Sandip Ray on how his father Satyajit Ray has shaped him as a filmmaker: 'He told me re-editing was the only learning process'

To celebrate the centenary year of Satyajit Ray, arguably the most remarkable filmmaker born on Indian soil, Firstpost will explore the lesser known aspects of his life. 

In the first three parts, we look at his relationship with his filmmaker-son Sandip Ray, through anecdotal and visual inputs provided by the latter.

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Back in Calcutta, the Ray family would watch Hollywood movies, including cartoons, at city theatres together. They were also invited to the United States Information Service (which was later rechristened American Centre) auditorium everytime a package of American films was screened there. Sandip’s birthdays every year also threw up a unique facet. Not only did one get to be part of a varied range of games, the celebrations rounded off, after a sumptuous dinner, with a movie screening. This was entirely the Ray touch. And it was facilitated by the various 16 mm film libraries which the famous Hollywood studio offices sported in the city.

When Sandip turned to filmmaking with Fatikchand  (Fatik and the Juggler) in 1982, Ray had written the screenplay. The movie, incidentally, was released next year in 1983. “I had banned father from being present on the sets. Of course, he would inquire about the day’s proceedings after I returned home in the evening. After the film was shot and edited, father viewed the first cut. It had stretched across two-hours-and-a-half at the outset. Father had observed that based on his script, the film should have ended in an hour-and-forty-minutes. He directed us go back to the editing table and re-edit it. He clearly told me this was the only learning process. Dulalkaku (Dulal Uncle) and I went about it afresh. Once we were fully done and satisfied, I found the film had finished in the timeframe father had projected. This is when I learnt being unsentimental in cutting (a film)," admits Sandip. “We showed this freshly edited print to father. He approved it, and then did the background (music) score.” He goes on to add that the first cut of his next directorial project, Goopy Bagha Phire Elo (The Return of Goopy and Bagha), was the final one except for some finetuning.

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We turn to the phase when Sandip whetted his skills in film music composition by drawing heavily on his father’s method of and mastery over penning notations. This was long after his father had passed away. This was when, after a run of TV films, a full-fledged feature film came Sandip’s way in the shape of the Feluda title Bombayer Bombete (The Bandits of Bombay). “I realised that I had to, like father, pick up Indian notations. Western notations wouldn’t gel with most Bengali or Indian musicians. This was exactly a roadblock that father had initially confronted when he began scoring music for his films. I drew entirely on father’s Indian notational manuscripts to absorb the approach to musical compositions and its variegated nuances. I also use acoustic instruments like he did. Of course, this self-training is unending,” he underlines. However, the method of music recording has undergone a seachange with digitisation. One doesn’t find several instruments playing simultaneously in the orchestral format as one saw in Satyajit Ray’s music recordings. Generally, individual instruments are recorded on separate tracks and, then, assembled. Hypothetically, one can even spread out recordings on hundreds of tracks today," Sandip explains.

 He recalls the days when he would be occasionally present in his father’s study, listening to the cream of Western Classical compositions. The Western music connoisseur that Ray was would bring his son abreast of a Beethoven, Bach, Mozart or Brahms, to list just a few that were playing on Ray’s Garrard turntable. Those mesmerising moments still haunt Sandip.

In step with the Classical composers, Ray’s interests fanned out to the composers of film music. After watching James Bond’s From Russia With Love, he was bowled over by John Barry’s background score. During his journeys overseas, he would return with the new album of a Bond film. Other than Sergei Prokofiev’s Classical compositions, he was also an admirer of the famed Russian composer’s scores for films, especially those directed by Eisenstein.

“Father’s gamut of interests was not only overwhelming, but, sometimes, also a trifle confounding.

He was not only also a die-hard fan of Kishore Kumar’s songs, but also aware of some of Bombay’s film music composers like Shankar Jaikishan, Sachin Dev Burman, Rahul Dev Burman, and the Beatles. Other than a huge range of books, he also read up varied magazines like National Geographic, Life, Omni, Scientific American, Sight and Sound, American Cinematographer, and Sequence. In his youth, he was also an avid reader of comics, including weekly British comic tabloids. It’s virtually impossible to pin him down. I remember him tossing a score of comics to me after I had finished an exam session in school,” says Sandip nostalgically.

Ashoke Nag is a veteran writer on art and culture with a special interest in legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray. All photos by Satyajit Ray Archives Read Part 1:  _Satyajit Ray's son Sandip opens up on their equation: 'My father knew I was interested in filmmaking, but he never pressurised me'_ Read Part 2: ‘ Watching Satyajit Ray edit was where I learnt to be ruthless in doing away with flab in a film': son Sandip Ray