Fade in
Aparna applies bindi and also vermillion in front of a mirror. To the Indian eye, both are celebration of a woman’s marital status.
Goes the alarm clock ring and sure enough she’s been waiting for her husband’s return from work. She has a little prank in mind.
The beauty and success of this scene lies in its simple, effortless execution. In a novice’s hands, the payoff moment could easily be marred through a nervous, self-conscious fragmentation, say, by keeping bursting of envelope and Apu’s reaction in separate shots. Even in the composite version things could go wrong through over-directing or over acting.
Notice, for example, that Aparna does not stand completely hidden behind the corner or with her envelope fully inflated and ready to strike. Rather it’s a lengthy shot that begins with her starting from the far end, then going past the camera and disappearing into what should be the kitchen, then returning with the envelope to her mouth and bursting it just as Apu emerges. The timing of the action has been entrusted to the actors, with the key expression—startling—left to the more experienced Apu. And typical of Ray, more than two takes of such a concept would risk sending the whole thing clumsy and mechanical.
Notice that we are not shown the husband in the street as Aparna sees him from the terrace. (Again, a novice might do that.) For one, it’s obvious from her reaction and secondly, it lays value to the other things that are shown through a separate shot in similar situations. Aparna seeing the mother and child earlier on, for example, would be insufficient if only implied through the child’s laughter and not shown in a separate insert.
A closer examination of this and the previous scene would show that she’s been wearing the same dress, a flower dotted white blouse with dark striped saree, across the fade. But that by itself needn’t mean that both are accounts of the same day. More important would be the ‘scripting’ fact that her activities before the fade and afterwards are really sequential continuations of the same act, namely bathing and getting ready. While talking to her husband before the fade she had been opening her plait and collecting clothes from various points in the room, generally in preparation for bath. Now after the fade, she is in front of the mirror as though after the same bath. Similarly, just before the fade she had been talking about him returning early from the office and now we see him returning before dark. He has after all given up that tuition.
Not for the first time in Ray, a momentum launched in the earlier scene has been continued over the next, enhancing the feel of a seamless, smooth operation.
Incidentally, the mirror was first introduced in the previous scene, partly through Aparna’s inspecting looks as she sat doing her hair and partly by its wooden stand included to the right of frame. Though not very clear, it’s the type of mirror you sit on the floor to use and it’s placed for once against the fourth wall of the room. Her toiletries, as we saw before, have been squeezed in with Apu’s shaving kit and the rest on the main wall.
Without this one single suggestion of the fourth wall, Apu’s room would be a theatre set.
Indeed the sequential progression continues throughout the rest of this montage as well. What happens after his return from work is eating dinner, then lesson in the bed, then an evening seeing a film, then returning at night in the luxury and romance of a phaeton taxi. And already in the next scene they are at the railway station bidding goodbye. (Which too incidentally happens at night.) Not only does the montage become an authentic representation of their married life but it also slips us into the next phase of pregnancy and delivery.
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Detailing with the montage, dinner.
For staging dinner, Ray uses an interesting concept. As per common practice of the times Apu is the first to eat while Aparna fans; we saw that in PP as well as in Aparajito. But when it comes to Aparna eating, tradition is turned on the head; she eats and Apu holds the fan. In the event, both characters feel (and look) odd—Apu yawns wide while Aparna is shy and embarrassed—and we laugh. Tradition, after all, is tradition for a reason but Apu is merely being childish and that’s part of his character. Just a while ago he was insisting they hire a maidservant.
Notice an interesting detail in the kitchen set. There is a wide opening between panels running right through the middle of the frame. This would be mainly to emphasise that this scene is not taking place in the main room but in another one, an improvised tin-sheet kitchen. Notice further that the action is more or less spot-lighted from above, leaving the walls rather dark and bereft of detail. This serves two purposes. To emphasise the action, particularly the flapping fan to which the view is tracking and at the same time to avoid overloading the walls with formulaic realism. The fact that they are eating and another that it’s not the main living room should be enough to indicate this is the kitchen. That we never again return here during daytime (or night, for that matter) helps.
Tuition on the bed.
After dinner, they are in bed—doing English alphabets. What the shot covers is Cat, Fat and Rat but the core is Fat at which there is a pause and exchange of glances. Pregnancy, we understand. Notice that the shot would not work if the tracking camera didn’t stop synchronous with the pause at Fat as it does.
Next, an evening at a cinema theatre.
The choice of film they have gone to watch is interesting. It’s a mythological involving a child as the main character. This twin consideration brings out the contrast of response in the parents-to-be, one an educated city bred writer and the other raised in a village. It’s no coincidence that the ‘incubating’ parent, the mother, is the one that’s given to a belief in the gods.
The legend of child devotee Dhruv is a well known story from Indian mythology but the snatch shown is sufficient to get a hang of the issue for audience all over the world. The scene is reminiscent of the Jatra sequence from PP. Child Apu’s excitement there is now transferred to the deeply-moved first timer Aparna here. Irrespective of the medium, the crudity, make-believe and stretching credulity to near breaking point is common to both forms.
The narration moves on through a dissolve between matching rectangles of the film’s frame and what turns out to be a phaeton’s rear-view window. Home bound after an evening at the films, we say. Far from looking like a gimmick, the transition works as a genuinely innovative device.
The phaeton scene is going to be the peak of marital bliss—verging on ayyashi—that Apu is ever going to experience. It begins with Aparna complaining of wasteful expenditure on the ride but Apu’s explanation that she would soon be gone softens her. From there Apu goes on to ‘seduce’ her to lighting up his forbidden smoke. He then sits back like a zamindar, a feudal lord that Calcutta teemed with at the time, with his ‘personal’ concubine amorously lit from below as streetlight shadows pass over him one after another.
Seating the two characters must have been a major consideration before setting out to write this scene. To have them sit side by side would be a compelling idea but then the possibility of longing looks would be out and touching (and beyond) mandatory.
Ray chooses the romance of longing looks.
Notice the quality of dialogue writing that Ray went on to develop and peak in Charulata (1964).
“What has happened? Anger, sorrow or pride?” Says Apu.
Instead of “Are you angry?”, it’s a writer-poet getting romantic.
“Anger.”
Aparna doesn’t look angry but rather pretty. While she keeps looking away for pauses, he throws his head back to look up as though to soak in the experience. (Perhaps his window is closed too.)
“Why?”
“Can’t I board a bus or tram?”
“Those are too crowded. How comfortable we are we here!”
We do not yet know she is pregnant.
“But it’s expensive.”
“That is 7 annas.”
The currency throws us back in those olden times.
“So?”
“You will go back after a few days, then the expenditure will be half.”
That’s the first hint she is pregnant.
“That is for two months.”
We needn’t look for signs of pregnancy; they wouldn’t be there. Apu’s abiding memory of her is going to be as a beloved wife, not as a mother of his child.
“Are two months any less?”
“But the expenditure will increase after my return.”
That confirms pregnancy.
“That it will,” he agrees reluctantly, then resumes, “You know I don’t want you to go. But your mother wrote in such a way and I thought that in this time…”
“So that’s good. You’ll be relieved, at least for two months.”
A touch of coquetry.
“No, but one thing will be done, that is the writing of my novel will be resumed. I didn’t write a single line after marriage.”
“Is that my fault?”
Another challenge.
“It’s your quality.” The writer is back with his play on words. “Do you know how important is my writing to me? But you are more than that.”
“Really?”
“I’ll dedicate that novel to you.”
“What word is that?”
She’s all the time learning new words.
“To my wife.”
“I know the meaning of wife!”
“You don’t know. I know that.”
The writer again.
“I also know that.”
She’s catching up.
He takes out a cigarette but stops midway before lighting it. Humour. Aparna sees his disappointment, then relents. She strikes the match and lights his cigarette.
“Well, what do you have in your eyes?”
The poet in love again. Just as it began.
“Kaajal.”
She doesn’t lag much behind.
Saying so she puts out a long held flame.
Fade out
This is the last intimate exchange the couple has in the film. Their child is named Kajal, the kohl in the eyes…
It’s for the first and only time that they are sitting face to face, bathing in each other’s love. All along otherwise it would be in one or the other formation. Ray’s mise-en-scene is full of situations using degrees of angle at which characters interact with each other. That would be a palette of sorts, to represent levels of engagement through the film. In this respect, Kanchanjangha (1962) is a tour de force where characters pair off and go walking around a mountain hill. The middle class job seeker, who we saw all along edging up to the domineering Rai Bahadur sideways, confronts him face to face for the final showdown.
Notice changes of mood over the brief run of the scene. Hers from angry to smiling to teasing, then via a momentary sternness to being the seductress lighting his cigarette. His by comparison is a steady lovelorn, drinking-from-the-eyes look, deeply troubled by the impending separation. And not to forget, the touch of humour around smoking. In classical Indian aesthetics, of which it has to be said Ray was not quite enamoured, shringaar and haasya rasas—erotic and the comic—blend very well.
The scene is a razor-edge experience where the brimming river never leaves its banks.
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Notice camera placements of the scene. With both characters sitting without shifting, camera could have been placed on either side of the Imaginary Line. But it’s been placed on the ‘cramped’ side of the cabin.
This helps in two ways. One that it avoids having to show the view through the side windows. That would be an overload after the vehicle’s movement has been adequately suggested through direct play of lights in the rear view window and shadows from streetlights passing over Apu.
Secondly, it provides an opportunity for trying out a ‘technique offensive’ which Ray was quite fond of. The highest point of this was achieved in Nayak (1965) which creates a perfect illusion of train journey shot entirely on poorly equipped studio sets of Calcutta. The phaeton scene in Apur Sansar is Ray’s first success of studio shooting in creating illusion of a moving vehicle through back projection. This after a failed attempt an year earlier in Jalsaghar (1958) where the nobleman hero rides to his death. That moment is an embarrassing patch on that otherwise perfect film.
Notice Apu’s dress. It’s an ironed soft silk kurta. Just a white floral garland wrapped in his wrist would make him look like a young landlord.
Notice nightlight shadows falling over Apu as they go. Often they are mixed with other passing sources but at crucial moments there are oblique wipes of light crossing his face as though he might be living a dream. This is high pleasure for Apu that is not going to last very long.
Reminiscent once again of Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu Monagatari (1953) where the husband is overwhelmed by luxuries of the world of ghosts from which he is soon going to wake up.
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The fade out of the phaeton scene is rather on the longish side—a semicolon of sorts—and when the view opens, we are at the railway station.
This would be another example of a fade that does not break the chapter; the first was between the couple’s wedding ceremony and the bridal night. From dissolves marking out snippets constituting the montage, this one denotes a longer passage of time and as such the concluding section of that same montage.
The overhead clock in the railway station and the associated din, night. The departure scene, you say. And so it is.
Already?
The scene is constructed in two contrasting idioms. Stark realistic and, for want of a better word, ethereal. And both cut with each other without in any way softening the edges.
After the clock, the view leads to the railway compartment following a luggage trolley and through criss-crossing figures. Standing outside, Apu is speaking to Aparna’s brother Murli, telling him, hurrying him to get in.
“Goodbye Apu-da. Are you coming for Puja?”
“I want to, brother. You must send a telegram after reaching as the letter will take three days to be delivered. Now, get on.”
Then turning to Aparna, he has nothing to talk but just look at her in sorrow. The silent exchange between the two is the ethereal idiom, broken only by the guard’s whistle.
Aparna’s shot is striking in its composition. Almost ‘studio’ lit—no dim lighting of the station’s ambience affects this image—her oval face fills out the Academy Aperture frame at the top and the bottom. There is no background movement, even for flavour, of a passing passenger in the background, for example. That kind of realism is kept exclusively for Apu’s shot. Aparna’s face, by comparison, is suspended in the dark.
This is perhaps why—besides the sequential momentum spoken about earlier—the scene has been staged at night. Eventually it’s the dark of the night that swallows the train that carries Aparna away.
The foreboding of Aparna’s death, which is critical to the narration at this point, is brought out almost exclusively by the aesthetics of this shot. Aparna’s last look is our take-away from this scene, as it should be of Apu’s too.
Here is how their last minute conversation goes, as the train starts to move.
“Will you come?”
“Have I ever broken a promise?”
“Write to me twice a week.”
“Will you write too?”
“Not unless you do.”
“Write to my office or Mr Ray will open your letters.”
“Listen… Oh I’m forgetting everything. Pintoo’s mother is making Mohan Bhog for you. Please have it.”
“Yes.”
And we owe the grocery money.”
“Yes.”
“I left some jewellery behind. Keep it safe, will you?”
“Please take care of yourself.”
The train has gathered speed and Apu has to break away.
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Two more things about this sequence. One, it’s so conceived as to have Aparna already sitting in the train and not, say, walking heavy with pregnancy. In fact none of the snatches of the montage after the paper bag bursting prank show Aparna physically active since that would involve showing her through stages of pregnancy. This would be in keeping with the subtle, visually underplayed portrayal of pregnancy that has been kept for the trilogy. Back in PP Sarbojaya too was never quite seen pregnant with Apu.
Perhaps this is a part of Ray’s worldview as a whole. His abiding view of the women is essentially as a normal human being, pregnancy being a temporary ‘distraction’ of nature that was aesthetically ungainly. I don’t recall any instances of pregnancy or delivery from any other of his films.
Secondly, there has been much back and forth between Calcutta and Aparna’s village but this is the first time we are learning train travel to be a part of it. As a style the whole process has been broken up and used at different places. So, to piece together, you go there by train, then by boat and finally walk along the river. The last is the only one repeated and gone over more than once in the later part of the film.
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Grateful acknowledgements: Monish K Das