The Apu Trilogy: Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

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"I can never forget the excitement in my mind after seeing 'Pather Panchali'", noted Akira Kurosawa. Satyajit Ray's three films about the boyhood, adolescence and manhood of Apu, Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and The World of Apu (1959) - collectively known as The Apu Trilogy - are established classics of world cinema. The Trilogy was the chief reason for Satyajit Ray's receiving an Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1992, just before his death.

This book by Ray's biographer and world authority Andrew Robinson is the first full study of the Trilogy. Robinson - who came to know the director well during the last decade of his career - covers the literary and cultural background to the films, their production, their music composed by Ravi Shankar, their aesthetic value, and their complex critical reception in the East and the West, from 1955 up to the present day. Extensively and beautifully illustrated and a pleasure to read, The Apu Trilogy will appeal to anyone captivated by the unique world created by Satyajit Ray.

Reviews

'Satyajit Ray has worked with humility and complete dedication; he has gone down on his knees in the dust. And his picture has the quality of intimate, unforgettable experience.' - Lindsay Anderson on 'Pather Panchali', 1956; 'Though he's very young still, he's the Father of Indian Cinema.' - Jean Renoir on Ray, 1967; 'Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon.' - Akira Kurosawa, 1975; 'Ray's magic, the simple poetry of his images and their emotional impact, will always stay with me.' - Martin Scorsese, 1991

Author Bio

Andrew Robinson is the author of more than two dozen books on a wide range of subjects. They include biographies of artists and scientists such as Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein, a large-format photographic study, Satyajit Ray: A Vision of Cinema (2005), and Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye (3rd edition, 2021). He has also written about Ray for major newspapers and magazines, such as the Financial Times, the New York Times, American Cinematographer and Sight and Sound.