Pather Panchali - Legacy

Legacy

Pather Panchali was followed by two films that continued the tale of Apu's life—Aparajito (The Unvanquished) in 1956 and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) in 1959. The three films are together known as the Apu Trilogy. Aparajito portrays the adolescent Apu, his education in the rural school and in a Calcutta college. The central theme in Aparajito is the poignant relation between a doting mother and her young ambitious boy. Apur Sansar tells the story of the brief family life of Apu, his reaction at the premature death of his wife, and finally bonding with his son whom he left as an infant. Both the two sequels won multiple national and international awards. Ray did not have any specific plan to make a trilogy from the start. Indeed, he planned to make the third installment only after being asked about the possibility of a trilogy at the 1957 Venice Film Festival, where Aparajito won the Golden Lion award.

Pather Panchali ushered in a new tradition of film-making in India, one in which authenticity and social realism were key themes (see Parallel Cinema), breaking the rule of the Indian film establishment of the time. Although described as a turning point in Indian cinema, some commentators opined that Pather Panchali did not usher in a modern age in Indian cinema. Rather, the film refined an already existent "realist textual principle" in Indian cinema. In 1963, Time noted that thanks to Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray was one of the "hardy little band of inspired pioneers" of a new cinematic movement that was enjoying a good number of imitators worldwide. The film has since been considered as a "global landmark" and "among the essential moviegoing experiences".

Sight & Sound, the British Film Institute's film magazine, included the film several times in its Critics' Poll list of all-time greatest films, in 1962 (ranked at #11), 1992 (ranked at #6) and 2002 (ranked at #22). In 1998, in the Asian film magazine Cinemaya's critics' poll of all-time greatest films, Pather Panchali was ranked at #2 on the list. The Village Voice ranked the film at #12 (tied with The Godfather) in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics.

Pather Panchali was included in various other all-time greatest film lists, including Time Out magazine's "Centenary Top One Hundred Films" in 1995, the San Francisco Chronicle "Hot 100 Films From the Past" in 1997, the Rolling Stone "100 Maverick Movies of the Last 100 Years" in 1999, "The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made" in 2002, and the British Film Institute's Top Fifty "Must See" Children's Films in 2005, as well as BFI's "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time. The Apu Trilogy as a whole was included in film critic Roger Ebert's list of "100 Great Movies" in 2001 and in Time magazine's All-Time 100 best movies list in 2005.

Following Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray went on to make a total of thirty-seven films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. His works included scripting, casting, scoring, cinematography, art direction, editing and designing his own credit titles and publicity material. He developed a distinctive style of film-making, with visual lyricism and strong humanism forming the basis of his works, as in his debut film Pather Panchali. Consequently Ray established himself as an auteur of cinema.