MarianStarrett

Interesting story about Satyajit Ray's movies showing at the Walter Reade theater in Lincoln Center: Film Satyajit Ray?s World of Restless Watchfulness and Nuance By TERRENCE RAFFERTY ?I find I am inimical to the idea of making two similar films in succession,? wrote the great Indian director Satyajit Ray in 1966, and in this, as in everything he wrote or filmed, he spoke the truth. At that point, 11 years after the premiere of his first movie, ?Pather Panchali,? he had written and directed 13 features, all of which will be on view at the Walter Reade Theater starting Wednesday, along with seven from the next decade of his career. The films are at least as various as his statement suggests, and you?re not likely to worry, as Ray did in 1966, whether their diversity indicates ?a restlessness of mind, an indecision, a lack of direction resulting in a blurring of outlook ? or if there is an underlying something which binds my disparate works together.? Restless, yes. Blurry, never. And the ?underlying something,? which is simply his bottomless curiosity about how people negotiate the most urgent demands of nature and culture, is impossible to mistake, no matter what kind of Satyajit Ray movie you?re watching. Some of the films in this series (co-sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Columbia University), like the nutty fairy-tale picaresque ?Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne? (1968), can be a little baffling for non-Indian audiences; nothing travels worse than folk humor. And some might make you feel as if you needed to know a good deal more about the history and politics of the subcontinent ? and specifically Ray?s native Bengal, where most of his stories are set ? to understand the finer nuances of the characters? behavior. Ray, however, has nuances to burn: you can miss quite a few and still feel as if you know his people intimately. The radiant ?Charulata? (1964), for example, takes place in Calcutta in 1880, and its characters, educated and well off, spend a lot of their time in earnest discussion of literature and politics of the day. Their spirited debates are full of names few Westerners will have heard and issues perhaps long forgotten even by Bengalis. What is clear, though, is their fierce passion for ideas, and the small, surprising ways in which that passion colors their feelings for one another. That?s how dialogue usually works in Ray movies, even ones like ?Charulata? and the superb, Chekhovian ensemble piece ?Days and Nights in the Forest? (1970). Ray is always less interested in what people are saying than why, and in his best pictures the most revealing moments tend to be silent, or nearly so. The fluid opening sequence of ?Charulata? is six almost-wordless minutes of a woman ? the title character, played by the beautiful, fiery-eyed Madhabi Mukherjee ? walking rather aimlessly from one room to another in her house. The languid rhythm of her steps tells us how wearily familiar everything seems to her, and the rapt attention she devotes to people passing on the street tells us something sadder still: in her comfortable but unstimulating life, the ordinary activities of ordinary people look exotic, wondrous. She watches everyday life with opera glasses, to feel a little closer. Ray has a particular affection for the watchful, for patient observers like this lonely wife and like Apu, the child hero of ?Pather Panchali,? who becomes a student in ?Aparajito? (1956) and then a husband and father in ?The World of Apu? (1959), looking at life a little differently at every stage but always looking, searching for clues about who he?s going to be. The Apu Trilogy is easily Ray?s best-known work, largely by default: few of the films he made between ?The World of Apu? and his death in 1992 are available on DVD in the United States and Britain, and theatrical retrospectives like Lincoln Center?s are, for an artist of his stature, shockingly rare. This series is full of memorable, affecting movies that have been just about impossible to see in recent years, like ?Devi? (1960), a remarkable exploration of religious madness, and ?Kanchenjungha? (1962), Ray?s first color film. ?Kanchenjungha? chronicles a few hours in the lives of a wealthy Calcutta family vacationing in Darjeeling and manages, with no action more dramatic than strolling and talking, to create a startlingly vivid (and, of course, nuanced) portrait of Indian society in transition. The films that may resonate most strongly in 2009, though, are the ones that deal with economic hardship and the strange parallel universe that is business, big or small. The grinding rural poverty of ?Pather Panchali? is powerfully rendered, but it?s not entirely typical of Ray?s approach to the vexed question of money and its absence. Abject need is, in a way, too stark, too absolute for his restless sensibility. He?s more at home with situations like that of the struggling middle-class family of ?Mahanagar? (1963), who have just a bit less income than they require and therefore have to make awkward choices: in this case, the wife (again, Ms. Mukherjee) takes a job, and she discovers that the world outside the home is both more exciting than the world within and much uglier. ?Mahanagar? has a happy ending, of a highly ambiguous sort. By the time Ray made ?The Adversary? (1971) ? the first of what has come to be called the Calcutta Trilogy, though the plots and characters of the three films are unrelated ? the economic and political landscape of India had darkened considerably. He had to watch even more closely, and more coldly, to understand this changing world. The protagonist of ?The Adversary? is a recent university graduate who can?t find a job and is briefly tempted by violent revolution. The second film, ?Company Limited? (1971), is perhaps Ray?s chilliest, bleakest vision of his society, the story of a rising young executive who squirms out of a potentially promotion-killing crisis by devious, dangerous means. He gets the promotion, but there?s a pesky observer in this film, too: his quiet, intelligent sister-in-law, with whom he is slightly in love and who knows, in the end, exactly what he has done in the name of success. Somnath Bannerjee (Pradip Mukherjee), the hero of the third film, ?The Middleman? (1975), is the most interesting and the most tragic, because he embodies aspects of both his predecessors: unemployed for the first half of the film, and in the second half beginning to succeed as an independent operator in what his mentor calls the ?order-supply? business. The term for his position as a commercial middleman is dalaal, which in Bengali can also mean pimp. He isn?t a villain ? hardly any of Ray?s characters are ? but he is, as so many in these films are, a young man who lacks the courage to fail in the eyes of the world. Somnath?s a watcher, watching himself, but not rigorously enough. Even when, as in this picture?s devastating final scenes, he hates the self he is becoming, he can?t stop what he?s doing: it?s as if he were looking at someone else. And in the audience you watch in melancholy horror because you?re looking through the eyes of Satyajit Ray. The ?underlying something? of his rich, various body of work is, ultimately, a kind of close observer?s faith: if you can see the world clearly enough, you?ll never be a stranger to yourself. ?First Light: Satyajit Ray From the Apu Trilogy to the Calcutta Trilogy? opens Wednesday and runs through April 30 at the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center; (212) 875-5600, filmlinc.com.

> {quote:title=CelluloidKid wrote:}{quote} > I never cared for Blockbuster Video ...Hollywood Video is no better ....maybe the Mom and Pop stores will thrive again!!!??! If Netflix vanquished BB Video, what makes you think mom-and-pop stores could compete any better?

Kim I rented "The Big Country" and should be watching it fairly soon, possibly over the weekend. I'm looking forward to a nice discussion later on in the Westerns section.

> {quote:title=CineSage_jr wrote:}{quote} > Cineastes and the Cahiers du Cinema auteurist crowd, who essentially granted themselves inordinate power to make or break a director's reputation in the 1960s (and relegate others, such as producers, to the periphery) have shown themselves very susceptible to those considerations (and not necessarily to their credit). > This probably also worked against directors like Michael Curtiz, wouldn't you say CineSage?

> {quote:title=movieman1957 wrote:}{quote} > Ethan Edwards being a farmer would drive him and everyone else a little crazy before long. I couldn't have said it better myself. He's too much of a wild spirit, from what I remember (I plan to watch the movie again today or tomorrow, but I have seen it in a theater before). He needs more space than he could have in such a small house.

I think it makes sense to me that Ethan remains, as you said, an outcast. The story could have been given a more conventionally happy ending, but it wouldn't have stayed with you quite the same way.

> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote} > Anyone want to start the discussion? I have a few thoughts, but I'd love to hear what you think, first.

> {quote:title=JoeBond wrote:}{quote} > I might prefer James Caan's character in El Dorado because of the knowlage that Ricky Nelson was not a trained actor or that I grew up watching El Dorado on AMC and never really had a chance to watch Rio Bravo until recently and I actually thought that Rio Bravo was just a coping off of El Dorado until I found out that Rio Bravo came out before El Dorado. I just think Rio Bravo is just a better overall movie than El Dorado. > > Message was edited by: JoeBond Maybe I had a hard time accepting Caan's character because I grew up watching him in leading parts and had a hard time getting used to watch him in this movie, being second banana to the Duke and Mitchum. It was probably a very good part for him, at that point in his career, and I'm sure he was glad to be in the movie.

> {quote:title=shuksan wrote:}{quote} > I love questions like this one since there's something special in each. > > So I'm going to go for minutia reasoning this time out. El Dorado is my pick for the best piece of horse-flesh The Duke every appeared on... Cochise (the big Appaloosa) he rides in this picture is to die for. Let's hear it for spotted **** horsies. (So much for my career as a film critic.) That was a seriously cute horse. :x I loved the scene where he got it to go "in reverse". I don't remember seeing that in a movie before.

> {quote:title=HarryLong wrote:}{quote} > Maybe now that Borzage has been rediscovered, Dieterle will be next. He deserves it. I agree with you completely there.

And in baseball-related news, I was very sorry to hear earlier this morning about the death of Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart, 22, in a car crash in Southern California that also killed two others. He'd just appeared in Wednesday's night Angels game a few hours earlier.

I read about that yesterday, and I'm definitely excited about the new remastered tracks. Hope they'll be available thru iTunes, too.

That's a really _awesome_ poster! B-)

Did you also have a sister like CineMaven's, molo?

> {quote:title=molo14 wrote:}{quote} > Some of you have commented on Shane's compliment to Marian but what stood out to me was a scene just before that. When Marian is setting the table, Joe says something to her about bringing out the fancy plates. She gives him a look like "don't embarrass me" and he asks her what's wrong. Am I making that up? I don't have my copy on hand to check. I noticed that more than Shane's compliment. I just checked my DVD.. the lines are: JOE: Say, we're kind of fancy, aren't we? JOEY: What is, pa? JOE: Our good plates and extra fork and... JOEY: What about me, ma? JOE: What's the matter, Marian? MARIAN: Nothing And you're right, she looks a bit flustered/embarrassed *He admires what Joe and Marian have and is protective of it. I also think Joe wants to believe that Shane will protect Marian and Joey if he is killed. He wants that comfort before he takes on Ryker.* That's another excellent point. He will have greater peace of mind if he knows someone's there to take care of them, if something were to happen to him. *Jean Arthur's Marian is the most subdued I've ever seen her in a film. It made me look at her character a lot more closely.* She really is great, and it was a great role for her to choose as her last film performance. *Heflin, I have always liked. I really like it when he plays a down and out kind of character, but he is just perfect for the role of Joe.* I agree, he just hits all the right notes and really makes us care for him. *Shane is Alan Ladd's greatest role. I love all the dark noir films he did with Veronica Lake, but this is the film that I will always think of first when someone mentions his name. It's a character that is nothing short of a legend to me. A mythic figure I have known since I was a kid. As I got older, I came to appreciate the character and the film even more for all it's complexities.* Yes, it's probably the one he's remembered for the most by the majority of classic movie buffs - but his work in noirs was also very good, of course.

> {quote:title=JoeBond wrote:}{quote} > Originally I really liked El Dorado before I even watched Rio Bravo, but after watching Rio Bravo for the first time I have to admit that I liked Rio Bravo a little better. I think Rio Bravo is better because John Wayne's love interest (Angie Dickinson) is superior and Walter Brennan is very memorable in the movie. The only drawback is Rick Nelson's performance which is not that bad but is not that good. I thought that James Can did a much better job in a similar role in El Dorado. Hi Joe, Just watched "El Dorado" and had a similar reaction, I still like "Rio Bravo" better, although "El Dorado" isn't bad at all. But I do like Angie Dickinson and Walter Brennan better, just like you did. As for "Mississippi" vs. "Colorado", I'm afraid that's the only character in which my preference differs from yours. I liked Ricky Nelson's Colorado a bit better than James Caan's Mississippi, Nelson seemed to have a bit more spark, and Caan clowned around just a bit too much, like when he pretends to be a Chinese man to surprise the guard. The movies start out fairly differently but by the second half, a sense of deja vu starts to hang in the air, as the plots become more and more similar. Michele Carey as Joey MacDonald was another good thing "El Dorado" had going for it. (And, needless to say, the fact that Leigh Brackett also worked on the screenplay).

> {quote:title=molo14 wrote:}{quote} > Well said and the screencap is perfect. Elisha Cook Jr. sure had a way of playing these kind of characters. His size and that face, it was like he was built for these roles. He's definitely one of my favorite supporting actors, his face was so very expressive and if cast right, he never failed to make quite an impression, usually getting your sympathy no matter what he was doing. Amazingly, his career stretches back to the 1930's!

I have been recording all these great movies all day long, while watching another movie on DVD. This looks like one of the better titles! Thanks, TCM! B-)

I look forward to watching it, shirleytemple - and welcome to the forums!

> {quote:title=musicalnovelty wrote:}{quote} > The highlight of the day of baseball movies for me will be the too-rarely-shown "They Learned About Women" (1930). > It is the movie that "Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) is a partial, sort-of remake of. I did _not_ know that! I would like to watch it, too, or at least record it for a rainy day.

I'm surprised TCMWebAdmin missed this one...

> {quote:title=Kim1607 wrote:}{quote} > Two things. > > I've used the db for movies but not actors. I will have to try that too. > > And Gentleman's Agreement comes on the FMC this weekend. It's one of those I am afraid of because it sounds intense but I will DVR it. > I wouldn't say that "Gentleman's Agreement" is intense by today's standards. It might have seemed very audacious in its time because few movies had tackled anti-semitism, and of course the movie has its heart in the right place, but for a lot of people watching it today, it might seem a little dated. Still worth watching, of course.

*Strangely, this was being said a year ago, too. I remember many April 2008 articles with the same headline.* It is possible, I suppose, that they're really much worse off now than a year ago, due to the economic meltdown late last year. Another factor has been the huge success of the "DVD kiosks" that are being put in many stores and supermarkets is another factor, especially since those movies rent for just $0.99 or so (and many are accessible 24 hours a day). I won't be sad to see them go under, if that happens.

I am very intrigued by *Lilac Time* and very surprised it has never been shown on TCM.

That whole evening - with no less than THREE fan programmers - is going to be awesome, I plan on recording every single one of them!