‘Pather Panchali,’ the Genius Film Where “Nothing” Happens

A man excitedly tells his wife that they must celebrate their son’s annaprasan, or rice-feeding ceremony, in style. “With what money?” the woman counters. The man has given away his orchard to settle debts that moneylenders claimed his family owed. Living in their dilapidated ancestral home in a small village in Bengal, it’s been difficult to feed their family of four, let alone guests. But her husband is a man of letters, education, and idealism. He’s always dreamed of writing plays or essays, which he thinks will help him provide for the family. “Original ideas don’t just grow on trees, you know,” he says.

When Satyajit Ray, a Bengali ad executive, set out to make Pather Panchali (1955), his debut film, he, too, had an original idea. He was radical in hiring non-actors. He shot during the monsoon season and used natural light, even when critics said the sun was “undependable.” His frames linger on the quotidian and masterful alike, from frogs jumping in a lake to a girl framed in an archway or a boy looking into a mirror. Every shot is perfect. It makes sense, since Ray sketched out his scenes for cinematographer Subrata Mitra. Self-admittedly, he was an “amateur.” So why not look at everything in a new way? 

This film, now an obvious classic beloved by everyone from Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese to Mira Nair, didn’t have many takers when it came out. One review called it a “rambling and random tour of an Indian village” and “a baffling mosaic of candid and crude domestic scenes” — which would “barely pass as a ‘rough cut’” with Hollywood editors. Yet, over 70 years later, Ray’s original approach is precisely what makes it, as an Indian reviewer corrected the record, “pure cinema."