Filed under: Film Series: High, General | Tags: behind-the-scenes, Bengali, high museum of art, Jean Renoir, media arts, Satyajit Ray, ten things, trivia
Satyajit Ray
1. From 1943 until 1956, when he became a full time filmmaker after the success of Pather Panchali, Ray worked for a British-owned advertising agency, beginning as a “junior visualizer,” and ending as the north Calcutta office’s art director.
2. Ray met Jean Renoir when the French director was in Calcutta searching for locations and actors for his film The River. As Andrew Robinson recounts in his biography, Satyajit Ray, The Inner Eye, “Satyajit recognized in Renoir a real film artist — the first he had come to know — and drew strength for his own work from the knowledge that such a person existed. Forty years later, while receiving the Legion of Honor from the President of France in Calcutta, Ray told him that he had alaways considered Renoir to be his ‘principal mentor’.”
3. In 1950, during a stay in London, Ray saw more than 100 movies, and was shaken to the core by De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. In a 1982 lecture he said, “I came out of the theatre my mind firmly made up. I would become a filmmaker. . . I would make my film exactly as De Sica had made his: working with non-professional actors, using modest recourses, and shooting on actual locations.”
Filed under: Film Series: High, Guest Blogger, Review | Tags: films, high museum of art, India, Jean Renoir, Satyajit Ray, world war II
Satyajit Ray
In Our Films, Their Films, a collection of his essays published posthumously in 1994, India filmmaker Satyajit Ray wrote about the great French director, Jean Renoir. As part of his tribute, he asked Renoir, who had fled to California from France to escape the Nazis, what was wrong with Hollywood. Renoir named the star system, the endless codes of censorship, and the tendency to regard film as a mass produced commodity as three major factors. He then added that he felt the best movies are created in times of stress:
“Look what the war has done to Italian films. Look at Brief Encounter. I don’t think a great film like that would have been possible without all those air raids London had to suffer. I think what Hollywood needs is a really good bombing.”
Of course, in Hollywood parlance, a bomb has a totally different meaning. But I can see what Renoir is getting at. Hollywood is fat, dumb, and happy — happiest of all during the “high seasons,” summer and the holidays. What would Ray –or Renoir, for that matter– have thought of movies like G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen?
Ray’s final film, The Stranger, showing at the High tonight (August 22) in the Hill Auditorium at 8 p.m., doesn’t have a single robot or explosion. It doesn’t have the acuity and passion of his masterpiece trilogy, The World of Apu, either. But the director was ill when he made it. What it does have is Ray’s customary compassion and seemingly effortless technique.
The plot is simple — a variation on the stranger among us. A well-to-do Calcutta housewife named Anila receives a letter from a man claiming to be her uncle who disappeared 35 years ago, when she was a toddler. In it, he asks if he may come and stay with her for a few days. Her husband is immediately suspicious. Uncertain, Anila nonetheless allows Uncle Mitra into their home. He turns out to be a total charmer with extraordinary tales about his world travels. Still, he must deal with a stream of interrogators as family, friends, and neighbors try to find the truth.
What strikes me most about The Stranger is, if you didn’t know Ray was 70 when he made it, you’d mistake it for a young man’s work. The film has a kind of Sixties idealism in its plea for universal brotherhood and fascination with simpler cultures. Anila’s uncle is an exemplar of these attitudes, and they are again embodied in her young son, who is enchanted by the elderly man’s stories about America’s Indians.
That small boy was played by Vikram Bhattacharjee, who is now a 28-year-old research scientist living in Philadelphia, PA. Bhattacharjee’s family moved to the Atlanta suburbs when he was ten, and he’ll be present at the High’s screening to share him reminiscences of working with India’s most acclaimed director.
Eleanor Ringel Cater
Filed under: Film Series: High, High Museum | Tags: actor, appearance, event, film series, films, Satyajit Ray, screening, special guest, The Stranger, Treasures from India
Saturday, August 22 in the Hill Auditorium at 8 p.m.
Meet Vikram Bhattacharjee
Vikram Bhattacharjee, who portrays the charming little boy captivated by the mysterious visitor in Satyajit Ray’s The Stranger, will be our special guest for the August 22nd screening of the film, which is presented as part of Treasures from India’s National Film Development Corporation.
Vikram with Satyajit Ray
Vikram was born in Kolkata and lived there until he was ten, when his family came to Atlanta. About a year and a half before their move, he had the opportunity of a lifetime: India’s most celebrated director, Satyajit Ray, personally selected him from a pool of aspiring child actors to play the role of Satyaki in his film. Vikram spent about six months acting in the production, and was there for the film’s premiere shortly before he left India.
Learn more about The Stranger at High.org >>
In Atlanta ,Vikram adjusted to life in the suburbs, attending school and graduating from Norcross High in 1999. He went on to the University of Georgia, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 2003. He stayed in the South, attending graduate school at the University of South Carolina where he received a doctoral degree in 2008.
Vikram now makes his home in Philadelphia, PA, where he works as a research scientist. He enjoys exploring the city, spending time with friends, cooking, and reading. His passions include politics and the sports of boxing and football. Though acting is no longer a part of his life, he looks back at the time he spent pretending to be Satyaki as a very fond memory.
Biography contributed by Ani Agnihotri
High Museum of Art: Films 