....of Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)...."It is banal to compare it with any other Indian picture - for even the best of the pictures produced so far have been cluttered with cliches. Pather Panchali is pure cinema. There is no trace of the theatre in it. The countryside lives in the quiver of every leaf, in every ripple on the surface of the pond, in the daily glory of its mornings and evenings. The people live in every nerve and we live with them. If sequence after sequence fixes itself in the mind of the audience, it is because every scene has been intensely conceived."

"....we are persuaded that Ray is unique in his treatment of basic human conflicts and struggles, in his sensitive portrayal of poverty and his 'sombre, perceptive and eloquent visual sensibility' has done, and can do more to touch the hearts of people than all the data on the human condition in our Human Development Reports and poverty statistics."

"My award goes to Satyajit Ray; and out of his great body of work, my own particular favorite is his film Charulata. Although he was such a superb visual artist, Ray's main inspiration was literary. He always wrote his own scripts (as well as directing them and composing his own original score!) and his greatest films were all adaptations of favorite novels and stories, including Charulata, which was based on a novella by Tagore. It doesn't seem to matter through what medium--novels, plays, films, music--the most potent influences reach us. All great works stimulate a hopeful emulation that ends occasionally, as in the films of Satyajit Ray, in radiant success--ensuring the continuation of this business of influence and inspiration that makes us all try and try and try again . . ."

"A beautiful picture, completely fresh and personal. [Ray's camera] reaches forward into life, exploring and exposing, with reverence and wonder."

"The man who made the memorable Apu trilogy is delineating an emotional marital triangle that develops in a comfortable Bengali household... Husband (Bhupati Dutt), a liberal newspaper publisher, neglects pretty young wife (Charulata). Wife is attracted to husband's young cousin (Amal), a dashing derelict... Not only has the director fashioned a scenario from a story by Rabindranath Tagore, but also Mr.Ray has composed a tremulous musical score, with two vocal interludes for good measure..."

"As usual, Mr. Ray has composed the picture in the most literal sense of the word-- and exquisitely. He has made the most of beautiful young Madhabi Mukherjee. In a sense, the very opening shot-- Miss Mukherjee's hands darting a needle into an emboidery hoop-- keys all that follows. Arranging every single camera frame to convey nuance, mood or tension, Mr. Ray has photographically embroidered a steady flow of quiet images with precise, striking acuity. One montage-- when the day-dreaming wife, in a garden swing, rocks to and fro like a pendulum-- is unforgettable."

"Of all the film directors of India-- which is one of the leading nations of the world in motion- picture production--the most famous is the Bengali Satyajit Ray, who developed entirely apart from the industry as an independent. His first film, Pather Panchali (1955), won the attention of audiences throughout the world to his subtle and sensitive work, and his subsequent efforts have confimed the inital evaluation of him as one of the most important contemporary directors... "Ray usually rehearses his actors very little, especially when they are nonprofessionals, and he usally prefers the first film of a scene, because of its spontaneity, rather than a 'retake.' In response to criticisms of the slow pace of his work, he has defended its rhythm as a reflection of the style of the life he is trying to interpret. He has cited as the greatest influences on his work the documentaries Nanook of the North (1920-21) and Louisiana Story (1948) by the American Robert Flaherty, and Earth (1930), set on a collective farm, by the Soviet director Alexander Dovzhenko."

"The first film by the masterly Satyajit Ray -possibly the most unembarrassed and natural of directors - is a quiet reverie about the life of an impoverished Brahman family in a Bengali village. Beautiful, sometimes funny, and full of love, it brought a new vision of India to the screen."

"The challenge of new ideas is a recurring theme in Ray's films. A hierarchical society, bound by the caste system and by a rigid adherence to the traditional way of doing things, comes into conflict with modernity and enlightenment. In Bengal, toward the end of the last century, even the most enlightened men did not include the liberation of women in their agenda for change. "Such is the setting for Charulata. Regarded as Ray's most accomplished film, Charulata is based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore, doyen of Indian writers and a great influence on Ray, who studied painting at Tagore's university, Shantiniketan.

"The year is 1879. Charulata is married to Bhupati Dutt, a wealthy intellectual who edits and publishes an English-language weekly paper. Bhupati is excited by the ideas of libertarian philosophers. The issue of the moment is an impending election in faraway Britain, with its prospect of a victory for Gladstone's Liberal party. He feels strongly for his wife-- but it simply never occurs to him that such matters could, or should, be of any interest to her. "Charulata appears to belong to that long line of submissive women portrayed by Ray in a number of films, from the Apu trilogy [1955-8] onward. She is trapped by tradition, enclosed within the shuttered rooms of her husband's house, apparently acquiescent in her role of the compliant wife who wants nothing from life but her husband's happiness. Ray's camera lingers on this prison of a house, with its heavy Victorian furniture, its embroidery, its cameos of Queen Victoria... The tranquility of these early scenes is soon revealed to be superficial, as Ray gently hints at Charulata's restlessness..."