criterionforum.org

Abhijan



Abhijan was Satyajit Ray's most popular film in Bengal: a "conscious" effort to communicate with a wider audience. The project was originally conceived by his friends and Ray stepped in when they panicked at the prospect of directing. Ray's mastery turned a starkly conventional plot into a subtly nuanced story which topped the Bengali box office for months.

Set on the Bihar-Bengal border, where Marwari businessmen — a powerful Hindi-dialect community of entrepreneurs much disliked throughout India — and Rajputs of warrior caste (from Rajasthan) have both settled. The central character of Narsingh (Soumitra Chatterjee), is a disillusioned, frequently drunken Rajput reduced in status to an ill-educated taxi driver. Proud and hot-tempered, with a passion for his 1930s Chrysler, Narsingh is offered work transporting tins of ghee for Sukhanram, a shady merchant, and finds himself drawn against his better judgement into trafficking opium. Having failed in everything honest, he has to decide whether or not he will engage in criminal activity to make money.

Starring Waheeda Rehman — one of the greatest stars of 'Bollywood' cinema — as Gulabi, a prostitute; Rabi Ghosh as Rama, Narsingh's right-hand man; and Ruma Guha Thakurata as Neeli, Abhijan was honoured with the National Award of India in 1962. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Abhijan for the first time on DVD in the West, restored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Academy Film Archive.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New progressive transfer from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Academy Film Archive restoration
• Video interview with Professor Dilip Basu, director of the Ray FASC (20 mins)
• Promotional material gallery
• New and improved optional English subtitles
• 36-page full colour booklet with reprints of Ray’s original production sketches; writing by Marie Seton, Waheeda Rehman, and Joseph Lindner

antnield wrote:The ad for the latest MoC releases in this month's 'Sight and Sound' mentions forthcoming Buster Keaton and Satyajit Ray titles. Now we're all aware of the forthcoming Keaton boxed set, no doubt, but what of Ray - any hints or rumours as to which title(s) is/are being selected?

I don't really care what titles they are going to put out - this is just freaking, fucking, flippin', cracking, smashing great news! Satyajit Ray on MoC? Bless your sweet soul, Nick Wrigley!

Excellent news, lets hope Artificial Eye begin to deliver also

Subbuteo wrote: Artificial Eye begin to deliver

Well, they are supposed to release Days and Nights in the Forest, The Chess Players, Devi and The Three Daughters still this year, hopefully. Which makes me think which titles those marvelous people over at MoC have in store for us.

Charulata, maybe? Or any of the 3 that form the Calcutta Trilogy? Come on, Nick - give us a hint or two here!

Personally speaking, I'd love it to be 'The Middleman'.

Incidentally, the BBFC classified the following Ray titles for 'Bollywood DVD' towards the end of last year, though none have surfaced on DVD yet as far as I know:

Mahanagar (The Big City, 1963)
Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964)
Mahapurush (The Saint, 1965)
Kapurush (The Coward, 1965)
Nayak (The Hero, 1966)
Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God, 1978)

Annie Mall wrote:Charulata, maybe?

I'd buy it -- one of the loveliest films I've seen.

Any would be welcome - Charulata, Mahanagar and The Music Room are really extraordinary.

The Calcutta trilogy (The Adversary, Company Limited and The Middleman) would be nice to see in a complete set as well - I think all US and UK releases have been piecemeal, with only one or two of these tiles in print (on VHS) at a time. The Middleman is excellent.

I haven't seen it, and it's never had a decent release out of India, but friends from there tell me consistently that The Adventures Of Goopy And Bagha - a children's fantasy/adventure film with some musical numbers - is an unheralded great one as well...

I haven't seen much else of the 60s/70s work - Kanchenjungha, The Hero, The Coward, The Saint, Distant Thunder, Sonar Kellar, The Elephant God and others. Critical consensus is all over the map on these - they're generally regarded as flawed experiments in various genres. But they've never been widely available out of India, so it's been near impossible to view them anew either - some of these titles might be worthy of pursuit.

Kanchenjungha (a restored print is archived at USC) and Days And Nights In The Forest (which Artificial Eye has listed as 'coming soon' for a year and a half, at least) both seem to generate interesting comment - comparisons to Rohmer among others - so they (or at least the first one, which was Ray's first color film) might be worth a look.

Elephant God is a sequal to The Adventures Of Goopy And Bagha, so those two might make for an interesting (and definitely quirky) two-fer.

Even the less-well-know films deserve some new attention - like Ozu, Kurosawa, Visconti or Renoir, it's impossible to really assess Ray's career and contributions with only a handful out of 30+ films in circulation. And some of the lesser known titles - like The Middleman and Mahanagar - are striking filmmaking.

There is a wealth of Indian film for MoC to explore, especially in light of Criterion's inaction in that department (or - to a degree - with non-Samurai Japanese film, as well). The Bengali alternative cinema that Ray emerged from also spawned Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, and eventually exerted a subtle infuence upon mainstream Indian film. None of those filmmakers' work (with the exception of 2 Ghatak films) is available in the West - with a little promotion and discussion it's a golden opportunity to expand the discussion of gloabl cinema.[/b]

Releasing some Ray...any Ray... will be a real feather in the MoC cap. Didn't AMPAS clean up a few of his prints quite recently? Fans of Ray who haven't already should look at The Householder on HomeVision- musiic supervision and significant editing by the man himself, and quite reminiscent of some of his post pastorale stuff.

well if MOC do something, they also wont have any competition from criterion: sad news (unfortunately) in one way:

do you have any plans for any Satyajit Ray films in the collection?

thanks

We have no plans for any Ray films at this time.

Best,
JM

It seems that the only times that you can trust Mulvaney are when he says that they don't have the rights, or when the gist of his message is 'yes'.

The only thing we can assume from this is that the rights are no longer completely out of Criterion's reach, as Mulvaney had previously stated that they were.

What A Disgrace wrote:It seems that the only times that you can trust Mulvaney are when he says that they don't have the rights, or when the gist of his message is 'yes'.

The only thing we can assume from this is that the rights are no longer completely out of Criterion's reach, as Mulvaney had previously stated that they were.

That's AWFUL AWFUL news for US fans - the level of neglect for Ray is pretty unthinkable. It's a golden opportuniuty for MoC if you can spring for a little discreet transatlantic marketing, for there are are those of US in the US who are baffled as to why it seems to be impossible to keep these films available here, and generally tired of waiting if the situation is different elsewhere. I do wonder who got the US rights? Sony's licences expired, and some of the others were always available, with restored prints stored in Cali. I do think hell will have frozen over before we see good R1s of any of them - thus his relative (and growing) obscurity on this side of the Atlantic will continue - self-perpetuating.

Abhijan



Abhijan was Satyajit Ray's most popular film in Bengal: a “consciousâ€

For some reason, the thought of MoC releasing a Satyajit Ray film never crossed my mind. Great news. I've been trying to convince a friend of mine; who had convinced me to eventually go multi-region, to invest in some of the MoC discs. Its proving to be absurdly difficult (the fool recently discovered online gaming. Argh.). Maybe this will finally convince him, as he adores the dozen or so Ray films that he's seen.

Looks like #27 is going to be Satyajit Ray's Abhijan (which should be spelt Abhijaan according to IMDB). Can't really see the cover that clearly on the MOC website.

I'm a huge fan of Ray's and have seen most of his films, but not this one. Has anyone seen this?

You can see the cover better here

Satyajit's Son wrote:Looks like #27 is going to be Satyajit Ray's Abhijan (which should be spelt Abhijaan according to IMDB).

imdb is wrong.

Any chance of a Charulata from MOC -- some day?

Im speculating searching for good enough source elements may be some of the reason for a delay of many of Ray's films on DVD. peerpee got any information?

Many of his films were produced, and are thus owned, by different people. Many of the producers are elderly or not with us anymore.

The Ray FASC in Santa Cruz and AMPASA have the best elements, but no-one's really been willing to pony up the dough to gain access or pay the producers for the rights (Columbia USA didn't bother with the restorations for their rubbish APU set, and neither did Artificial Eye, to the best of my knowledge).

Hats of to Eureka for this Ray release, but in defense of the Artificial Eye Apu Trilogy, it may not be pristine, but it's a good enough set of transfers (better than the individual releases, and with removable subs), and the extras are worthy of any DVD company.

I totally agree. The Artificial Eye APU set is really great.

However, restored materials do exist at AMPASA.

Nick,

There's no way you could get a hold of "Satyajit Ray, Filmmaker" by Shyam Benegal (Guru Dutt's cousin and a golden palm nominated filmmaker in his own right) for this release? imdb.com doesn't have much information on it, and I've never seen it.

Steven H wrote:There's no way you could get a hold of "Satyajit Ray, Filmmaker" by Shyam Benegal (Guru Dutt's cousin and a golden palm nominated filmmaker in his own right) for this release? IMDb doesn't have much information on it, and I've never seen it.

Steven - this might help you, and more specfically, only the real player version seems to work.

The link has first 70 mins of the documentary ( its mostly in english) , dont know why the rest is missing :-k

Two other documentaries are also available on the site ( do a search for Satyajit Ray)

Title: Rabindranath Tagore
Duration: 51 mins Year: 1980

Title: The Inner Eye
Duration: 22 mins Year: 1972

There are screenplays available that might be of interst to you.



Satyajit Ray
A Film by Shyam Benegal
Script reconstructed by
Alakananda Datta and Samik Bandyopadhyay

Rs 100 £12.95 / $19.95
ISBN 81 7046 021 2
Pb: 124pp 68b/w photos and illus

In this unusual book, Satyajit Ray, the internationally renowned filmmaker, is seen on the sets and at home through the lens of contemporary film director Shyam Benegal.

Conceived around Shyam Benegal's two-hour-long film on Satyajit Ray, this volume brings together the script of the film, selections from Benegal's extensive interviews with Ray, and a rare collection of visual material documenting Ray as designer, illustrator, film director and scriptwriter.

I am glad MOC is releasing a Satyajit Ray title and hope more is to follow [-o<

dvdisoil wrote:Steven - this might help you

Ah, thanks! That's a lot of information.