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| Ray as Scriptwriter |
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Ray's screenplays were always full of thumbnail drawings |
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1949 was a memorable year in Satyajit Ray's life. It was the year he met the French-born American director Jean Renoir who was then in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) to select actors and find locations for his forthcoming film, The River . Ray spoke to Renoir at length on the art of filmmaking and accompanied him on his hunt for locations, which consolidated his resolve to be an independent filmmaker. He, along with some friends, had already founded Calcutta Film Society, and been writing film scripts “just for the fun of it.” The professionalism of the scripts included in John Gassner and Dudley Nichols' 20 Best Film Plays , which he found “beyond doubt and of great value to me,” came in handy as a learner's guide. He continued doing scripts “without any thought of turning any of them into a film.” |
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The first script Ray did on commission around the time was that of Ghare Baire ( The Home and the World ), which was to have been directed by one of his friends, Harisadhan Dasgupta. But the project fell through, for Ray refused to make changes in his screenplay as suggested by the producer. Ray returned to Ghare Baire after a long space of time, in 1984. This time he worked on a thoroughly revised script, as the original smacked of amateurism and Hollywood. “Thirty-five years later, when I made The Home and the World ”, wrote Ray in his memoir, “I had a look at my original script and I realized it was an amateurish, Hollywoodian effort which would have ruined our reputation and put an end to whatever thoughts I might have had about a film career.” |
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Ray studying the pages of his treatment of 'Pather Panchali' |
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The idea of filming Bibhutibhusan Banerjee's novel, Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) , gelled while Ray was doing the illustrations for an abridged, children's edition of the book. But he never wrote a fully developed screenplay for the film. All on which he shot the film that changed the face of the Indian cinema was the treatment that he had finished on boat on his way back from a six-month trip abroad, and some jottings and elaborate sketches drawn in black ink which sequenced the film like a storyboard. “…I knew I did not need a dossier, because I knew the whole story by heart,” Ray wrote. Most of the dialogue he picked up from the original novel. Later on, Ray donated his notes and sketches to the Cinematheque in Paris from where they are reported to be missing.
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One of Ray's famous red script-books |
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The Ray screenplays, written in red notebooks known popularly as Kheror Khata in Bengal, served at once as scripts and storyboards. They were painstakingly elaborate affairs complete with sketches of sets, costumes and shot compositions. His wife Bijoya was the first to read a screenplay after the rough draft was ready. Ray introduced changes on her suggestions, if of course he found them acceptable, which he often did. The second to have a look was Sandip, his son. “The first person to read it was my wife. She always is,” said Ray in an interview on Ganasatru ( An Enemy of the People ). “Her comments are often pertinent and sometimes quite ruthless. Then Babu (Sandip) read it.”
Thereafter Ray made a revised draft, which was read out to the actors and members of his production unit. Finally, several handwritten copies were made for distribution among the cast and the crew.
Ray based only a few of his twenty-eight feature films on original screenplays. The rest he based on either his own stories or those by others. Nearly always did he make departures from the original stories to suit his own interpretations. |
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The planning of the orthodox landlord's dream in Devi, where his young daughter-in-law
is being transformed into a goddess |
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He never regarded total loyalty to the original narrative as a virtue for a filmmaker. “We do not admire a painting for its fidelity to the model,” Ray remarked in an interview while speaking on his screenplays. “All we want is for the model to stimulate the painter's imagination.” He was a master scriptwriter who made subtle and beautiful changes in original storylines to make his films come alive on the screen the way he wanted them to.
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