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Film details
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Featuring
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Director
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Country
India
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Year
1955
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Genre
Drama
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Type
Film
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Category
Fiction
Alternative titles
- Song of the Little Road Alternative
Introduction
“Pather Panchali introduced Indian cinema to the West as cataclysmically as Kurosawa’s Rashomon had done for Japanese films. A human document of timeless simplicity and exquisite beauty.”
Ephraim Katz, The Macmillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1998
Bengali film director Satyajit Ray was inspired by the example of Italian neo-realist films such as Bicycle Thieves (1948) to make his own low-budget, open-air drama painting a naturalistic portrait of ordinary lives. Encouraged by Jean Renoir, whom he assisted during the filming of The River (1951), Ray set to work on an adaptation of a 1929 novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay about a young boy growing up in an impoverished rural community.
Like Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin (1953), Pather Panchali announced the arrival of a humanistic, Calcutta-centred Indian art cinema, distinct from the commercial product of Bollywood. Among the film’s intensely memorable moments is a scene in which Apu (Subir Banerjee) and his sister run through a paddy field to catch a glimpse of a passing train.
Ray’s trilogy follows Apu as he matures into adulthood and moves to the big city, in Aparajito (1956) and The World of Apu (1959).
Cast & Credits
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Cast
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Harihar, the father
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Sarbajaya, the mother
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Apu, the son
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the older Durga
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Indira Thakrun
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the younger Durga
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Seja Thakrun
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Nilmoni's wife
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Prasanna, the schoolteacher
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Baidyanath Majumdar
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Chinibash, the sweets seller
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doctor
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Chakravarti
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Dasi
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priest
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Roma
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Credits
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Direction:
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Director
Production:
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Production Company
Writing:
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Screenplay
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Based on the novel by
Photography:
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Director of Photography
Editing:
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Editor
Design:
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Art Director
Music:
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Music
Sound:
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Sound
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The Greatest Films of All Time 2012
Ranked 41st in the critics’ poll