Word: apu
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SATYAJIT RAY's Apu trilogy, completed in 1958, was the first group of Indian films to gain attention in the West, and it still serves as the reference to which all other Indian films are compared. But while the critical standard has not changed, Indian society has been in upheaval. At one time Ray explored misery, poverty, and rural survival in a colonial province, or the tenacity of religious superstition in a new nation, but now he focuses more sharply than before on an urban elite caught between the Western forces of the city and the essentially tribal India...
...actors are all amateurs, as in all of Ray's films. Ray first saw the potential of using untrained local people as actors when he saw de Sica's The Bicycle Thief before he made Apu. But although de Sica sometimes went through 30 takes of a single scene, Ray consistently obtains deeply emotional performances with little rehearsal or retake...
...original material for Siddhartha--the book itself--was no gem, but the basic setting and action has potential. Louis Malle (Phantom India) and Jean Renoir (The River), along with Satyajit Ray and his Apu trilogy, have shown that India's culture is fascinating on film. And Kon Ichikawa made a brilliant Japanese film called The Burmese Harp about a soldier burying the unknown dead after the World War II defeat, giving the story of a religious ascetic roaming the countryside incredible resonance and conviction...
Father Panchali. The first film in Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy is one of the best films to come out of India. As a sort of fictional documentary, the film focuses on middle class life and post-war Indian culture under assault from Westernization...
...PLAYHOUSE Devi (1960). Indian Film Maker Satyajit Ray, best known for The Apu Trilogy, directs the story of a devout Indian whose religious fantasies lead to domestic tragedy...