#PATHER PANCHALI ANALYSIS PROFESSIONAL#

By the time it comes to its sad end, it has the substance of a tender threnody.Much of the effect is accomplished by some stunningly composed domestic scenes, well performed-or pictured-by an excellent Indian cast, and exquisitely photographed by Subrata Mitra in tastefully filtered blacks and whites. Any picture as loose in structure or as listless in tempo as this one is would barely pass as a 'rough cut' with the editors in Hollywood.But, oddly enough, as it continues-as the bits in the mosaic increase and a couple of basically human and dramatic incidents are dropped in, such as the pitiful death of the old woman and the sickness and death of the little girl-the poignant theme emerges and the whole thing-takes a slim poetic form.

#PATHER PANCHALI ANALYSIS PROFESSIONAL#

There are scenes, as familiar as next-door neighbors, of the mother trying to get the child to eat, washing clothes, quarreling with the husband or pushing the child toward school.Satyajit Roy, Indian artist, who wrote the screen play and directed this film, provides ample indication that this is his first professional motion picture job. And, in that time, the most the camera shows us in a rambling and random tour of an Indian village is a baffling mosaic of candid and crude domestic scenes.There are shots of a creaky old woman, a harassed mother, her lively little girl and a cheerful husband and father who plainly cannot provide for his small brood.

THE Indian film, 'Pather Panchali' ('Song of the Road'), which opened at the Fifth Avenue Cinema yesterday, is one of those rare exotic items, remote in idiom from the usual Hollywood film, that should offer some subtle compensations to anyone who has the patience to sit through its almost two hours.Chief among the delicate revelations that emerge from its loosely formed account of the pathetic little joys and sorrows of a poor Indian family in Bengal is the touching indication that poverty does not always nullify love and that even the most afflicted people can find some modest pleasures in their worlds.This theme, which is not as insistent or sentimental as it may sound, barely begins to be evident after the picture has run at least an hour.

Pather panchali analysis