C. Clarke, M.F. Husain, Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmusch and Ray Bradbury, Hindi film actor Nargis’ criticism of Pather Panchali peddling Indian poverty for international audiences is veritably lost.
What stands out are interesting nuggets culled from the essays: B.C. Roy, then heading the West Bengal government, which part-funded the film, suggesting to an incredulous Ray that he change the ending of the film to reflect the good work done by the state’s panchayati system; singer Kishore Kumar chipping in with funds and later refusing to take back the money; cinematographer Subrata Mitra fortuitously playing the sitar in two sequences after music composer Pandit Ravi Shankar went abroad; and Ray’s still photographer Nemai Ghosh getting selected initially as the man behind the camera.
While many of these tidbits are part of Pather Panchali lore, Ray’s wife, Bijoya, adds to the common knowledge of her having pawned her jewellery to fund the film. To keep her mother-in-law in the dark about this, Bijoya would borrow heavy jewellery from a friend and wear it on social occasions. It helped, Bijoya suggests, that her mother-in-law had just had a cataract operation.
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