| Ray's Views |
Beethoven
“…It is a significant fact that all the pioneers of the cinema are known to have loved and known a great deal about music. Griffith used to speak of the inspiration that he derived from the music of Beethoven and one can actually spot the symphonic structure underlying films like The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance .”
( Chitravas, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1966 )
“In our house there was a record of the 20s, one movement of Beethoven's violin concerto. Its ownership hasn't yet been traced but I have been listening to it since I was seven. After reading about the great composers in the Book of Knowledge , especially about Beethoven, I came to worship him as my hero. If anyone were to ask me now to do a biography of Beethoven, I would jump at it. Someday, perhaps, I might seriously make a suggestion to East or West Germany that I do a movie on his life. My interest dates back to those days, and in my first year [at college] it was a consuming interest.”
( Interview with Karuna Shankar Ray, Kolkata, 1970 ) |
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| Ludwig Van Beethoven |
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Mozart
“…When I talk of Mozart as an influence, I am thinking more of his operas and his miraculous ability to have groups of characters maintain their individuality through elaborate ensembles. Leporello's stuttering fright, the Don's bravado in the face of doom and the Commendatore's relentless intoning of his challenge in the Statue Scene in Don Giovanni is but one example out of many. I am greatly fascinated by the possibility of such ensembles in films. The memory game in Days and Nights in the Forest attempts this. Here the game itself is the ground bass over which the six characters play out their individual roles in word, look, and gesture.”
( Sight & Sound, Autumn, 1982 ) |
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| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
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| Charles Spencer Chaplin |
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Chaplin
“If there is one name which can be said to symbolize the cinema – it is Charlie Chaplin. … I'm sure Chaplin's name will survive even if the cinema ceases to exist as a medium of artistic expression. Chaplin is truly immortal.”
( Charles Chaplin – a centenary tribute/West Bengal Film Centre Publication/1989 ) |
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The Soviet Masters
“…A comparison of Mother and Potemkin reveals the differences between the attitudes of two great directors. A geometric design is obvious in Eisenstein's techniques. It affects to a certain extent the human aspect of the subject, but the central thesis emerges clearly, boldly and sharply. Humanism and lyricism are the properties obvious in Pudovkin's film. He is a master of technique but he does not have the ruthless geometric inevitability of Eisenstein. To draw an analogy from music, Eisenstein reminds one of Bach, while Pudovkin is closer to Beethoven. …”
( From the Brochure of Eisenstein Cine Club, 1983 ) |
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| Sergei
Mikhailovich
Eisenstein |
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| From the sequence of Odessa
steps, Potemkin |
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Potemkin
“Is Potemkin fact or fiction? Or does it fall between two stools? I personally think that the film will never pass muster as a faithful account of a historical event, but as a creative interpretation of a naval mutiny, it will remain a valid and artistic statement.”
( Four Times Five - 20th Anniversary Souvenir/Films Division/1969 ) |
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Kurosawa
“Of all the Japanese directors, Kurosawa has been the most accessible to the outside world. There are obvious reasons of this. He seems, for instance, to have a preference for simple, universal situations over narrowly regional ones: the fear of nuclear destruction, graft in high places, the dehumanising effect of bureaucracy, simple conflicts of good and evil, the moral allegory in Rashomon and so on.
But most importantly,
I think, it is his penchant for movement, for physical action, which has won him so many admirers in the west."
( From Akira Kurosawa, written in 1967. Quoted from Our Films Their Films ) |
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| Akira Kurosawa
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| Igmer Bergman |
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Bergman
“ On my first visit to Stockholm I was particularly keen to meet Bergman as I had been a great admirer of his work ever since I saw ‘ The Seventh Seal' way back in mid-fifties. Bergman of today is not the Bergman of thirty years ago. He has pared down his style to a chamber music austerity. But he is still capable of handling big subjects, as witness Fanny and Alexander . At the opposite and more characteristic pole lies Scenes from a marriage, a relentless study of two people - -husband and wife- -compelling and exhaustive…”
( Chaplin Film Magazine, Bergman Tribute number, Swedish Film Institute, 1988 ) |
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Godard
“… If Godard has a hallmark, it is in repeated references to other directors, other films ( both good and bad ), other forms of art, and to a myriad phenomena of contemporary life. These references do not congeal into a single significant attitude, but merely reflect the alertness of Godard's mind, and the range and variety of his interests.”
( Link, August 15, 1966 ) |
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| Jean-Luc Godard |
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| Ritwik Kumar Ghatak |
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Ritwik Ghatak
“…He had a sensitive pair of eyes. He knew his camera. He had many theories. He abided by them, instead of obeying the logic of his tale. But the appeal of his imagery transcends cultural borders. Unforgettable images. But there is too important a role given to coincidences in his films. There are melodramas… Of course, a film maker—such as he would be a national treasure anywhere.”
( 11 th January, 1992 ) |
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Kipling, the colonial writer
“Kipling, writing about Indians, often gets closer to the truth than any western writers before or since. ‘The Miracle of Puran Bhagat' could well be the work of a particularly gifted Indian writer, and Hurree Chunder Mukherjee ( in `Kim') is the nearest the west has come to portraying a Bengali in fiction whose Babuisms ring true. The beautiful Mowgli stories have served as typical Indian fable in the absence of genuine fables and folk tales …”
( Sight & Sound, Autumn, 1982 ) |
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| Rudyard Kipling |
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| An Indian woman in Tintin comics |
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The East is the East
“…I am a great fan of Herge -- superb drawing -- I have the complete series -- the Hindi part of the conversation in the balloons are set down in Devanagari, admirable attention to detail -- but his Indian woman cannot wear the sari right. Nor are the coconut trees correctly drawn. These they fail to depict with verisimilitude. Yes, there were many aspersions on him, insinuations about his Nazi connections. But he is a superb illustrator. That an illustrator of such skill should be beaten by the style of the sari or coconut fronds shows that the East is the East, the West is the West.”
( 4 th January, 1992, to Tim McGrick of the The Independent , London ) |
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The Feudal Decadence
“…What The Chess Players says in effect is (a) that Nawabi did not change with the take over ; (b) that upper class values were only superficially affected by British rule, and (c) that feudal decadence was a contributing factor in the consolidation of British rule in India.”
( Illustrated Weekly of India,Dec 31,1978 ) |
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Nawab Wajid Ali Shah
and the Crown |
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| Mao Tse Tung |
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Mao Tse Tung
“ I can understand and admire Mao's revolution which has completely changed China and achieved – at a cost – the eradication of poverty and illiteracy. But I don't think I could find a place in China, because I am still too much of an individual and I still believe too strongly in personal expression. Over the years, I have understood art as an expression of a creative personality, and I don't believe in the new theories which hold that art must be destroyed and doesn't need to be permanent. I believe in permanent values….”
( Sight and Sound, Autumn, 1972, Interviewed by Christian Braad Thomsen ) |
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Women
“I think I have perhaps a subconscious conviction about women - that they are basically more honest, more forthright - because physically they are weaker sex, they are perhaps certain compensating factors in the general makeup of their characters. ”
( Decade, a special supplement of the Economic Times, Kolkata, June 9, 1986 )
Religion / Orthodoxy
“... I'm not conscious of belonging to any caste at all at any time. So I have nothing to defend in caste at all - nothing at all. Or in orthodoxy. I'm firmly against that kind of orthodoxy which is based purely on religion because I don't consider religion to be that important. What can you say in favour of orthodoxy which creates this division between people? And puts up a wall which is so artifical ?”
( From Ray's interview in "Chess Players & Other Screenplays" Faber and Faber, London 1989 ) |
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A woman painted
by Satyajit Ray |
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Where do Ideas come from ?
“… Just why story ideas started coming is something I'm afraid I cannot explain. It just so happened that a plot … different sorts of situations, different sorts of started coming to my mind, and feeling that they should be written down, I started writing them down. The first one I wrote was Bonkubabu's Friend Because I was interested in science fiction, there were elements of science it.”
( Interview with Aparna Sen, published in Decade, a special supplement of the Economic Times, Calcutta, June 9, 1986 ) |
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| A frontispiece with Bengali typography drawn by Satyajit Ray for one of his own short stories |
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Is it progress?
“…The strides made in the development of drugs and who stands to benefit from them. Well, I did ! It was the injection of a newly-developed drug that saved my life this time. Had it not been marketed just then, I would have died. This drug cost Rs. 4,000 per shot. Another has been discovered, yet more potent, yet more costly -- Rs. 20,000. This is progress, no doubt. But the question is what fraction of humanity can afford it?”
( Last interview of his life recorded on 11 th January, 1992 ) |
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