New Celebrity Sightings

The Apu Trilogy is a series of three cinemas directed by Satyajit Ray. Completed between the years 1955 and 1955, the three movies were based on the two classic Bengali novels Pather Panchali (1929) and Aparajito (1932) written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. The three films, Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu), are now known as the finest movies of the Parallel Cinema movement and among the greatest movies ever made.

Satyajit Ray was deeply inspired by the novel Pather Panchali when he was working on a children’s version of it in his original job as a designer of book covers. On the ship from London back to India after training, he wrote the screenplay for his first film based on the novel. Making that first movie was filled with difficulties especially with financing production of the film but in the end, it paid off with an award at the Cannes Film Festival and cementing Ray’s reputation and destiny as a filmmaker.

The first film in this Bangla Natok trilogy, Pather Panchali, is all about the protagonist Apu’s early life in rural Bengal. The story is mainly about the experiences of the hero and his poor but high caste family wherein the death of his sister made the family move to Benares, a holy city.

The second film, Aparajito, highlights the tension between a young man’s ambitions and his mother’s love and fears. In this Bangla cinema, Apu’s father dies, making him and his mother go back to Bangladesh.

The third movie, Apur Sansar, shows Apu in an unusual marriage, its tragic end, and the hero’s struggles thereafter. This cinema is noted for its frank depiction of married life.

The influence of The Apu Trilogy continues to this day with the steady proliferation of the youthful coming of age dramas that has been a recurring theme both in Bangla cinema and worldwide.