'The Apu Trilogy': Satyajit Ray's masterpiece restored

We celebrate India as the most populous democracy in the world and home to Bollywood, one of the globe's biggest film industries.

But when India gained its independence from England in 1947, few could have foreseen the nation also would produce some of the greatest works in international cinema.

While Bollywood was churning out 200 features a year as early as the 1930s, what we know today as serious Indian cinema didn't make its mark until the 1950s. That's when a group of Bengali filmmakers, led by Satyajit Ray, rebelled against the fairy-tale aesthetic of the nation's mainstream Hindi films.

Called Parallel Cinema and deeply inspired by Italian neorealism, this movement made its mark with three films Ray released in quick succession in the 1950s: Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), and Apur Sansar (1959). Known collectively as The Apu Trilogy, this masterpiece has existed only in inferior prints, until now.

Two decades ago, the negatives for all three films were destroyed by fire. Restored by the Criterion Collection, each will be shown by the Ritz Bourse beginning Friday.

Based on two circa-1930 Bengali novels written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay and made for about $3,000, the films feature amateur actors and a largely inexperienced crew, save for the composer, Ravi Shankar.

A coming-of-age story set in the early part of the 20th century, the trilogy follows the childhood, education, and early career of a young Bengali man named Apu played by Apurba Kumar Roy. (Smaran Ghosal portrays him as an adolescent.)

Born into a high-caste family in rural Bengal, Apu's journey is marked by poverty and privation. His family can't make ends meet and moves to the holy city of Benares, where the he still manages to acquire a first-rate education. Brilliant, sensitive, and talented, he has hopes of one day becoming a writer.

Deeply humanist, the films marry stark realism and poetry to describe how individual desire and ambition are thwarted and transformed by the vagaries of fate: Apu's ambitions seem upended at every turn by death (first his father's, then his mother's) and social obligation (he's forced into a marriage he does not desire).

But Apu manages to make a go of his life as he finds it, even falling deeply in love with his wife before she also dies.

The Apu Trilogy is a masterpiece no cinephile can afford to miss.

Directed by Satyajit Ray. With Apurba Kumar Roy, Smaran Ghosal. Distributed by Janus Films/The Criterion Collection. In Bengali with English subtitles.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (adult themes, some violence, sexuality).

Playing at: Ritz Bourse. Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), and Apur Sansar (1959) will be shown at separate screenings.

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