Kolkata: Thespian Soumitra Chatterjee said Saturday that watching master director Satyajit Ray’s much-feted film ‘Pather Panchali’ (1955) changed his perceptions about cinema forever and made him fall in love with the art form.
Chatterjee, who has acted in 14 of Ray’s films, said he felt ‘the happiest’ when the director announced that he would cast him as the protagonist of his 1959 film ‘Apur Sangsar’ (The World of Apu), the third film of the revered ‘Apu’ trilogy.
“After coming to Kolkata, there was a time when I became an avid theatre watcher and had certain prejudices about films. But when I saw ‘Pather Panchali’ in 1955, my views about films changed forever. It made me forget all my prejudices and fall in love with cinema,” Chatterjee said at a session in ‘Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet 2019’ here.
Chatterjee while reminiscing, his first interaction with Ray said the director was extremely focused about minute details of the actors he used to cast and gave a lot of importance to their Bengali diction.
“When he (Ray) said I will play ‘Apu’, I was taken aback. I felt the pressure of that huge responsibility. But I never felt so happy before. I realised that I have reached the destiny,” the veteran actor said.
Chatterjee, whose acting career now spans over six decades, said it was good that many of the then Bengali films were based on literary adaptations as it allowed the actors to play characters which are ‘much closer to life’ and reach out to the larger audience.
“It is good that we had films based on literary adaptations during our time. Bengali literature has always been very rich in quality. So it worked like a safety valve for us (the actors) as we were able to play characters which had a semblance of life,” pointed out the legendary actor.
“If our films were based on something completely outlandish, then it would have been difficult to reach out to the larger audience,” he added.
IANS