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Satyajit Ray (listen ⓘ; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian filmmaker who worked prominently in Bengali cinema. Ray received numerous awards and honours, including India's highest award in cinema, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award (1984) and India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna (1992).
Satyajit Ray received numerous awards, both for personal achievements as a filmmaker and for the films he made. Personal Awards. Padmashree, India, 1958; Padmabhushan, India, 1965; Magasaysay Award, Manila, 1967; Star of Yugoslavia, 1971; Doctor of Letters, Delhi University, 1973; D. Litt., Royal College of Arts, London, 1974; Padmabibhushan ...
- Overview
- Early life
- The Apu Trilogy
- Themes and documentaries
- Adaptations of works by Rabindranath Tagore
- Major films, comedies, and musicals
- Films about Calcutta and later work
- Work as a writer and illustrator
Satyajit Ray (born May 2, 1921, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India—died April 23, 1992, Calcutta) Bengali motion-picture director, writer, and illustrator who brought the Indian cinema to world recognition with Pather Panchali (1955; The Song of the Road) and its two sequels, known as the Apu Trilogy. As a director, Ray was noted for his humanism, his v...
Ray was an only child whose father died in 1923. His grandfather was a writer and illustrator, and his father, Sukumar Ray, was a writer and illustrator of Bengali nonsense verse. Ray grew up in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and was looked after by his mother. He entered a government school, where he was taught chiefly in Bengali, and then studied at Presidency College, Calcutta’s leading college, where he was taught in English. By the time he graduated in 1940, he was fluent in both languages. In 1940 his mother persuaded him to attend art school at Santiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore’s rural university northwest of Calcutta. There Ray, whose interests had been exclusively urban and Western-oriented, was exposed to Indian and other Eastern art and gained a deeper appreciation of both Eastern and Western culture, a harmonious combination that is evident in his films.
Returning to Calcutta, Ray in 1943 got a job in a British-owned advertising agency, became its art director within a few years, and also worked for a publishing house as a commercial illustrator, becoming a leading Indian typographer and book-jacket designer. Among the books he illustrated (1944) was the novel Pather Panchali by Bibhuti Bhushan Banarjee, the cinematic possibilities of which began to intrigue him. Ray had long been an avid filmgoer, and his deepening interest in the medium inspired his first attempts to write screenplays and his cofounding (1947) of the Calcutta Film Society. In 1949 Ray was encouraged in his cinematic ambitions by the French director Jean Renoir, who was then in Bengal to shoot The River. The success of Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief (1948), with its downbeat story and its economy of means—location shooting with nonprofessional actors—convinced Ray that he should attempt to film Pather Panchali.
Ray was unable to raise money from skeptical Bengali producers, who distrusted a first-time director with such unconventional ideas. Shooting could not begin until late 1952, using Ray’s own money, with the rest eventually coming from a grudging West Bengal government. The film took two-and-a-half years to complete, with the crew, most of whom lack...
Ray never returned to this saga form, his subsequent films becoming more and more concentrated in time, with an emphasis on psychology rather than conventional narrative. He also consciously avoided repeating himself. As a result, his films span an unusually wide gamut of mood, milieu, period, and genre, with comedies, tragedies, romances, musicals...
Some of Ray’s finest films were based on novels or other works by Rabindranath Tagore, who was the principal creative influence on the director. Among such works, Charulata (1964; The Lonely Wife), a tragic love triangle set within a wealthy, Western-influenced Bengali family in 1879, is perhaps Ray’s most accomplished film. Teen Kanya (1961; “Three Daughters,” English-language title Two Daughters) is a varied trilogy of short films about women, while Ghare Baire (1984; The Home and the World) is a sombre study of Bengal’s first revolutionary movement, set in 1907–08 during the period of British rule.
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Ray’s major films about Hindu orthodoxy and feudal values (and their potential clash with modern Western-inspired reforms) include Jalsaghar (1958; The Music Room), an impassioned evocation of a man’s obsession with music; Devi (1960; The Goddess), in which the obsession is with a girl’s divine incarnation; Sadgati (1981; Deliverance), a powerful indictment of caste; and Kanchenjungha (1962), Ray’s first original screenplay and first colour film, a subtle exploration of arranged marriage among wealthy, westernized Bengalis. Shatranj ke Khilari (1977; The Chess Players), Ray’s first film made in the Hindi language, with a comparatively large budget, is an even subtler probing of the impact of the West on India. Set in Lucknow in 1856, just before the Indian Mutiny, it depicts the downfall of the ruler Wajid Ali at the hands of the British with exquisite irony and pathos.
Although humour is evident in almost all of Ray’s films, it is particularly marked in the comedy Parash Pathar (1957; The Philosopher’s Stone) and in the musical Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969; The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha), based on a story by his grandfather. The songs composed by Ray for the latter are among his best-known contributions to Bengali culture.
The rest of Ray’s major work—with the exception of his moving story of the Bengal Famine of 1943–44, Ahsani Sanket (1973; Distant Thunder)—chiefly concerns Calcutta and modern Calcuttans. Aranyer Din Ratri (1970; Days and Nights in the Forest) observes the adventures of four young men trying to escape urban mores on a trip to the country, and faili...
The motion-picture director also established a parallel career in Bengal as a writer and an illustrator, chiefly for young people. He revived the children’s magazine Sandesh (which his grandfather had started in 1913) and edited it until his death in 1992. Ray was the author of numerous short stories and novellas, and in fact writing, rather than f...
Ray received many major awards in his career, including a record thirty-seven Indian National Film Awards which includes Dadasaheb Phalke Award, a Golden Lion, a Golden Bear, two Silver Bears, many additional awards at international film festivals and ceremonies, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1992.
Academy Awards, USA 1992 Winner Honorary Award For his rare mastery of the art of motion pictures and for his profound humanitarian outlook, which has had an indelible influence on filmmakers and audiences throughout the world.
- May 2, 1921
- April 23, 1992
The IFFI Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award (formerly IFFI Lifetime Achievement Award) is an international honor instituted by the International Film Festival of India. The recipient is honored for their "outstanding contribution to the growth and development of World cinema.
Nov 27, 2023 · Michael Douglas will be bestowed with the prestigious Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award at the closing ceremony of 54th IFFI tomorrow. The iconic actor further said that this is the best time for Indian cinema industry, and the representation of more than 78 foreign countries in IFFI 54 is the reflection of its strength.
