Satyajit Ray Won the Best Human Document Prize at Cannes in 1956 and the Golden Lion at Venice in 1957, Then Received an Honorary Oscar and the Bharat Ratna in 1992

The Festival de Cannes archive lists Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali as a competition film of 1956 and gives its prize as the “Prix du document humain”, the Best Human Document prize. A year later Ray’s second film, Aparajito, won the Golden Lion at Venice. In 1992 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an Honorary Award for his “rare mastery of the art of motion pictures”, and the Ministry of Home Affairs lists his Bharat Ratna under the same year. Ray died in Calcutta on 23 April 1992, aged 70.

A commercial artist with a notebook and no film behind him

Ray was born in Calcutta on 2 May 1921, according to the Satyajit Ray Foundation’s biography. He studied at the university there and in 1940 joined Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan, where he stayed until December 1942. The foundation notes that Tagore had been a close friend of Ray’s grandfather and father, and that Tagore died on 7 August 1941 while Ray was still a student there. The tuput piece on Tagore, the Nobel Prize and the returned knighthood tells the poet’s own story.

From 1943 Ray worked as a commercial artist, and by 1949 he was an art director at the Calcutta advertising agency D. J. Keymer. The foundation says he founded Calcutta’s first film society in 1947. The Week reports that Signet Press asked him to illustrate a children’s abridgement of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel Pather Panchali, and that he read the full novel and drew the cover of the Signet edition.

In 1949 the French director Jean Renoir came to Calcutta to scout locations for The River. Ray went to his hotel, joined him on weekend trips to the edge of the city and, when Renoir asked whether he meant to become a filmmaker, gave him a short outline of Pather Panchali, the foundation records.

In 1950 Keymer sent Ray to London on business. He stayed about six months and saw roughly a hundred films, among them Bicycle Thieves, which confirmed his belief that a realistic film could be made with a nearly amateur cast on real locations. His notebook already held notes for a film of the novel. He wanted unknown actors, no make-up and real villages, most friends thought that unworkable, and he finished his treatment on the voyage home.

Sundays, borrowed money and a state government

Shooting began on 27 October 1952 with the scene in which Apu and his sister Durga find a train in a field of kaash grass. Ray shot on Sundays because of his job at Keymer. By the next Sunday cattle had eaten the flowers, so the scene waited for the following flowering season, the foundation says.

He borrowed against his insurance policy and from relatives and friends, and when the money ran out his wife Bijoya’s jewellery was pawned so that shooting could go on for a few more days. Before shooting, he had spent about two years looking for a producer who would back the film, and none would, even though they admired his script and sketches.

The production manager, Anil Choudhury, then suggested approaching Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, and the state government agreed to fund the film. The money came in instalments, each needing cleared accounts that could take up to a month, and shooting resumed in early 1954 after a break of almost a year. The sum is reported differently. The Week says some accounts give ₹1 lakh and others ₹80,000, and that Ray’s son Sandip Ray doubted ₹1 lakh and put it at no more than ₹60,000.

The cast was largely new to the screen. Subir Banerjee played Apu, Karuna Banerjee played his mother, and neither they nor the villagers had acted before. Chunibala Devi, an 80-year-old retired stage actress, played Indir Thakrun. The main location was Boral, a village on the outskirts of Calcutta, and Subrata Mitra, who had been a still photographer, shot the film. Ravi Shankar, who had seen about half of it, recorded the score in a non-stop session of about eleven hours.

In autumn 1954 Monroe Wheeler of the Museum of Modern Art in New York offered to hold a world premiere, the foundation says. Outlook India, drawing on letters in the museum’s archive, reports that Wheeler had met Ray in Calcutta that year while shooting was stalled for lack of money. When a strike left Ray unable to buy raw film stock in Calcutta, the museum had stock bought in London and sent to him. There was no time or money for subtitles.

The midnight screening at Cannes

Pather Panchali opened in Calcutta on 26 August 1955. Business was modest for two weeks, and by the third week it was playing to packed houses at three cinemas. The first cinema kept it for six weeks and it then ran seven more weeks with another chain, according to the foundation. Its awards list shows the President’s Gold and Silver Medals in New Delhi that year.

Dr Roy, who had seen the film earlier, arranged a screening for Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was moved by it and made sure it was entered at Cannes despite some opposition, the foundation says. The Week gives a different route. It says Roy took the film to Delhi and, because the print had no subtitles, explained it to Nehru scene by scene.

The first Cannes screening was at midnight on a festival holiday, and most of the jury did not come. Critics and friends of Ray, including Lindsay Anderson and André Bazin, pressed for another, and a second screening was held for the full jury. The festival’s own archive records the prize as the Prix du document humain for 1956. The foundation calls it a special jury prize.

The foundation counts about a dozen prizes for the film at home and abroad. Its list includes a Diploma of Merit at Edinburgh and a Vatican Award in Rome in 1956, best film and direction at San Francisco in 1957, best film at Vancouver in 1958 and best foreign film in New York in 1959.

Outlook India reports that the American distributor Edward Harrison spent two years looking for an exhibitor before the film opened at the Fifth Avenue Cinema in New York in September 1958. It ran seven months, which the magazine calls a record for a foreign film in the United States.

Aparajito and the Golden Lion

Aparajito followed in 1956, with a special screening for Nehru and Rajendra Prasad before its public release. It follows Apu and his widowed mother in the countryside, and Apu’s move to Calcutta after she dies. The foundation says it did not do very well with Bengali audiences at first.

At Venice in 1957 it won the Golden Lion for best feature film. The foundation also lists a Cinema Nuovo Award and a Critics Award from that festival. La Biennale’s archive records Ray at the 18th Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica in 1957 with Aparajito, under India.

Ray had not planned a third film. The foundation says that when Nehru asked what happens to Apu now, Ray said he had no third Apu film in mind. At the Venice press conference he was asked whether he had a trilogy in mind and found himself saying yes. Apur Sansar came in 1959, with Soumitra Chatterjee as Apu and Sharmila Tagore, in her first film, as his wife. The foundation lists the President’s Gold Medal in New Delhi for it in 1959.

The same list shows Silver Bears for best direction at Berlin for Mahanagar in 1964 and for Charulata in 1965. It also lists a Special Golden Lion at Venice in 1982, for which La Biennale’s archive records a “Leone d’oro alla carriera”, a tribute at Cannes the same year, a fellowship of the British Film Institute in 1983 and the French Legion of Honour in 1987.

The honours at home

The foundation lists the Padma Shri in 1958, the Padma Bhushan in 1965 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1976, and the Ramon Magsaysay Award, given in Manila, in 1967. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the government’s lifetime award for cinema, appears under 1985 on the foundation’s list and under 1984 on the Film Federation of India’s list of winners, which names one winner a year from 1969. The tuput profiles of Amitabh Bachchan and Lata Mangeshkar cover two later recipients of the Phalke Award and other national honours.

The Ministry of Home Affairs’ list of Bharat Ratna recipients, India’s highest civilian honour, records Ray under 1992. The sources tuput opened do not give the day it was announced or presented.

The Academy Award, and what followed

The 64th Academy Awards were held on 30 March 1992 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, the Academy’s ceremony page says. Ray could not travel because of heart disease. Audrey Hepburn presented the Honorary Award, and Ray accepted from a hospital bed in Calcutta. The Caravan described this in 2016 as a pre-taped video, while the Satyajit Ray Foundation describes a live satellite television link.

The foundation prints the citation as given “in recognition of his rare mastery of the art of motion pictures” and for his humanitarian outlook. Caravan added in 2016 that Ray is still the only Indian to have received an honorary Oscar. He died 24 days after the ceremony.

The Academy began a Ray Preservation Project after the award. Its Academy Film Archive now holds preservation masters and projection prints for eighteen features and one short film that Ray directed.