Uma Thurman
Uma Thurman
Uma Thurman
Famous actress Uma Thurman
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
***½
Country: Japan
Director: Hiroshi Inagaki
The Japanese director Hiroshi Inagaki, who made seventy-five films between 1928 and 1970, is probably best known in the U.S. for Chushingura (1962). This is his version of the well-known and frequently filmed story of the forty-seven ronin, 18th-century samurai whose master has been unjustly forced by rivals to commit hara-kiri and who devise an elaborate (and suicidal) plot to exact revenge on those responsible for their master's death. Earlier than this, though, his film Samurai (1954), starring Toshiro Mifune, received an honorary Oscar as the best foreign language film released in the U.S. in 1955, the last year before this became a competitive award. In reality, Samurai is the first part of a trilogy of films about the legendary 17th-century samurai Musashi Miyamoto, played by Mifune: Musashi Miyamoto (1954), actually the correct title of the film originally released in the U.S. as Samurai; Duel at Ichijoji Temple (1955); and Duel at Ganryu Island (1956), also known as Bushido. The three are available as a boxed set from Criterion.
Each of the three films deals with one stage of the development of Musashi Miyamoto from a callow, self-interested youth to a mature man who embodies not only the physical but also the mental and spiritual virtues of the samurai. The first installment opens in A.D. 1600 in the midst of civil war. At this point Mifune is called Takezo, and we first meet him as a young man sitting in a tree in the courtyard of a monastery with his friend Matahachi watching a battle take place below. Thrilled by the excitement of what they're witnessing, the two determine to leave their native village to become samurai. Takezo, who seems to be the more dominant of the pair, is an orphan, but Matahachi leaves behind his mother and his fiancée, Otsu. Being soldiers turns out not to be the glamorous occupation the young men envisioned, though, and before long they find themselves stuck in muddy trenches on the losing side. Escaping, they take refuge with a mother and daughter who survive by stripping the bodies of dead warriors and selling their equipment. The mother sets her sights on Matahachi and soon seduces him; the daughter, Akemi, falls in love with Takezo. While Matahachi stays behind, Takezo decides to return to their village to tell Otsu of her fiancé's fate.
Because he must defy a ban on travel to get home, Takezo becomes an outlaw and fugitive. When he finally does reach the village, he develops an attachment to Otsu (which she returns) that lasts for the remainder of the cycle of films. But before he can leave the village, he is captured by the Buddhist priest Takuan, who binds him and suspends him from the very tree where we first saw him. Released into Takuan's custody, Takezo is taken to a nearby castle, where the priest lures him to a barred cell in the attics of the castle and locks him in, showing him piles of books in the room and telling him to study those books, for they contain all he needs to know. Three years later Takuan returns and releases Takezo, now reborn as Musashi Miyamoto, to take his place as a real samurai. After a final meeting with Otsu, during which she tells him she will wait for him, Musashi is last seen heading down the road and on to his destiny.
In the second film, Musashi becomes involved in a dispute with the Yoshioko martial arts school and its head, Seijuro. He also meets for the first time another warrior named Kojiro when he saves Musashi from an ambush by the warriors of the Yoshioko School. Kojiro later allies himself with the Yoshioko warriors, however, and becomes Musashi's rival. Akemi also returns in this episode, first being raped by Seijuro after her ambitious mother attempts to arrange a liaison between her daughter, still in love with Musashi, and the powerful young head of the samurai school and later taking refuge with Kojiro. In this film, Musashi spends a peaceful interlude between battles as a guest of the most famous "club" in Kyoto and its "star courtesan," the Lady Yoshino. Near the end of the film, he finally does meet Seijuro in battle at the Ichijoji Temple and defeats him. As he prepares to kill his enemy, though, Musashi has an epiphany in which he recalls in a montage of rapid flashbacks the defects in his character that several people he encountered in the past pointed out to him, an experience that persuades him to spare Seijuro's life. Just when it seems that Musashi has advanced to the next stage of his personal development, the finale of the film shows him that his education is not yet complete: His ego swollen with victory, he impulsively attempts to assault the faithful Otsu, who rebuffs his crude advances. Shocked and shamed by the brutality of his own behavior, Musashi takes off and is again last seen heading down the road and into the future.
In the final installment, many of the characters from the first two parts return: Otsu, Akemi, and most important Kojiro, now Musashi's bitter rival who challenges him to a duel on Ganryu Island. Musashi accepts the challenge but asks to postpone the duel for one year. He spends the interval with two companions he has picked up along the way, a hero-worshiping boy and a buffoonish older man, living in a rural village and becoming a farmer. Like the villagers in The Seven Samurai, these people are menaced by brigands, and Musashi finds himself organizing the farmers to defend themselves. Akemi also shows up and, after being rejected by Musashi again, betrays the village to the brigands in an outburst of wounded vanity. With Musashi's assistance, the villagers are able to repel the invaders during an exhilarating attack sequence. The climax of the film and of the trilogy comes with the duel with Kojiro on Ganryu Island. Musashi does, of course, defeat Kojiro after another rousing duel sequence on the beach. He is last seen leaving the island on a boat, but this time he is returning . . . to the ever-faithful Otsu, whom he has promised to marry if he wins the duel.
Taken together, the three films of The Samurai Trilogy offer a highly entertaining blend of thrilling action sequences, romance, and thoughtful examination of the nature of honor, personal growth, and being a samurai. The films are directed by Inagaki in a style that, while less distinctive than those of his better-known contemporaries, is still quite proficient and seems very naturalistic compared to the direction of the two heavily stylized Japanese films that also won honorary Oscars in the early 1950s, Rashomon and Gate of Hell. Inagaki makes especially good use of colorful and dramatic outdoor locations and shows great skill in staging action sequences. But if there is one thing that holds all this together, that gives the trilogy real thematic resonance and depth, it is the character of Musashi and the chronicling of his personal development. This development is the result not of physical training or even the love of Otsu, but of Musashi's own internal growth towards a moral and ethical stature he has already achieved as a fighter early in the first film.
Each of the three films concentrates on a different area of Musashi's development. Musashi Miyamoto focuses on the growth of his spiritual and intellectual awareness under the tutelage of the priest Takuan, who tells Musashi that even though he has the physical prowess of a samurai, he lacks the spiritual development of a real samurai. The priest teaches him that there is more to being a samurai than using his warrior's skills for personal advancement, that he must learn self-control and the need to direct his power to less egoistic aims. While Musashi is hanging in that tree, the priest tells him, "Conceited in your strength, you ignored wisdom and virtue. . . . Could you but use that force for humanity's good." At the end of the film, after spending three years in that cell reading and meditating, Musashi is clearly a different man, a man now prepared to accept the chivalric responsibilities that are central to being a samurai.
The second film, Duel at Ichijoji Temple, focuses on Musashi's emotional development. During Lady Yoshino's farewell to Musashi before he leaves to meet Seijuro at Ichijoji Temple, she tells him, "You're craving for self-control [because] you lack affection. Human affection." She correctly recognizes that he is incapable of real feeling for another person because in his emotional insecurity he sees affection for others as a weakness. Under the priest Takuan's guidance, Musashi has acquired self-restraint and compassion for his enemies. But having shed his youthful pride and self-absorption, he has been unable to fill the vacuum left behind with real empathy or meaningful connection with another human being, not even the patient and loving Otsu. He has not yet fully grasped that being a samurai is not just a matter of restraining negative impulses, but of generating the positive feelings towards others that will allow him to transcend the limitations of the self.
The final film, Duel at Ganryu Island, with its year-long interlude in the village, focuses on Musashi's forging of a connection with the earth and for the first time in his life becoming part of a community. In this film he finally achieves the humility that Takuan attempted to instill in him in Musashi Miyamoto. By helping the villagers to organize and repel the threat to their village, he is at last able to turn his martial skills to a good and selfless purpose, as Takuan urged, and to experience the caring affection for others that Lady Yoshino told him he lacked. His journey from the selfish desire for personal glory to the samurai's ideal of selfless service to others is complete. He is now ready to face Kojiro and afterward to accept and return the love of Otsu.
The growth and development of Musashi, the arc of his spiritual and sentimental education, is not based on quasi-mystical twaddle about the samurai code, but grounded in specific behaviors and attitudes, and one reason The Samurai Trilogy is so affecting is the way Toshiro Mifune brilliantly expresses the challenges of learning and applying those qualities. For nearly five hours, Mifune leads us step by step through the process of Musashi's gradual transition from an alienated, arrogant, and spiritually unaware young man driven by the most selfish motivations to a mature and serene man who has learned how to connect with the rest of the world and humanity. The lessons in self-awareness, self-control, and selflessness that Musashi learns in these films are surely principles applicable not just to persons of great physical skill and latent spiritual nobility like himself, but to all people, a concept which Mifune expertly conveys by showing how extraordinary ability and ordinary human fallibility can exist side by side in the same person.
I've seen Toshiro Mifune in quite a few films and consider him one of the great film actors of all time. But I don't think I've ever seen him give a finer performance than he does here. In the end, even with all the other strengths of these films, it is Mifune's sustained representation of the formation of Musashi Miyamoto's character and values that towers over all else in The Samurai Trilogy. It is a performance of the utmost subtlety, gravity, and control—one of the most remarkable screen performances I've ever seen.
Country: Japan
Director: Hiroshi Inagaki
The Japanese director Hiroshi Inagaki, who made seventy-five films between 1928 and 1970, is probably best known in the U.S. for Chushingura (1962). This is his version of the well-known and frequently filmed story of the forty-seven ronin, 18th-century samurai whose master has been unjustly forced by rivals to commit hara-kiri and who devise an elaborate (and suicidal) plot to exact revenge on those responsible for their master's death. Earlier than this, though, his film Samurai (1954), starring Toshiro Mifune, received an honorary Oscar as the best foreign language film released in the U.S. in 1955, the last year before this became a competitive award. In reality, Samurai is the first part of a trilogy of films about the legendary 17th-century samurai Musashi Miyamoto, played by Mifune: Musashi Miyamoto (1954), actually the correct title of the film originally released in the U.S. as Samurai; Duel at Ichijoji Temple (1955); and Duel at Ganryu Island (1956), also known as Bushido. The three are available as a boxed set from Criterion.
Each of the three films deals with one stage of the development of Musashi Miyamoto from a callow, self-interested youth to a mature man who embodies not only the physical but also the mental and spiritual virtues of the samurai. The first installment opens in A.D. 1600 in the midst of civil war. At this point Mifune is called Takezo, and we first meet him as a young man sitting in a tree in the courtyard of a monastery with his friend Matahachi watching a battle take place below. Thrilled by the excitement of what they're witnessing, the two determine to leave their native village to become samurai. Takezo, who seems to be the more dominant of the pair, is an orphan, but Matahachi leaves behind his mother and his fiancée, Otsu. Being soldiers turns out not to be the glamorous occupation the young men envisioned, though, and before long they find themselves stuck in muddy trenches on the losing side. Escaping, they take refuge with a mother and daughter who survive by stripping the bodies of dead warriors and selling their equipment. The mother sets her sights on Matahachi and soon seduces him; the daughter, Akemi, falls in love with Takezo. While Matahachi stays behind, Takezo decides to return to their village to tell Otsu of her fiancé's fate.Because he must defy a ban on travel to get home, Takezo becomes an outlaw and fugitive. When he finally does reach the village, he develops an attachment to Otsu (which she returns) that lasts for the remainder of the cycle of films. But before he can leave the village, he is captured by the Buddhist priest Takuan, who binds him and suspends him from the very tree where we first saw him. Released into Takuan's custody, Takezo is taken to a nearby castle, where the priest lures him to a barred cell in the attics of the castle and locks him in, showing him piles of books in the room and telling him to study those books, for they contain all he needs to know. Three years later Takuan returns and releases Takezo, now reborn as Musashi Miyamoto, to take his place as a real samurai. After a final meeting with Otsu, during which she tells him she will wait for him, Musashi is last seen heading down the road and on to his destiny.
In the second film, Musashi becomes involved in a dispute with the Yoshioko martial arts school and its head, Seijuro. He also meets for the first time another warrior named Kojiro when he saves Musashi from an ambush by the warriors of the Yoshioko School. Kojiro later allies himself with the Yoshioko warriors, however, and becomes Musashi's rival. Akemi also returns in this episode, first being raped by Seijuro after her ambitious mother attempts to arrange a liaison between her daughter, still in love with Musashi, and the powerful young head of the samurai school and later taking refuge with Kojiro. In this film, Musashi spends a peaceful interlude between battles as a guest of the most famous "club" in Kyoto and its "star courtesan," the Lady Yoshino. Near the end of the film, he finally does meet Seijuro in battle at the Ichijoji Temple and defeats him. As he prepares to kill his enemy, though, Musashi has an epiphany in which he recalls in a montage of rapid flashbacks the defects in his character that several people he encountered in the past pointed out to him, an experience that persuades him to spare Seijuro's life. Just when it seems that Musashi has advanced to the next stage of his personal development, the finale of the film shows him that his education is not yet complete: His ego swollen with victory, he impulsively attempts to assault the faithful Otsu, who rebuffs his crude advances. Shocked and shamed by the brutality of his own behavior, Musashi takes off and is again last seen heading down the road and into the future.
In the final installment, many of the characters from the first two parts return: Otsu, Akemi, and most important Kojiro, now Musashi's bitter rival who challenges him to a duel on Ganryu Island. Musashi accepts the challenge but asks to postpone the duel for one year. He spends the interval with two companions he has picked up along the way, a hero-worshiping boy and a buffoonish older man, living in a rural village and becoming a farmer. Like the villagers in The Seven Samurai, these people are menaced by brigands, and Musashi finds himself organizing the farmers to defend themselves. Akemi also shows up and, after being rejected by Musashi again, betrays the village to the brigands in an outburst of wounded vanity. With Musashi's assistance, the villagers are able to repel the invaders during an exhilarating attack sequence. The climax of the film and of the trilogy comes with the duel with Kojiro on Ganryu Island. Musashi does, of course, defeat Kojiro after another rousing duel sequence on the beach. He is last seen leaving the island on a boat, but this time he is returning . . . to the ever-faithful Otsu, whom he has promised to marry if he wins the duel.
Taken together, the three films of The Samurai Trilogy offer a highly entertaining blend of thrilling action sequences, romance, and thoughtful examination of the nature of honor, personal growth, and being a samurai. The films are directed by Inagaki in a style that, while less distinctive than those of his better-known contemporaries, is still quite proficient and seems very naturalistic compared to the direction of the two heavily stylized Japanese films that also won honorary Oscars in the early 1950s, Rashomon and Gate of Hell. Inagaki makes especially good use of colorful and dramatic outdoor locations and shows great skill in staging action sequences. But if there is one thing that holds all this together, that gives the trilogy real thematic resonance and depth, it is the character of Musashi and the chronicling of his personal development. This development is the result not of physical training or even the love of Otsu, but of Musashi's own internal growth towards a moral and ethical stature he has already achieved as a fighter early in the first film.
Each of the three films concentrates on a different area of Musashi's development. Musashi Miyamoto focuses on the growth of his spiritual and intellectual awareness under the tutelage of the priest Takuan, who tells Musashi that even though he has the physical prowess of a samurai, he lacks the spiritual development of a real samurai. The priest teaches him that there is more to being a samurai than using his warrior's skills for personal advancement, that he must learn self-control and the need to direct his power to less egoistic aims. While Musashi is hanging in that tree, the priest tells him, "Conceited in your strength, you ignored wisdom and virtue. . . . Could you but use that force for humanity's good." At the end of the film, after spending three years in that cell reading and meditating, Musashi is clearly a different man, a man now prepared to accept the chivalric responsibilities that are central to being a samurai.
The second film, Duel at Ichijoji Temple, focuses on Musashi's emotional development. During Lady Yoshino's farewell to Musashi before he leaves to meet Seijuro at Ichijoji Temple, she tells him, "You're craving for self-control [because] you lack affection. Human affection." She correctly recognizes that he is incapable of real feeling for another person because in his emotional insecurity he sees affection for others as a weakness. Under the priest Takuan's guidance, Musashi has acquired self-restraint and compassion for his enemies. But having shed his youthful pride and self-absorption, he has been unable to fill the vacuum left behind with real empathy or meaningful connection with another human being, not even the patient and loving Otsu. He has not yet fully grasped that being a samurai is not just a matter of restraining negative impulses, but of generating the positive feelings towards others that will allow him to transcend the limitations of the self.
The final film, Duel at Ganryu Island, with its year-long interlude in the village, focuses on Musashi's forging of a connection with the earth and for the first time in his life becoming part of a community. In this film he finally achieves the humility that Takuan attempted to instill in him in Musashi Miyamoto. By helping the villagers to organize and repel the threat to their village, he is at last able to turn his martial skills to a good and selfless purpose, as Takuan urged, and to experience the caring affection for others that Lady Yoshino told him he lacked. His journey from the selfish desire for personal glory to the samurai's ideal of selfless service to others is complete. He is now ready to face Kojiro and afterward to accept and return the love of Otsu.
The growth and development of Musashi, the arc of his spiritual and sentimental education, is not based on quasi-mystical twaddle about the samurai code, but grounded in specific behaviors and attitudes, and one reason The Samurai Trilogy is so affecting is the way Toshiro Mifune brilliantly expresses the challenges of learning and applying those qualities. For nearly five hours, Mifune leads us step by step through the process of Musashi's gradual transition from an alienated, arrogant, and spiritually unaware young man driven by the most selfish motivations to a mature and serene man who has learned how to connect with the rest of the world and humanity. The lessons in self-awareness, self-control, and selflessness that Musashi learns in these films are surely principles applicable not just to persons of great physical skill and latent spiritual nobility like himself, but to all people, a concept which Mifune expertly conveys by showing how extraordinary ability and ordinary human fallibility can exist side by side in the same person.
I've seen Toshiro Mifune in quite a few films and consider him one of the great film actors of all time. But I don't think I've ever seen him give a finer performance than he does here. In the end, even with all the other strengths of these films, it is Mifune's sustained representation of the formation of Musashi Miyamoto's character and values that towers over all else in The Samurai Trilogy. It is a performance of the utmost subtlety, gravity, and control—one of the most remarkable screen performances I've ever seen.
Monday, November 8, 2010
The Song of the Little Road (2003)
Country: US
Director: Priyanka Kumar
Priyanka Kumar's documentary on the Indian director Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) is named in honor of the English translation of the title of Ray's first film, Pather Panchali. The seventy-minute long documentary approaches Ray's career and legacy from several angles, using interviews with experts in various fields of film studies as well as brief excerpts from Ray's films. Ray's movies are examined by Peter Rainer, film critic for the Christian Science Monitor and past president of the National Society of Film Critics, and by director Martin Scorsese, whose commitment to film preservation is well known. Both of these men, ardent admirers of Ray, offer genuinely perceptive observations about his work, in particular the great early films, which are the focus of The Song of the Little Road.
Typically, Scorsese approaches Ray from the point of view of his own personal relationship to Ray's films. Of watching the entire Apu trilogy in one sitting, Scorsese says that it "was one of the great cinema experiences" of his life and was a direct inspiration for his own early films, explaining how his realization that Ray was able to make stories so "foreign" seem "personal" made him see that he could do the same thing with the world he grew up in and was familiar with. Rainer enthusiastically calls Ray "the complete filmmaker" and credits his rediscovery of Ray's films with changing his mind about giving up film criticism as a career because of his disenchantment with contemporary movies. The two men discuss many of the most important elements of Ray's work: his humanism, the "introspective" and "meditative" quality of his films, his affinity for telling stories from a child's point of view, the almost documentary simplicity of his technique, his seamless integration of music and narrative. Interestingly, both point out the resemblance of his movies to literature: Scorsese compares watching the Apu trilogy to "reading a two thousand page novel," while Rainer observes that Ray "really does give you the kind of richness and complexity that you get from great literature."
The documentary also uses interviews with personal friends of Ray like Ismail Merchant and musician Ravi Shankar to give us a sketch of Ray the man. We learn of his modest lifestyle and of his gregariousness and sense of humor, as well as his fascination with the arts of all kinds. (His small apartment in Calcutta was virtually a salon for lovers of cinema, literature, music, and art.) We also learn of the financial problems of his film career, which were so great that he had to write novels to support his family because he earned so little from his movies. Most of the early films were made for only around sixty thousand dollars but were nevertheless difficult to finance because they were not popular in India. It was really only the success of his films with foreign audiences that allowed Ray to keep working. So great was his love of his native Bengal, though, that he turned down many offers to work abroad after he became a festival and art-house favorite, preferring to make modest movies about Bengal even if it meant scraping together financing, working with primitive equipment, and knowing that his films would never be popular at home.
Michael Pogorzelsky, director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archives (Ray received an honorary award from the Academy in 1992, less than a month before his death) and film restorer David Sheppard offer some fascinating insights into the subject of film preservation and the challenges of restoring Ray's films. By the time a restoration project was begun in the 1990s, few prints of Ray's early films remained. Not only had the negatives been used to make so many prints that they were essentially worn out, but the humid climate of Bengal had caused severe damage, causing a progressive process of chemical decomposition called "the vinegar syndrome" because of the strong smell of vinegar the damaged film gives off. After a set of negatives in good condition was discovered and sent to London, they were destroyed in a fire before any significant work could be done. The restorers were then forced to rely on assembling new prints from bits and pieces obtained from various sources, a process further complicated by the fact that only prints without subtitles could be used. Given these difficulties, it seems almost miraculous that the restoration project was able to be completed. I have seen the restored prints of the Apu trilogy sponsored by the Merchant and Ivory Foundation that resulted from the project and although not absolutely perfect, they are quite acceptable, especially compared to the much poorer quality prints of Ray's films from other sources.
My one reservation about The Song of the Little Road is that the interviews are illustrated not by live footage of the person being interviewed, but by stills apparently taken from the interview footage, giving the film a rather static quality at times. However, this is certainly offset by the excellence of the commentary and the power of the excerpts from Ray's films, which seem particularly well chosen to illustrate the point being made. All in all, The Song of the Little Road, which is distributed by NEHST Studios, is without question essential viewing for anyone interested in Satyajit Ray. Click here for more information.
Laurie Pederson of NEHST kindly sent me a review copy of The Song of the Little Road after reading my post on Ray's Aparajito and The World of Apu, the second and third films in the Apu trilogy.
Director: Priyanka Kumar
Priyanka Kumar's documentary on the Indian director Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) is named in honor of the English translation of the title of Ray's first film, Pather Panchali. The seventy-minute long documentary approaches Ray's career and legacy from several angles, using interviews with experts in various fields of film studies as well as brief excerpts from Ray's films. Ray's movies are examined by Peter Rainer, film critic for the Christian Science Monitor and past president of the National Society of Film Critics, and by director Martin Scorsese, whose commitment to film preservation is well known. Both of these men, ardent admirers of Ray, offer genuinely perceptive observations about his work, in particular the great early films, which are the focus of The Song of the Little Road.Typically, Scorsese approaches Ray from the point of view of his own personal relationship to Ray's films. Of watching the entire Apu trilogy in one sitting, Scorsese says that it "was one of the great cinema experiences" of his life and was a direct inspiration for his own early films, explaining how his realization that Ray was able to make stories so "foreign" seem "personal" made him see that he could do the same thing with the world he grew up in and was familiar with. Rainer enthusiastically calls Ray "the complete filmmaker" and credits his rediscovery of Ray's films with changing his mind about giving up film criticism as a career because of his disenchantment with contemporary movies. The two men discuss many of the most important elements of Ray's work: his humanism, the "introspective" and "meditative" quality of his films, his affinity for telling stories from a child's point of view, the almost documentary simplicity of his technique, his seamless integration of music and narrative. Interestingly, both point out the resemblance of his movies to literature: Scorsese compares watching the Apu trilogy to "reading a two thousand page novel," while Rainer observes that Ray "really does give you the kind of richness and complexity that you get from great literature."
The documentary also uses interviews with personal friends of Ray like Ismail Merchant and musician Ravi Shankar to give us a sketch of Ray the man. We learn of his modest lifestyle and of his gregariousness and sense of humor, as well as his fascination with the arts of all kinds. (His small apartment in Calcutta was virtually a salon for lovers of cinema, literature, music, and art.) We also learn of the financial problems of his film career, which were so great that he had to write novels to support his family because he earned so little from his movies. Most of the early films were made for only around sixty thousand dollars but were nevertheless difficult to finance because they were not popular in India. It was really only the success of his films with foreign audiences that allowed Ray to keep working. So great was his love of his native Bengal, though, that he turned down many offers to work abroad after he became a festival and art-house favorite, preferring to make modest movies about Bengal even if it meant scraping together financing, working with primitive equipment, and knowing that his films would never be popular at home.
Michael Pogorzelsky, director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archives (Ray received an honorary award from the Academy in 1992, less than a month before his death) and film restorer David Sheppard offer some fascinating insights into the subject of film preservation and the challenges of restoring Ray's films. By the time a restoration project was begun in the 1990s, few prints of Ray's early films remained. Not only had the negatives been used to make so many prints that they were essentially worn out, but the humid climate of Bengal had caused severe damage, causing a progressive process of chemical decomposition called "the vinegar syndrome" because of the strong smell of vinegar the damaged film gives off. After a set of negatives in good condition was discovered and sent to London, they were destroyed in a fire before any significant work could be done. The restorers were then forced to rely on assembling new prints from bits and pieces obtained from various sources, a process further complicated by the fact that only prints without subtitles could be used. Given these difficulties, it seems almost miraculous that the restoration project was able to be completed. I have seen the restored prints of the Apu trilogy sponsored by the Merchant and Ivory Foundation that resulted from the project and although not absolutely perfect, they are quite acceptable, especially compared to the much poorer quality prints of Ray's films from other sources.
My one reservation about The Song of the Little Road is that the interviews are illustrated not by live footage of the person being interviewed, but by stills apparently taken from the interview footage, giving the film a rather static quality at times. However, this is certainly offset by the excellence of the commentary and the power of the excerpts from Ray's films, which seem particularly well chosen to illustrate the point being made. All in all, The Song of the Little Road, which is distributed by NEHST Studios, is without question essential viewing for anyone interested in Satyajit Ray. Click here for more information.
Laurie Pederson of NEHST kindly sent me a review copy of The Song of the Little Road after reading my post on Ray's Aparajito and The World of Apu, the second and third films in the Apu trilogy.
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