QUESTIONS
1. Regarding which film did Satyajit Ray write to Marie Seton, author of Portrait of a Director: Satyajit Ray: ‘It’s certainly not for the Bond addicts!’
2. Who was the actor whom Ray described using the following words?
“He was able to mimic some of our well-known stage actors. He was exceedingly gifted. And he seemed quite unaware of the camera, completely stage-free and unselfconscious. A very rare kind of boy.”
3. When she first met Ray, she wore a pearl necklace to impress him, which he promptly told her she must take off. She learned all the dialogues of the character she was supposed to play from the original script, then found it had been revised during the eight months’ halt in shooting. Who was she?
4. “Some day I’ll make a great film!” remarked Ray in 1948 to his friend, who laughed thinking Ray was joking. Who was this friend?
5. Ray wrote about this movie, ‘… it just gored me. I was terribly excited, also, because I already had this idea of making Pather Panchali, but I wasn’t sure whether one could really work with an entirely amateur cast.’ Which movie was this?
6. Ray did the cover for some editions of this literary magazine called Ekkhon. One of the editors was Nirmalya Acharya. Who was the other editor of this magazine? (The name has been digitally removed from this cover)
7. He had great influence on Ray’s works. Rabindranath Tagore commented in 1898 that he was ‘the first Bengali who learnt the half-tone process (photography) by himself and quickly succeeded in improving it’.The Penrose Annual, Volume X, 1904-05, mentioned him in an editorial note, commenting that “… is evidently possessed of a mathematical quality of mind and he has reasoned out for himself the problems of half-tone work in a remarkably successful manner …” Who we are talking about?
8. Ray asked this actor how he managed to get his eyes so wide open, because he had normal kind of small eyes. He said: “Eisenstein made me do it … at the end of the day I would have muscle pains all over my body.” Who is this actor?
9. Which film’s illustration is this?
10. Which are the two movies for which Ray won the National Award for Best Music Director?
And the correct answers to the Ray quiz are...
THE WINNER IS...
SUPARNA BHATTACHARYA of AE Block. Congratulations, Suparna. You will receive a token of appreciation from us. We also thank all the other readers who took part in the quiz.
Suparna Bhattacharya pens her thoughts on Satyajit Ray and the quiz:
My first exposure to Satyajit Ray was at the age of 12 through his films. We lived in Patna, where there was only one cinema hall which released Bengali films at long intervals. During Rabindrajayanti, they released Teen Kanya. That was the first time I heard of Ray, that a very fine director’s film had released and we were going to watch it. I loved Samapti and Monihara as one was comedy and the other in the horror space. Even now when I watch Monihara I get goosebumps.
Later, through friends, I read a few editions of Sandesh. Those magazines were not widely available as one had to subscribe to receive them. When my friends visited Calcutta, they sometimes brought back books and magazines which we all shared and read.
Each of Ray’s works is special. My all-time favourite is Charulata. Soumitra and Madhabi’s acting, the emotions, the portrayal of the period — everything was so beautiful — as also the subject of the film — the loneliness and emotions of Charu. Ray made the story and characters come alive.
But it is Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne that I have watched the most number of times and till now every time I watch this film I enjoy it just as much.
I was happy to see the quiz in last Friday’s edition of The Telegraph Salt Lake and sat down with it post-lunch with my daughter. We got all the answers in around 45 minutes.
