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Satyajit Ray is internationally acknowledged as one of the great masters of world cinema. From his extraordinarily accomplished debut 'Pather Panchali', his films - many of them masterpieces - have won him legions of admirers, among them Akira Kurosawa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, V.S. Naipaul and Martin Scorsese. Mahanagar (The Big City): Set in the mid' 50s, Ray's often humorous story of conflicting social values in India's lower-middle class stars Madhabi Mukherjee as a housewife whose growing independence alarms her traditionalist family. Charulata (The Lonely Wife) Neglected by her ambitious journalist husband, the lonely Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee) befriends his cousin (Soumitra Chatterjee), a sensitive aspiring writer, and almost inevitably their feelings for each other begin to deepen. Adapted from a story by Rabindranath Tagore, Ray considered this sensitively realised drama one of his finest achievements. Nayak (The Hero) This beautifully observed character study was one of Ray's earliest original screenplays. En route to an award ceremony, a famous and egocentric Bengali movie star finds that he is compelled to re-evaluate his life after encountering a disapproving young journalist (Sharmila Tagore).
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34 of 36 people found the following review helpful
By Phillip Kay
One of the interesting aspects of watching people's reactions to one another when they meet is to see the extent these reactions are shaped by unacknowledged emotions: tiredness, prejudice, suppressed resentment lead to condescension, flattery, anger and other subtexts which colour the consciously controlled verbal exchange.
While some great writers (Flaubert for instance) have examined these subtleties, very few film makers have. Even the great Junichiro Ozu steps back, as it were, and observes personal interactions in a social context. Satyajit Ray is almost alone in presenting what goes on beneath the surface of a persona, and as a result his characters are among the most richly realised in cinema.
This explains partly the comparative neglect that Ray's films have suffered. Many of them have never been available on disk. (True, this neglect is also partly due to Ray's carelessness about preserving his work, over which he had almost complete artistic control). But consider the context in which we see films. Action dominates the cinema world: our powerful reactions of fear, anger and lust are well catered to. On the sidelines are the human emotions, with actors registering the basic ones: love, fear, joy, despair, hate ' and this is seen as an accomplishment, made by those actors who can act. And then there is the cinema of Satyajit Ray, where a commonplace phrase can say so much, and a dozen expressions cross an actor's face before they reply. Ray is not more realistic than others, he just shows more. We may know this is happening with the people around us; we're not used to seeing it in films.
So a plot summary of a Ray film will often not tell us what it is about.... Read more ›
While some great writers (Flaubert for instance) have examined these subtleties, very few film makers have. Even the great Junichiro Ozu steps back, as it were, and observes personal interactions in a social context. Satyajit Ray is almost alone in presenting what goes on beneath the surface of a persona, and as a result his characters are among the most richly realised in cinema.
This explains partly the comparative neglect that Ray's films have suffered. Many of them have never been available on disk. (True, this neglect is also partly due to Ray's carelessness about preserving his work, over which he had almost complete artistic control). But consider the context in which we see films. Action dominates the cinema world: our powerful reactions of fear, anger and lust are well catered to. On the sidelines are the human emotions, with actors registering the basic ones: love, fear, joy, despair, hate ' and this is seen as an accomplishment, made by those actors who can act. And then there is the cinema of Satyajit Ray, where a commonplace phrase can say so much, and a dozen expressions cross an actor's face before they reply. Ray is not more realistic than others, he just shows more. We may know this is happening with the people around us; we're not used to seeing it in films.
So a plot summary of a Ray film will often not tell us what it is about.... Read more ›
32 of 36 people found the following review helpful
By M. A. PALASH
I was waited a long for this moment.good cinema always demand good print.we enjoy Apu Trilogy again & again also because of the good print.thanks to Artificial Eye for the iniciative.vol 1 have three great film of Ray-Mohanogor,Charulota & Nayok,vol 2 also have great film like Kapurush.may be we will have Days & Night in the Forest or Zoo or Kanchonjangha someday...Ray is one of the great director of World & greatest from Bengal( Bangladesh & West Bengal)..now we are going to have his film in a good print.as a film lover-Bangali I'm feeling proud & very happy!
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
charulata -the lonely wife
ray's most personal movie describes the unadulterated love and longing of an intelligent woman for her younger brother-in-law ,while the husband is pursuing his intellectual hobby of running a radical english newspaper in calcutta ,charaluta is left to confide her creative passions with her artistic and poetic brothrer-in-law ,it is diificult to define where this crosses the line from admiration to love but the emotion evolves naturally to blossom into something more than matronly affiliation ,whether there is an element of lust is left for the audience to decide with small trivial domestic details,but the relationship is a satire on the security of the indian marriage where any such thought much less act can become a blasphemy ,
charu is adored by her husband who is one of the most respectable aristocrats in the higher social echelons in colonial calcutta,their political discussions are just as enthusiastic as their exploration of piano and music ,this is a private sacred world and when a virtuous woman finds herself heeding thoughts which are ambivalent to her breeding ,she spurns herself and almost becomes a stranger to herself ,
the internal strife is beautifully depicted through other characters surrounding her ,the domestic chores and her observaviotions of the street life from her balcony,
the edwardian decor of the town house and the cloistered garden are the backdrop to this shy and mellow drama,it is too quaint to call it a romance and it is too bold in it's conclusion to be labelled as anything but a ground-breaking drama .
nayak is very good too but charulata is a must -see masterpiece .
ray's most personal movie describes the unadulterated love and longing of an intelligent woman for her younger brother-in-law ,while the husband is pursuing his intellectual hobby of running a radical english newspaper in calcutta ,charaluta is left to confide her creative passions with her artistic and poetic brothrer-in-law ,it is diificult to define where this crosses the line from admiration to love but the emotion evolves naturally to blossom into something more than matronly affiliation ,whether there is an element of lust is left for the audience to decide with small trivial domestic details,but the relationship is a satire on the security of the indian marriage where any such thought much less act can become a blasphemy ,
charu is adored by her husband who is one of the most respectable aristocrats in the higher social echelons in colonial calcutta,their political discussions are just as enthusiastic as their exploration of piano and music ,this is a private sacred world and when a virtuous woman finds herself heeding thoughts which are ambivalent to her breeding ,she spurns herself and almost becomes a stranger to herself ,
the internal strife is beautifully depicted through other characters surrounding her ,the domestic chores and her observaviotions of the street life from her balcony,
the edwardian decor of the town house and the cloistered garden are the backdrop to this shy and mellow drama,it is too quaint to call it a romance and it is too bold in it's conclusion to be labelled as anything but a ground-breaking drama .
nayak is very good too but charulata is a must -see masterpiece .
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
By Alex Lehmann
Satyajit Ray can easily be described as one of the best filmmakers of all time. Yet, I know how cliché this sounds, and how little justice it really does to Ray to say so. Even Kurosawa saying not seeing Ray's films are like not seeing the sun and the moon doesn't say anything close to give justice to the artistry that is presented within this modest and badly packaged box-set. Satyajit Ray's films reach for the stars in every sense of the word, but without in any way coming across as pretentious or particularly intellectual. Ray's films are the simplest of films, yet the most complex one can ever see.
Oh, some might say that, films like Persona or Zerkalo are more complex films, but they are wrong (not saying anything against those films, I love them both). Ray's films reach a universal complexity, through the simplicity of his narratives and images. One look, one image, can tell a thousand stories, where so many, oh so many, other films just attempt to grasp one within the frame of 90 minutes. Ray's films reach us on an intuitive level. Complexity and depth, through simplicity, is one of the hardest things to achieve, in any art.
Being an aspiring filmmaker (I know how pretentious that sounds), I found myself constantly annoyed and angry while watching these films. All the while, I was thinking "how can this man be so good, how can he do this, how can he create such a long non-dialogue sequence which still reaches an unheard of level of emotional suffering and sense of loss? How?" So many films leave me bored because of the predictability in both their imagery and narrative. Never with Ray's films, they astound in their technique, their extreme naturalness. They flow, go on and never pretend to be art. They are just pure art.... Read more ›
Oh, some might say that, films like Persona or Zerkalo are more complex films, but they are wrong (not saying anything against those films, I love them both). Ray's films reach a universal complexity, through the simplicity of his narratives and images. One look, one image, can tell a thousand stories, where so many, oh so many, other films just attempt to grasp one within the frame of 90 minutes. Ray's films reach us on an intuitive level. Complexity and depth, through simplicity, is one of the hardest things to achieve, in any art.
Being an aspiring filmmaker (I know how pretentious that sounds), I found myself constantly annoyed and angry while watching these films. All the while, I was thinking "how can this man be so good, how can he do this, how can he create such a long non-dialogue sequence which still reaches an unheard of level of emotional suffering and sense of loss? How?" So many films leave me bored because of the predictability in both their imagery and narrative. Never with Ray's films, they astound in their technique, their extreme naturalness. They flow, go on and never pretend to be art. They are just pure art.... Read more ›
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