Synopsis

"I can never forget the excitement in my mind after seeing it... It is the kind of cinema that flows with the serenity and nobility of a big river" --  (Akira Kurosawa).

The Apu Trilogy is a trilogy consisting of three Bengali films directed by Satyajit Ray: Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu).

The films—completed between 1955 and 1959—were based on two Bengali novels written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay: Pather Panchali (1929) and Aparajito (1932). The original music for the trilogy was composed by Ravi Shankar.



Produced on a shoestring budget of Rs. 1.5 lakh ($3000) using an amateur cast and crew, the trilogy was a milestone in Indian cinema and remains one of the finest examples of Parallel Cinema. The three films went on to win many national and international awards, including three National Film Awards and seven awards from the Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals. They are today frequently listed among the greatest films of all time and considered one of the greatest film trilogies ever made.

• Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959)
• Aparajito (The Unvanquished) (1956)
• Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) (1955)

The movies are a "coming of age" narrative in the vein of a bildungsroman, describing the childhood, education and early maturity of a young Bengali named Apu Roy in the early part of the 20th century. The first film Pather Panchali is about Apu's early experiences in rural Bengal, as the son of a poor but high caste family. His father Harihar, a Brahmin, has difficulty in supporting his family. After the death of Apu's sister, Durga, the family moves to the holy city of Benares.

In the second film Aparajito, the family's finances are still precarious. After his father dies there, Apu and his mother Sarbajaya come back to a village in Bengal. Despite incessant poverty, Apu manages to get formal schooling and turns out to be a brilliant student. The growing Apu comes into conflict with his mother. Later, when his mother dies too, he has to learn to live alone.

In the third film Apur Sansar, attempting to become a writer, he accidentally finds himself pressured to marry a girl who has rejected her mentally ill bridegroom. Their blossoming marriage ends in her death in childbirth, after which the despairing Apu abandons his child, but eventually returns to accept his responsibilities.

Influence

According to Michael Sragow of The Atlantic Monthly in 1994:

    In the four decades since Ray's debut as a writer-director — with the first Apu movie, Pather Panchali (1955) — his influence has been felt both in the type of work other directors attempt and in the means they employ to execute it.

The youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy, which Terrence Rafferty has rightly called "cinema's purest Bildungsroman." (In baggy-pants homage to Ray, American TV's cartoon-burlesque Bildungsroman, The Simpsons — which could be called "The Education of Bart Simpson" — contains an Indian convenience-store owner named Apu.)

Across the world, filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, James Ivory, Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, Carlos Saura, Isao Takahata, Philip Kaufman, Wes Anderson and Danny Boyle have been influenced by The Apu Trilogy, with many others such as Akira Kurosawa praising the work. In Gregory Nava's 1995 film My Family, the final scene is duplicated from the final scene of Apur Sansar.

Similar influences and references to the trilogy can be found, for example, in recent works such as Sacred Evil, Key's 2004 visual novel Clannad, Paul Auster's 2008 novel Man in the Dark, the Elements trilogy of Deepa Mehta and even in films of Jean-Luc Godard. The technique of bounce lighting pioneered by Subrata Mitra, to recreate the effect of daylight on sets, has also had a profound influence on the development of cinematography. (Wikipedia)