Pather Panchali

Daily life in a poor family in a Bengali village: the father goes to the city for work, the mother struggles to hold the house together, an elderly relative lives in a corner, and two children grow up. The film constructs no plot. The narrative moves through the turn of the seasons, the arrival of the rain, a train seen at a distance; the scene of the children running to the tracks stands as the outside world appearing for the first time. It is Satyajit Ray's first film. Most of the crew had never made one, and production stretched over years for lack of money. The music is by Ravi Shankar. It is adapted from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's novel and is the first part of the Apu trilogy. A real warning: it moves slowly and carries a heavy loss in its middle section. Being designed as a trilogy, the narrative does not close here.