Satyajit Ray Quotes

MAMMOOTTY has presented an outstanding performance in film'New Delhi'

Somehow I feel that an ordinary person–the man in the street if you like–is a more challenging subject for exploration than people in the heroic mold. It is the half shades, the hardly audible notes that I want to capture and explore. […] My films are about human beings, human relationships, and social problems. I think it is possible for everyone to relate to these issues. On a certain level, foreign audiences can appreciate Indian works, but many details are missed. For example, when they see a woman with a red spot on her forehead, they don't know that this is a sign showing that she is married, or that a woman dressed in a white sari is a widow. Indian audiences understand this at once; it is self-evident for them. So, on certain level, the cultural gap is too wide. But on a psychological level, on the level of social relations, it is possible to relate. I think I have been able to cross the barrier between cultures. My films are made for an Indian audience, but I think they have bridged the gap.

I don't understand these national awards, because half of those who sit in judgement over Indian films do not ... possess the competence to evaluate a film correctly.

Sometimes a director is making three films. Perhaps he is shooting a film in Madras and a film in Bombay and he can't leave Madras as some shooting has to be done, so he directs by telephone. The shooting takes place. On schedule.

My films play only in Bengal, and my audience is the educated middle class in the cities and small towns. They also play in Bombay, Madras and Delhi where there is a Bengali population.

If the theme is simple, you can include a hundred details that create the illusion of actuality better.

There is a ban on Indian films in Pakistan, so that's half of our market gone.

Cinema's characteristic forte is its ability to capture and communicate the intimacies of the human mind.

At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music.

Ever since Two Daughters I've been composing my own music.

When I'm shooting on location, you get ideas on the spot - new angles. You make not major changes but important modifications, that you can't do on a set. I do that because you have to be economical.

There's always some room for improvisation.

Well the Bombay film wasn't always like how it is now. It did have a local industry. There were realistic films made on local scenes. But it gradually changed over the years.

Ray doesn't go into lengthy descriptions. Yet, you can see - even feel - it all happening. That's enough to bring out the goose pimples!' Clearly, here the filmmaker in Ray gave him an edge over other writers. His words were brief, simple, lucid. But the impression that emerged was extraordinarily rich in detail.

I think they quite like me when I work because I'm one of the safer directors to back, because even if my films don't bring their costs in back home, once they're shown outside of India they manage to cover the costs.

Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens.

What is attempted in these film is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure.

The conception of background music is changing. You use less and less of it these days.

I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.

The only solutions that are ever worth anything are the solutions that people find themselves.

It was only after Pather Panchali had some success at home that I decided to do a second part. But I didn't want to do the same kind of film again, so I made a musical.

If you take some words at random and put them together, it becomes gibberish, and everyone who knows the meaning of words knows it as such. But if you take unrelated moving images and string them together, there will always be some people who will hold that the resultant strip of celluloid aims at some profundity.