The Music Room

The Music Room is a film led to greatness by Satyajit Ray’s devotion to a single mood: elegiac. Ray isn’t alone in sculpting this great piece. The acting by Chabi Biswas as the crumbling aristocrat Huzur Biswambhar Roy, cinematography by Subrata Mitra and music direction by Ustad Vilayat Khan all contribute immensely. Set in the 1930’s with the emerging nouveau riche, Roy is the last in a long of rich patriarchs, stumbling as his estate diminishes but clinging till the end to his refined means. Roy lives in a mansion in the middle of a desert, a symbol of his isolation from encroaching destitute. Roy is frequently filmed alone, as are other subjects (his dog, horse, elephant). The film begins with the elderly Huzur sitting alone, staring blankly in his back garden overlooking a once proud space. He is served by one of his two humble and loyal servants. The story flashes back some 15-20 years to a more glorious time when the younger Huzur, with his young son Khoka and wife Padma (the realist/pragmatist to Huzur’s idealism) was the class of his region, hosting luxurious concerts in his home. Huzur’s centerpiece, his ivory tower and final refuge from the external reality/realism is the titular music room. The room reflects Huzur, his pride, his heirloom, his inner soul. Ray draws us in spatially, in concentric circles, from the outer oasis, to the backyard pool/yard, to the mansion, to the music room and further yet, the music room’s stage. Likewise Mitra’s camera often, and nearly always in relation to Roy, dollies inwards toward Roy. The movement not only serves to honor the character and make us feel more empathy toward him, but counterpoints the film’s maze-like construction.

Many of the film’s best moments take place in the music room. For example, the first concert during the flashback, in which the camera encircles Roy surrounded by his guests and cuts into the long takes only to underscore Roy’s sense of tranquillity and contentment; the concert which is interrupted by the tragic news of his son and wife’s drowning; and the final concert, Roy’s swan song which leads to his psychological break from reality into momentary insanity (he imagines the candles in the room extinguishing themselves one by one). In each of the concerts the music varies. In the first we have more of an ensemble piece; in the second the singer dominates with his emotive voicing; and a phenomenal dancer highlights the third. The final concert occurs years after Roy, saddened by the double deaths of his wife and son and his failing estate, has closed the music room and remained living on the mansion’s second floor. With all his gold, silver, and jewellery gone all that remains is a little money. He uses it to stage one final concert. Roy’s continued carelessness toward his economic state can be read in several ways. If we read it critically, it becomes a sign of his selfishness and disregard for his families well-being. In another sense his gesture can be seen as an act of defiance against the upstart moneylender who is out to show Roy up, and a romantic tribute to the “class of class.” A third meaning, psychological, can see the acts as a reflection of how deeply ingrained the caste system and colonialism are in India.

When the drunken Roy explains to his servant why he is different from Tulsi, the estate manager, he speaks in English and refers to his “blood,” and then points to the three portraits of his ancestral forefathers (father, grandfather, great grandfather) that hang around the music room’s huge mirror. Ray’s genius is in balancing these three readings so that our emotional relation to the character is complex and in a sense more critical and involved. The film ends with the drunken-maddened Roy, against the wishes of his servants (servile to the end), riding his horse for one last jaunt through the desert. The final moments are reminiscent of Kenji Mizoguchi, especially Sansho the Bailiff (camera movement that moves away from the center action; set in an arid zone). Roy is thrown violently off his horse. The servants run to their fatally hurt, bleeding master. With the earlier death of his son and now himself, his rich, aristocratic lineage has come to an end. In this touching moment Ray has the camera track away (left) from the body to stop at his fallen headgear. This image dissolves to the final shot: that of the darkened chandelier swinging aimlessly in the darkened music room.

Ajantrik (1958)

The other pillar of Indian cinema greatness is Ray's (lesser known) contemporary, Ritwik Ghatak. In the same year as Ray's majestic The Music Room , Ghatak made his first feature film, Ajantrik , also a film about obsession (to be more precise, not the first film he made, which would be Nagarik , but his first film to be released). The film begins with two comic-relief men looking for a taxi to drive them to a nearby village. A boy leads them to an obstreperous taxi driver with a battered, ancient Chevrolet. Roughed up and haggard, the two men finally arrive at their destination. At this point Ghatak shifts the film's emphasis from the two men to the cab driver, and we slowly learn of the cab driver's (Bimal) obsessive relationship with his car. Kali Bammerjee's performance as Bimal is excellent, displaying subtle nuances of a character slowly losing touch with reality. At first Ghatak treats Bimal's obsession humorously. Bimal treats his car as a living thing, giving it a name (Jagaddal), pampering it, and defending it against insults (as one may protect a lover). Ghatak underscores the humor in this relationship formally, with for example human gurgling sounds as Bimal feeds the radiator, and moments of fantasy (the car's headlights move about as if they were eyes).

Ritwik Ghatak

The film's tone and style shift approximately halfway into the film, with humour and playfulness giving way to an eerie subjectivity (less dialogue, a more pronounced emphasis on the landscape, heightened use of ambient music and sound effects). A key moment in signaling this shift occurs during an extended solo drive when Ghatak cleverly manipulates the conventional use of point of view cutting. A disturbed Bimal is driving along mountainous roads. Ghatak cuts from third person shots of Bimal in medium close- up at the wheel and point of view shots where we see the hood of the car and the road. However, in one of the supposed point of view shots we are shocked when we see his car enter the frame from a bend in the road! The shot is equivalent to those trick point of view shots found in the films of Carl Dreyer or Michelangelo Antonioni where a shot clearly begins as a character's subjective point of view but then as the camera continues to pan or dolly it picks up the character in the frame, shifting the point of view to third person. The simple effect creates a jarring sense of disorientation that places us poetically into Bimal's crumbling psyche.

In reference to Bimal, Ritwik Ghatak has said: "You can call my protagonist, Bimal, a lunatic, a child, or a tribal. At one level they are all the same. They react to lifeless things almost passionately. This is an ancient, archetypal reaction....The tribal songs and dances in Ajantrik describe the whole cycle of life - birth, hunting, marriage, death, ancestor worship, and rebirth. This is the main theme of Ajantrik , this law of life.." Throughout the film characters treat Bimal's obsession with ridicule, scorn or puzzlement. Their actions and dialogue often raise the question of why Bimal is not able to sever his irrational association with this crumpling, decrepit vehicle. Even after the car finally gives in to its age, Bimal, an otherwise miser, spends a huge amount of money on new car parts to render life (only temporarily) back to Jagaddal. One could offer a metaphorical reading of this "fear of separation." Ghatak was born in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh and the then center of cultural activity in East Bengal. The Independence of India in 1947 led to the partition of Bengal (West/East Bengali), which left collective emotional and psychological scars on many Bengali families. Ghatak, who greatly lamented the division of Bengal, has dealt with this pain of separation overtly in many of his later films. Perhaps, subconsciously, it was already present in Ajantrik ? In either case, as a study in obsessive behavior or a metaphorical enactment of political partition, Ajantrik is a remarkable first feature.

Western Influences on Satyajit Ray

Western Influences on Satyajit Ray

Jean Renoir was a major influence on Ray. Renoir was the first European director who warned Ray against Hollywood influence in Indian films. Renoir had noticed how the Indian film industry was churning out melodramas to cater to the taste of ever-enthusiastic Indian public. But he was optimistic that better films were going to be made and he blamed the current state of affairs on the Indian directors who found more "inspiration in the slick, artificiality of a Hollywood film than in the reality around him." Of all the films of Renoir, Ray admired La Regle du Jeu the most, a personal favorite of Renoir himself. Regarding filmmaking Renoir said that a filmmaker need not show a lot of things in a film but to show only the right things. Ray diligently followed the same advice that Renoir offered him in 1952: "You don't have to have too many elements in a film, but whatever you use must be the right elements, the expressive elements." From Renoir, Ray learnt that there was nothing more important to a film than the emotional integrity of human relationship in the film. No doubt technique was important but he said that it should not become the dominant force. " Renoir said, "they worry too much about the technique, and neglect the human aspect."

Apart from Renoir, it was the Italian Neo-Realists who gripped Ray's imagination next. Ray noted in his book that his trip to London as an art director of an advertising agency was to seal the fate of his advertising career. He said that within three days of his arrival he had seen The Bicycle Thief by Vittorio De Sica which furthermore strengthened his resolve to make his first feature film Pather Panchali using natural locations and unknown actors as was the case with The Bicycle Thief. Ray says: "All through my stay in London, the lessons of The Bicycle Thief and neo-realist cinema stayed with me." Ray's praise for The Bicycle Thief knew no bounds as he says: "BT is a triumphant discovery of the fundamentals of cinema and De Sica has openly acknowledged his debt to Chaplin." He found that the universality of the theme, the effectiveness of the treatment and the low-cost production made it an ideal film to be used as a model by the Indian filmmakers.

Curiously, one of Ray's earliest introduction to sound films and one of the earliest influence in filmmaking was Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise. Ray pointed out that with the introduction of sound on film it was Lubitsch who integrated a story and the song to form a whole new work of art. Ray admiringly talked of Lubitsch as a director with "all wit and elegance and innuendo," "a director who had a permanent influence on all future filmmakers of sophisticated comedy." Incidentally, Lubitsch was also one of the few top rated European directors to really succeed in Hollywood.

In Calcutta, Ray often used to drop by Jean Renoir's hotel-room during the evenings to discuss Europeans films and filmmakers. Renoir would point out the distinctive and specific features of the landscape of Bengal which symbolised the essence of Bengal. For instance, a clump of banana trees, a small pond in a village or a waving paddy was quintessentially Bengal to Renoir. Like in Renoir's The River, the placid Ganges is a recurrent symbol in Ray's films including Aparajito. The film, shot in Benares, continuously shows man's dependence on the river as a source of life. Renoir even told Ray that if Indian filmmakers could get Hollywood out of their system, they would be making great films. (Marie Seton, Satyajit Ray, OUP, 1974; p. 145)

True to Renoir's advice, Ray focused on details which typified the city and the village in Bengal. The vast plains of Bengal, the rivers, the monsoon rains, and heavy moisture-laden clouds formed the backbone of Ray's earlier films.

In Pather Panchali, Ray introduced the neo-realist tradition of using non-actors and actually shooting on location while using an unadorned style of photography. The details of speech, behavior, habits, customs, rituals, substantiated the very simple structure and the narrative line. The film, almost a documentary, was simple enough to be comprehensible at all levels. Incidentally, the novel Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, from which the movie was adapted, was a sprawling saga whose slow speed, leisurely denouement caught the perfect rhythm of the rural Bengal.

At an interview given at the AFI (American Film Institute), Ray told the interviewer that the slow pace of the narrative in his films developed out of necessity -- the necessity of portraying the subtle and complex relations among the human characters. The relationship between Apu and his mother is so carefully and diligently handled that we realize, in due course of time, where the two stand in regards to each other. Apu's wonder at modern inventions and amenities like electricity, the printing press, and automobiles is like a great discovery. It is from such minute observations that a convincing picture of Apu's transition to maturity and independence is built up in Aparajito. This application of details and the focus on human-relationship is an aspect prevalent in the films of Italian neo-realists like De Sica, Rossellini, Fellini and others. In Aparajito, Benares is seen through the eyes of the curious Apu -- the narrow lanes, the sacred monkeys, the muscle builders, the boats on the river, the priests chanting their hymns, and the daily cleansing of bodies on the banks of the holy river Ganges. A parallel could be drawn between De Sica's The Bicycle Thief where much of the city life and city activities could be viewed through the wandering Bruno's eyes and Apu's wonder-filled eyes on his arrival in Benares.

European traits and facets are in abundance in Ray's films. Ray claims that, "they have been brought up to my notice that I can actually name them: irony, understatement, humor, open endings, the use of leit-motifs and a fluid camera and so on. I only try to tell a story in the best possible way balancing the needs of Art with the need to reach an audience. By no means a unique pre-occupation for a filmmaker, but perhaps involving more risks than usual in the context of <ST1:COUNTRY-REGIoN>India</ST1:COUNTRY-REGIoN>. The Western elements often perturbs the Indian viewer in the same way as the indigenous elements perturb the Western viewers." Then later Ray adds: "What is attempted in these film is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure".

Pertaining to cinema techniques and cinematography, Ray claimed to be in debt to Godard and Truffaut of the French. New Wave for introducing Western technical and cinematic innovations. The new cinema techniques introduced by Jean Luc Godard in films such as Breathless certainly had an effect on Ray who once said: "all artists owe a debt to innovators and profit by such innovation. Godard gave me the courage to dispense largely with fades and dissolves, Truffaut to use the freeze." (Sight & Sound, Vol.51 #2, Sp.1982)

But what impressed Ray the most was the innovation, "-- subtle, almost imperceptible kind of innovation that can be felt in the very texture and sinews of a film. A film like La Regle du Jeu - I defy anyone to give it a label. This is the kind of innovation that appeals to me," he said. (Sight & Sound, vol.51; #2, Sp.1982)

Ray's love of Western classical music has already been mentioned. Furthermore, Ray not only wrote his scripts, designed costumes and clothes, he also composed musical scores for his films. For Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Jalsaghar he used well-known Indian classical musicians to score but progressively he felt the creative urge to control the sound-track of the movie. He devised his own music for Teen Kanya and at one time he told Goerges Sadoul that he thought (Seton, 1974) endlessly of Mozart in connection with Charulata, and for that he himself had composed four musical motifs. Ray at one time claimed that his films had been influenced by the musical forms of a symphony and sonatas, and he was highly impressed by Sergei Profokiev's scores of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible; by Cicoguini's music for The Bicycle Thief and Miracle in Milan. Although Ray had no formal music education, he could pick out a tune or a melody by humming whistling or by tinkering on the piano and his scores for his films were usually very simple and straightforward, mainly with the use of a single instrument. Nonetheless, he also loved using Bengali folk songs and ballads as he did in Kanchenjungha, Charulata and later in the fantasy story Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne.

Western cultural behavior and mannerisms surface in quite a few of Ray's films. The depiction of life in the city, as in Mahanagar, appears fast paced, modern and contemporary. In his urban films, the themes appear to be universal and a part of any city life: rat race, unemployment, the working woman, and when dwellers behaving in much the same way as any other city folks the world over. The use of English language in some of his films itself indicates the influence of the British culture. English words and phrases used in the movies convey feelings and nuances for which Bengali language may have no equivalence. The use of English by the actors in Kanchenjungha for example actually indicates the degree of Westernization undergone by a set of characters in the film, consequently their class, social background and status in the society, as pointed out by an observer. There is ample eveidence to show that the elites of the Bengali society, who attended English-medium schools were in general more Anglicized and westernized than their counterparts from other social backgrounds. That the characters would break into English once in a while in the film clearly indicated their urban sophistication and the degree of westernization undergone by the characters. In the era when this film was produced such pronouncements were rare occasions but it is all too common nowadays.

In dealing with the subject of religion, superstition, and even death Ray stood squarely on the side of the Western rationalists. In general, Ray tended to avoid overly melodramatize and avoid sentimental approaches when dealing with these issues. In Devi, dealing with superstition and religiosity, Ray balanced the orthodox notion of a woman possessed of a great spiritual and psychic power with a rational and progressive household of a scientific-minded professor in Calcutta. The conflict between reason and superstition was approached with a deliberate sensitivity by Ray, avoiding what could potentially have become a bizarre situation. Instead of heightening the drama, the camera was used to contemplate the tragedy in a deliberate and a purposeful manner and gravity. In scenes of death there is no excessive show of grief. When the father/priest died in Aparajito we did not see his wife and son wailing but a beautiful symbolic shot of a flock of pigeons taking off in a soaring flight across the cloudy sky -- as if the soul had been freed from the body to now roam the universe as it pleased. When Apu's mother died, Apu was shown, briefly, crying with his head down under a tree -- and we moved on to the next scene. The discipline of Ray's inner self, not given to undue emotionalism, is reflected in his films and the structured images influenced by the Western classical music and some Western films, made Ray a true classicist and an integrated filmmaker according to some critics and scholars. (Seton, 1974).

By reviewing his films obvious questions arise and some of them have been clearly articulated by cultural critics like Ashish Nandy. He basically questions Ray's authenticity as an Indian filmmaker -- was he an Indian who was highly westernized, fully cosmopolitan but dealt with Indian themes merely because he happened to live in India? Or was he an Indian with Western aesthetic values even though the subject matters of his films remained Indocentric? Nandy hypothesizes that Ray's guiding principles of aesthetics and core values of his life were intrinsically drawn from the European Enlightenment of 17th-18th century.

Ray, no doubt, was a product of a "cultural implosion" that took place in Bengal in the 19th c., triggered by the British colonial intrusion and the European rationalism and values were a part and parcel of his consciousness. Nandy expounds that as a creative person Ray probably lived internally with a plurality of selves -- that a part of him was Indian and the other part was Western, imbuing his personality with a "bi-cultural component." Thus, true to his cultural and middleclass heritage, Ray was essentially a Calcuttan "babu" whose true cultural self expressed itself bi- culturally even in art. The peaceful co-existence within the two cultures, Bengali and English, once learnt as a technique of survival has now become a character trait of Bengalis and Indians in general, according to Nandy. If this is the case, then Ray was certainly open to Western and European ideas and thoughts throughout his life and related to Western filmmaking very strongly.

Many of the examples cited in this paper illustrate Ray's need to explore Bengal and the Bengali society both externally and internally, giving full vent to his multi-cultural self and exposing in its entirety the evolving post-colonial pluralistic society of Bengal and . To do so, Ray not only took the story-telling techniques via celluloid from both the European and the Hollywood masters but also their music, narrative style, languages and other aspects of filmmaking.

Satyajit Ray quotes on Music.

Satyajit Ray is perhaps the most well known Indian filmmaker to the Western World and inarguably among the dozen or so great masters of world cinema. He made his films in Bengali, a language spoken in the eastern state of - West Bengal. And yet, his films are of universal interest. They are about things that make up the human race - relationships, emotions, struggle, conflicts, joys and sorrows. His films demonstrate a remarkable humanism, elaborate observation and subtle handling of characters and situations.

In the beginning of his career Ray worked with some of greatest music maestros of Indian classical music; Pandit Ravi Shankar for the Apu Trilogy and Parash Pathar (The Philosopher's Stone, 1958, Ustad Vilayat Khan for Jalsaghar (The Music Room, 1958) and Ali Akbar Khan for Devi (The Goddess, 1960).Since Teen Kanya (1961), he began composing the music for his films. He said, "The reason why I do not work with professional composers any more is that I get too many musical ideas of my own, and composers, understandably enough, resent being guided too much".

He would start working on music in very early stages of a production - sometimes as early as in the script stage. He would keep notes of the music ideas as they evolved. After completing the final edit, he would usually shut himself in his study for several days to compose the music. He meticulously wrote the scores in either Indian or western notation depending on musicians.

"... the pleasure of finding out that the music sounds as you had imagined it would, more that compensates for the hard work that goes into it. The final pleasure, of course, is in finding out that it not only sounds right but is also right for the scene for which it was meant". he wrote.

To him the role of music was to make things simpler for the audience. "If I were the only audience, I wouldn't be using music! ... I have always felt that music is really an extraneous element, that one should be able to do without it, express oneself without it", he said.

He experimented with mixing western and Indian elements in his scores. He composed a background music that belonged a particular film rather than to any recognisable tradition. In Ghare-Baire (Home and the World, 1984), he adapted western music elements along with Indian ones to complement the two influences on the characters of film.

Satyajit Ray is among the world's greatest directors, living or dead... Isn't it curious that the newest, the most modern of the arts, has found one of its deepest, most fluent expressions in the work of an artist like Ray, who must make his seamless films - many have been masterpieces - in a chaotic and volatile corner of one of the world's oldest cultures, amidst the most stringent shortages of today's advanced movie-making material and equipment?

James Ivory
Film Director, 1991

Akira Kurosawa, Film Director
"The quiet but deep observation, understanding and love of the human race, which are characteristic of all his films, have impressed me greatly. … I feel that he is a "giant" of the movie industry." … " Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon."

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

People are born, live out their lives, and then accept their deaths. Without the least effort and without any sudden jerks, Ray paints his picture, but its effect on the audience is to stir up deep passions. How does he achieve this? There is nothing irrelevant or haphazard in his cinematographic technique. In that lies the secret of its excellence."
- As reported in Eksan, 1987 (Translation of remarks made in Moscow in 1975)


Academy Award Citation, 1992
"In recognition of his rare mastery of the art of motion pictures, and of his profound humanitarian outlook, which has had an indelible influence on filmmakers and audiences throughout the world.”


Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate Economics
"The work of Satyajit Ray presents a remarkably insightful understanding of the relations between cultures, and his ideas remain pertinent to the great cultural debates in the contemporary world, not least in India."
- Satyajit Ray and the art of Universalism, The New Republic, April 1, 1996.


Darius Cooper, Film Critic
"In film after film, he investigates India's social institutions and the power structures to which they give rise, or vice versa. He works out, in concrete terms, the conflicts and issues of his times, both in his own state of Bengal and in the larger Indian nation.
- The Cinema of Satyajit Ray: Between Tradition and Modernity, 2000


Elia Kazan, Film Director
"I want to add my voice to those of Scorsese and Merchant in asking the Academy grant Satyajit Ray an Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award. I have admired his films for many years and for me he is the filmic voice of India, speaking for the people of all classes of the country...He is the most sensitive and eloquent artist and it can truly be said in his case that when we honor him we are honoring ourselves."
(Nominating Ray for Life Time Achievement Oscar, 1991)


George Lucas, Film Producer/Screenwriter,1991
"Satyajit Ray is an extraordinary filmmaker with a long and illustrious career who has had a profound influence on filmmakers and audiences throughout the world. By honoring Satyajit Ray, the Academy will help bring his work to the attention of a larger public, particularly to young filmmakers, on whom his work will certainly have a positive effect."
(Nominating Ray for Life Time Achievement Oscar, 1991)

His Films

Pather Panchali