Teen Kanya (Two Daughters)

“If I were forced to pick only one work by Ray to show to someone unfamiliar with his films, it would have to be Three Daughters.” Andrew Robinson

Teen Kanya (Three Daughters), a trilogy of three short films, was conceived by Ray as a tribute to mark the birth centenary of Rabindranath Tagore. Released in 1961, along with a state-commissioned documentary on Tagore (also directed by Ray), the trilogy brings to life three short stories penned by the Nobel laureate – The Postmaster, Monihara (The Lost Jewels) and Samapti (The Conclusion). On its release in Bengal, Teen Kanya was screened in the above order; however, concerns over the length (the films were all nearly an hour long) and inability to complete the subtitles before its international release forced Ray to drop Monihara from the trilogy; The Postmaster and Samapti were screened under the title Two Daughters abroad. Teen Kanya, with all the three films, was later available to the international audience, but only in the DVD format. However, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Archive is currently in the process of restoring the original print of Monihara, a macabre ghost story of a rich wife’s obsession with her jewels, as part of the Ray Preservation Project begun in 1992.

For Ray it was a conscious decision to adapt Tagore’s short stories to screen, and not one of his novels or longer works (Ray would again revisit his literary world in Charulata – The Lonely Wife, which was based on the Tagore novella Nastanirh – The Broken Nest). Tagore’s short stories are infused with an inherent earthiness and humanity that have endeared them to readers, and truly showcase the diversity of his work. In spite of their distinctive characters, the three narratives in Teen Kanya are united in one aspect – the presence of a female character as the center of narrative focus – the village waif in The Postmaster, the childless wife of a rich landlord in Monihara and the tomboyish child-woman in Samapti. Apart from this common thread, the films are quite different in their treatment and tone.

Ray’s personal favorite was undeniably The Postmaster. Andrew Robinson, Ray’s biographer, describes the film as “one of Ray’s best films…It feels faultless in every department of film-making…The Postmaster is humanist cinema of the highest sort.” (Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye) But much of the film’s poignant beauty is also courtesy Tagore’s vivid portrayal of the relationship between a village postmaster, Nanda (Anil Chatterjee) and an orphan servant girl, Ratan (Chandana Banerjee). Written in 1891, The Postmaster is one of Tagore’s earlier works, and is loosely based on a postmaster he knew in his rural estate in East Bengal. In Tagore’s story, the postmaster is like “a fish out of water”, a city-bred man from an impoverished lower middle-class background forced to live in a village because of his posting. Frustrated and bored with his lonely existence in the sleepy rural hamlet, he develops a bond with Ratan, the orphan girl working for him – a bond that is only a pastime for him, a distraction from his lonely, insipid existence, but for Ratan, unaccustomed to such attention, it becomes a real relationship, redeeming the drudgery of her daily life. The girl tends and cares for him as if he was a close relative, but for the young postmaster she is merely the orphan servant girl. His decision to finally go back to his familiar milieu, the city, leaves her feeling hurt and betrayed.

Ray who found the ending in Tagore’s original too ‘sentimental’ changes it considerably, and as acclaimed critic Chidananda Das Gupta describes, “with superlative effect”. (Das Gupta, The Cinema of Satyajit Ray) Instead of pleading with the postmaster to take her with him, Ray makes Ratan turn away from him in wounded pride; his offer of monetary help only accentuating her hurt and betrayal. Ray also introduced new characters: the harmless madman who terrifies the postmaster to read his book upside down, the village elders who gather around him in his dilapidated office for the perfunctory adda (a Bengali term for an informal social gathering) – characters recruited from among the villagers, some of whom who had earlier appeared in the Apu Trilogy. (Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye) But the film’s highlight is Chandana Banerjee, who in the role of the waif-like Ratan imbibes it with pathos and poignancy. Ray had discovered Banerjee in a Calcutta dancing school, not very different from the way he had ‘discovered’ Sharmila Tagore for Aparna in Apur Sansar. With no previous experience, Chandana “turned out to be an absolutely fantastic actress: ready, no tension at all, and intelligent and observant and obedient – perfect to work with.” (Satyajit Ray; Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye)

Tagore’s rural Bengal in The Postmaster is not as romantic and idyllic as Bhibhutibhushan’s Nishchindipur in Pather Panchali (The Song of the Road). For Nanda, the village is a symbol of the unknown, the unfamiliar – he slips in the mud, shudders on seeing a snake skin, and is terrified by the madman. Ray’s use of long night shots, the shabby interiors, and the camera’s avoidance of large open spaces usually associated with rural areas, all underline the film’s dark, shadowy tone, and the postmaster’s fear and claustrophobia. In contrast, Samapti paints a very different picture of rural Bengal – vast expanses of space, wide, sunny, with the river, the Banyan tree with the swing. As Das Gupta notes, “Even the slushy village paths are wide and have a depth of perspective.” (Das Gupta, The Cinema of Satyajit Ray) The city-village dyad is again explored and cultural mores of the age is evoked in Amulya’s treasured portrait of Napoleon, his tartan socks, and the Oxford shoes, which slip repeatedly on the slushy village paths.

The third and final film in the series, Samapti, is a romantic comedy with Soumitra Chatterjee as the young graduate Amulya and Aparna Sen (nee Das Gupta) as his tomboyish child-bride Mrinmoyee. The wild and rebellious Mrinmoyee is a marked contrast to the quiet and docile Aparna in Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) or the dutiful Doyamoyee in Devi (The Goddess). For Sen, who is now an accomplished and renowned director, Mrinmoyee came naturally – “I didn’t act in Samapti at all. I was told what to do from beginning to end. I remember Soumitra (Chatterjee) telling me that I should try to live the part, and believe that I was Mrinmoyee. I had already started behaving like her without being told to do so, maybe because I just liked doing so.” (Aparna Sen in Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye) Some of the scenes in the film – falling off a tree while trying to climb it, releasing her pet squirrel in the ‘bride-viewing session’ – were not pre-planned. Ray simply like the way she did them and retained them. Aparna Sen, who was the daughter of acclaimed Bengali film critic Chidananda Das Gupta, had earlier been considered by Ray for the role of her namesake in Apur Sansar but was rejected because of her accent – a problem that, as Ray notes, mars her otherwise delightful portrayal of Mrinmoyee. (Satyajit Ray in conversation with Andrew Robinson; Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye) Samapti was awarded the President’s Silver Medal (New Delhi, 1961). The truncated version, Two Daughters, received the Golden Boomerang (Melbourne, 1962) and the Selznick Golden Laurel Award (Berlin, 1963).

 

Devi (The Goddess)

Set in the 1860s, Devi (The Goddess) revisits the milieu of the Bengali zamindar (landlord), a theme Ray had earlier explored in Jalsaghar (The Music Room). However, unlike the decadent despair and decay of Jalsaghar, Devi is a tale of religious superstition and orthodoxy set against the backdrop of the Bengal Renaissance. Kalikinkar Roy (Chhabi Biswas in yet another formidable role), an aging Bengali zamindar, is convinced that his daughter-in-law, Doyamoyee (Sharmila Tagore), is the goddess Kali, who is worshipped all over Bengal. The narrative then sets the stage for the confrontation between the religiosity and orthodoxy of Roy and the rational ideology of his son, Umaprasad (Soumitra Chatterjee), who is exposed to western thought.

Based on a short story by Bengali writer Prabhat Kumar Mukherjee in 1899, Devi can be decidedly termed as Ray’s most ‘Hindu’ film, and as Ray’s biographer, Andrew Robinson points out, “one whose impact depends greatly on atmosphere and suggestive details – which can make it difficult (for) those unfamiliar with Hindu rituals and practices.” (Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye) Ray himself was aware of the film’s limitations, especially in the context of the western audience. Writing in 1982 in Sight and Sound, he remarked,

“The western critic who hopes to do full justice to Devi must be prepared to do a great deal of homework before he confronts the film. He must read up on the cult of the Mother Goddess; on the 19th century Renaissance in Bengal and how it affected the values of orthodox Hindu society; on the position of the Hindu bride in an upper-class family and the relationship between father and son in the same family. All the turns and twists of the plot grow out of one or more of these factors. The western critic who hasn’t done his homework will pin his faith on the rational son to save him from the swirls and eddies of an alien value system; but even here the son’s ultimate helplessness will convince him only if he is aware of the stranglehold of Hindu orthodoxy in 19th century Bengal.”

Understandably, the film did not receive a favorable response from western critics – while some termed the story ‘dauntingly alien’, others found it ‘an exquisite bore.’ For the London Times, the film seemed ‘more a matter of uncluttered story-telling than of atmosphere and the loving accumulation of detail – always Mr. Ray’s strong points.’ Moreover, Doyamoyee’s predicament and the helplessness of her husband seemed incomprehensible to most. Film critic Eric Rhode, writing in Sight and Sound, wondered: ‘Would an intelligent girl like Doyamoyee – and in Sharmila Tagore’s performance she comes over sharp as a pin – allow herself to be deified, even a hundred years ago? And would a husband as shrewd as Soumitra Chatterjee makes Umapada [Umaprasad] allow himself to be so easily checked?’ (Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye)

Even for critics like Pauline Kael, who appreciated Devi, misreading was inevitable due to the film’s reliance on the finer nuances of Bengali culture and familial structure. For Kael, the scene of Doyamoyee massaging her father-in-law’s feet was implicit with ‘Freudian connotations’, but as Ray explained, ‘Padaseba [foot massage] is a conventional Hindu conception and swasur padaseba [foot massage of a father-in-law] would be considered a very admirable thing for a daughter-in-law to do. You can read a sexual element if you want to, but it wasn’t in my mind.’ (Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye)

Like his earlier adaptations of literary works, Ray also infused Mukherjee’s short story with his distinctive touch. The confrontation between the orthodox Kalikinkar Roy and his son emerges as more powerful – a marked departure from its literary counterpart where it was considerably latent. As Ray later mentioned, ‘The son’s character is very much developed in this film according to my feelings for dramatic reasons. I was full of sympathy for him. I believed his arguments were much stronger than the father’s arguments, because of the irrationality involved.’ (Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye)

Released in 1960, a little more than a year after the theatrical screening of Apur Sansar (The World of Apu), Devi repeats the on-screen coupling of Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore. Tagore, who later became a Bollywood star in the 1960s-70s, attributes her haunting portrayal of the child-woman, Doyamoyee, to Ray: ‘Devi was what a genius got out of me, not something I did myself.’ Ray recalls how during the film she would complain that he was not directing her to the same extent as in Apur Sansar (The World of Apu), ‘I had to tell her I felt she was doing it all right. “Why should I direct you when you don’t require any direction of that kind?”’ (Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye)

The music for Devi was composed by Ali Akbar Khan, a renowned Indian classical musician. Though Khan composed haunting music for the film, his relationship with Ray was strained. As the director would later recall, “It was rather an unpleasant experience.” Working with Ravi Shankar for the Apu Trilogy and Vilayat Khan for Jalsaghar (The Music Room) had convinced Ray that in spite of their talent, classical musicians could never really mould their art to the demands of the film. Moreover, unlike Ray, they seemed reluctant to include western classical music in the soundtrack. For Devi, Ray himself chose the western elements in the film’s music, such as a loop consisting of the ninth to twelfth bars of Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony”, which he used to highlight Doyamoyee’s turmoil. He also composed two songs, his first for a film. Devi would be the last Ray film where another music director was credited; from henceforth, the music in all his films was composed by Ray himself.

In spite of Ray’s attempt to defend his work as an attack on religious orthodoxy, and not on Hinduism itself, Devi was initially perceived as critical of Hindu religion and there was a determined attempt to prevent its release abroad, though it was eventually awarded the President’s Gold Medal by the Indian government in 1961.