 |
 |
|
|
|
> Pather Panchali |
|
|
|
| |
see larger picture
|
|
Staring:
Kanu Bannerjee,
Karuna Bannerjee,
Subir Bannerjee,
Uma Das Gupta,
Chunibala Devi
Director:
Satyajit Ray
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: $29.95
Our Price: $59.95
|
|
|
|
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781404941052
Format: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 1404941053
Label: Sony Pictures
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Region Code: 99
Release Date: 2003-10-28
Running Time: 119
Studio: Sony Pictures
Theatrical Release Date: 1958-09-22 |
|
|
|
Description
The first in a popular trilogy of Indian films! Pather Panchali is a moving story of a rural family cursed with bad luck. The father is a dreamer, while his wife struggles to feed the family, including son Apu. When a petty thief brings tragedy to them, they must find a way to survive.Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Satyajit Ray. Multiple film festival awards.
Amazon.com essential video
Pather Panchali tells the story of a family inching slowly and irrevocably, over the course of several years, toward the edge of financial and emotional disaster. In a rural Bengali village, circa 1919, Harihar (Kanu Bannerjee) recites sacred texts and performs religious rites for a living. He dreams of being a playwright, but he must support his growing family. His wife, Sarbajaya (Karuna Bannerjee) must suffer her husband's long absences as he searches for work and the hostile pity of extended family members who are better off financially and socially. Her daughter, Durga (Uma Das Gupta), has the bad habit of stealing mangoes from the neighboring orchard, which adds to her mother's shame. When a son, Apu (Subir Bannerjee), is born, things seem to be looking up for the family. But it is only a short-lived illusion. First films don't come any better than Pather Panchali. Made in 1955 by Satyajit Ray, this truly remarkable feat of storytelling is a must-see kind of movie. Ray reveals a gift for presenting stories that unfold gently, one engaging scene at time. This film delivers an amazing emotional punch that will linger in your consciousness for some time, not in spite of, but because of its simplicity. The story is based on the novel of the same title, written by Bibhutibhushan Banerjee. Shot in glorious black and white, it runs for 115 minutes. The script is by Satyajit Ray, the music by Ravi Shankar. --Luanne Brown
|
|
beautiful introduction to Satyajit Ray......, 2007-03-20
This is a great introduction to the masterful films of the late, great Indian filmmaker, Satyajit Ray. PATHER PANCHALI is the first of the Apu Trilogy, a series of stories that takes a look at the life of Apu, a young Bengali boy from a poor background. In this installment, Apu (Subir Bannerjee) is growing up with his older sister, Durga (Uma Das Gupta) who has the pesky habit of stealing mangos from their neighbor's tree. His mother, Sarbojaya Ray (Karuma Bannerjee) is constantly bickering with the children's elderly aunt (Chunibala Devi) and struggling to maintain a tidy household. Apu's father, Harihar Ray(Kanu Bannerjee) performs religious prayers and writes for a living. He ventures out to seek work for himself, leaving his small village and family behind him.
This story examines the ups and downs that the struggling family must endure, and is truly poetry in motion. What's more, it has a quiet intensity that flows beautifully with the wonderful musical score by the legendary sitar master, Ravi Shankar. Be sure not to miss this treasure......
 An amazing movie with a terrible DVD release., 2007-05-11
Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
This would be a ludicrously long review before I ran out of good things to say about Pather Panchali. But everyone else has already said all those things. If you didn't listen to them, you're not going to listen to me, but I'll put in a "see it. now." here for good measure and get onto what will be a review not of a great film, but a ludicrous DVD release.
Biswas proudly trumpets that it has exclusive rights to Pather Panchali in the DVD market. If this is the case, it should be considered a crime against nature. The video transfer is horrible, the sound transfer only marginally better. I've seen better subtitling on bargain-basement bootleg Chinese DVDs. If your only chance to see the film is in the Biswas DVD release, wait until you can catch a revival somewhere. This is terrible in the extreme, and hopefully, someday, someone will do something about it. The movie gets four stars; the DVD release, one.
Brilliant , 2009-01-26
A masterpiece in Black and White. The story, camera-work, natural acting will remain with you forever! Understated elegance of epic proportions!!
Great, 2008-10-18
Somewhere between the Oriental placidity of a great Yasujiro Ozu film and the harsh reality of a great Vittorio De Sica film lies the world of Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali, the first of his Apu Trilogy of films. And in case there was any doubt, that place is a very, very good one for any filmmaker to be, for the two aforementioned filmmakers were masters of their own sorts of films, and- if this one, and first, film of Ray's is an indication, the same plaudits can be ascribed to Ray, a former advertising firm's employee who struck out on his own to raise Indian cinema from the melodramatic doldrums it had been in since its creation.
This almost two hour long black and white film, made in 1955, was not only Ray's debut in the medium, but the first `serious' film in Indian history- at least that made by an Indian. It is no surprise that Ray, a Bengali, made his film in his part of India- funded by the provincial government of West Bengal, away from the more commercial films of what would later be called Bollywood. The film's English subtitle is Song Of The Little Road, but this is a bit of a nonsequitur since the film is based on a novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, and the only road with any prominence in the film is a recurring hagiography of a local set of railroad tracks. Some websites claim that the title connotes the subtitle, and that Pather, in Bengali, means of a path, and Panchali means a kind of Bengal song; however, other sites and critics dispute this claim. The tale is set in the early 20th Century, although the film never specifies a date- at least not in the white English subtitles of the Artificial Eye DVD The Apu Trilogy three pack, which includes the other two films, as well: Aparajito and The World Of Apu.
Like the Italian Neo-Realist films of De Sica, Ray relied on an excellent script (adapted by Ray, from the novel) and amateur actors, for the most part, to pull the film off. A low budget made `big' scenes an impossibility, but Ray shows off, in this film, some nice touches with the camera that cost nothing but a few minutes of cogitation. These skills all led to international praise of the film in many quarters, and a special award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.
The plot of the tale is rather simple, and easily conveyed, but this film is a great example of how merely recapitulating or summing up a plot utterly does an injustice to the deeper and greater story....Pather Panchali is a truly great film; it is not only a classic of its native land, but of the very art form of film. And, as mentioned, it not only derives its power from Italian Neo-Realism, but also from the diurnal do of Yasujiro Ozu's films. Ozu is another filmmaker who has been criticized as dull and tedious, but both men are keen observers of their fictive worlds. In those realms the flicker of an eyebrow can have greater consequence than an army brigade's assault on an enemy. Yet, to the viewer not yet weaned off of the Lowest Common Denominator, such moments are not even noticed. I only wish that Satyajit Ray, who died in 1992, was still around to know that his film was yet influencing more people in the positive way all great art does, but realize, as he surely did, that he need not be, for great art always and eventually fills out the places the human body gives way to. In watching Pather Panchali, one gets a sense of Satyajit Ray, as he was. Go know him.
Charity at home, 2008-12-14
One of the greatest films ever made, this stunning 1955 film was the great Satyajit's Ray's first full-length work, and remains the benchmark for all the great films that followed. The film is slow paced and keeps entirely to the outskirts of one village in Bengal, but the characters are so rich and their problems so absorbing that you become entirely lost in their world. The story centers almost entirely upon one family headed by a scholarly, likable man who has returned to his crumbling family homestead from Benares (Varanasi) to raise his children with his wife. They have two children, the dreamy Durga and the always alert Apu, whom they can barely manage to feed; complicating matters is their octogenarian "Auntie" (the amazing Chunilbali Devi), who eats up her share of the meals and who tries to retain some sense of dignity about her despite the fights she has with the wife. The film is mostly about how a tiny community cares for each other--how food is shared among them despite its preciousness as a commodity, and the cruelties they can visit upon one another when driven by ego or shame and also the incredible generosities they are capable of when calamities strike. All the actors are great, but special commendation must be given to Karuna Bannerjee who manages to make the forever-nagging and hard-suffering mother seem so fundamentally decent. The sequence of Durga and Apu playing in the waving flax near some power lines and a railway line, which suggest a world of modernity beyond their own, is unforgettable, as is the famous sequence of the waterbugs skimming along after the rains following the wife's receipt of some very welcome news. This is one of the greatest films I have ever seen, and deserves to always be readily available.
|
|
|
|
| |
![The Twilight Saga: New Moon [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516h%2BrDEcxL._SL75_.jpg "The Twilight Saga: New Moon [Blu-ray]")
