8/8/2019 Satyajit Ray at Work the Making of 'the Players'

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HpHE Hindi cinema is no longerA wh at it used to be a few yearsago: a cultural desert where thefiims of Bimay Roy and Guru Puttprovided the only patches of green.Today the greenery stands out alittle more prominently. We nowhave at 4least half a dozen direc-tors whose films are different fromthe stereotyped products bearingthe trad e m ark of th e Bom bay-based industry.Some of these directors havediscarded altogether the norms thatgovern the average commercialfilm. Others have continued toiadhere to them in varying degrees.^In spite of these differences, how-ever, all of them share a few thingsin com mon. (They handle meaning-ful themes and try "to establishcredible plots. They also show aconcern for authenticity or realism-in acting and the choice of sets.In other words, unlike in the in*

dustry, where stars and music direc-tors rule the roast, they seek toassert the supremacy of the direc-tor)The commercial success of suchfilms as Nishant, Ankur and Rajni-gandha has been so encouragingthat some barons of the film in-dustry have themselves come for-ward to finance independent-mind-ed directors. They realise by nowthat small-budget films can and doreap h andsome pro fits ^ But willthey agree to invest big money in.a film which eschews the son%~and-dance formula?*The answer to that will dependto & considerable extent # thepublic response to Satyajit Ray's1 first venture in Hindi, Shcitranj keKhilari (The Chess Players). Cur-rently under product/on the film,i based on a sho rt story by Munstrij Premc hand is expected to cost aboqtRs. 35 lakhs which is the invest-ment on an average 'commercial'

film. However, for Ray the sumrepresents nearly four times thebudget oi any of his pictures madein Bengali.

as a metaphor for the manoeuvresby the East India Company whichfinally led to the annexation cf i th eKingdom of Oudh.Once he had determined thestructure of Che screen play-r-infact he had sketched virtually everyshot in his "red book"he had toovercome the language barrier. Hedid have a smattering of Hindi butthis was obviously no t sufficient.So he wrote the dialogue in.

English and. for the first time,sought the assistance of translators.Shama Zaidi, who also designedthe costumes, and laved Siddiqui,who joined the unit as an assistantdirector, had a difficult task onhand. They did not want to usethe Urdu which was spoken inWajid's time for it would havesounded much too archaic. At thesame time the dialogue had to haveLucknowi flavour.This was not all. The y had to

write several kinds of dialogue.One was the Persianised, flowerycourt language used by the inter-preters and the courtiers. The otherwas the much simpler form of idio-matic Urd u spoken by Mir andMirza. They had also to think ofthe Urdu used by the women whichis different from the one spokenby the men: it is less Persianisedand consists of many sayings whichonly women use. Finally, they hadto work out dialogue in Awa dhispoken by the servants.

Ray says that he did not firstread the story and then decide tomake the film in Hindi. The deci-sion was dictated by the fad thatblack-and-white raw stock is diffi-cult to obtain, He was thereforeobliged to work in colour. Andcolour fi!m being expensive he wasforced to think in terms of a largermarket.This is how he chose to makea film in Hxidi. He had read TheChess Players at Shantiniketan inthe early 'forties. At that time fthad struck him vaguely that thestory could be turned into an in-teresting film. But he had for-gotten all about it "until he seri-ously began to toy with a projectia Hindi. The chance to realise itcame his way when a, young Amen*can-trained-engineer - turned-produ-cer Surcsh Jidda/, offered to footthe bill.j Once the deal was finalised Kayj se t about facing the real challenges.\ For one thing the original storyabout two noblemen in Luckflowwho are obsessed with the gameof chessseemod to be too shortto make SK^H-length feature. Hetherefore I med th e chess game

The next step consisted of select-ing the real locations, designing thestudio sets and the costumes andchoosing the accessories. For these,tasks Ray's familiarity with Luck-now and its culture proved help'ful (he spent every other lonR vacation in the city with his mother fora number of years. Indeed the firsdetective story he wrote for children had Lucknow as a background).Long before he began the shootinghe hunted for locations togetherwith his art director, Bansi Chan-dragupta, for four days. One wholeday was spending observing thesunlight. The two then poured overold prints and paintings and drewthe final sketches.

Likewise Ray took a personal in-terest in choosing the material forthe costumes and the accessories.While they easily found silk clothwith traditional designs, the cheap-er materials meant to clothe theservants was difficult to come by.Shama Zaidi had the costumesstitched by hand so that the mach-ine-stitching would not show in theclose-ups. She also had the costum-es washed, soared in tea. water andrubbed with dirt, shoe polish andfabric paint to give them an "age-ing" look.Ray's obsession with details wasalso evident in the efforts he put,m to find the right kinds of shoes,sword's, walking sticks, pistols,shawls, jewellery and wigs. Forthe pistols, for example, they wentto every gun dealer in Calcutta.They did no t come across anyperiod guns. Finally they got whatthey wanted two splendid silverpistols;at a police training school.One of its staff members was es-pecially hired to keep a constantwat^h on them . ... , ,;Shama fi$i

spent a considerable am oun t oftime designing the wigs. Indeed onhis return from the Teheran 'filmfestival he stopped for three hoursin Bombay and dashed to the houseof one of his principal actors, San-:jeev K um ar, just to check that the jfall of his wig was corre ct. Th e :coifures of the women also posedprob lem s: in Wajid*s time thesewere rather elaborate affairs. Thehair had to be combed tightly, thenlacquered and covered with a cloth.,This proved to be a bit cumbersome \for the actresses. So they had tndesign something simpler.Ray also sought the advice ofexperts to choose the ghazals andthe thumris which he wanted forthe film. One of them will be acomp osition - by W ajid AH Shah

himself. The film contains a dance-ballet (Raas) sequence as well. Itis being choreographed by the re-nowned exponent of Kathak, BirjuMaharaj.

With most of these details settl-ed, Ray went abou t selecting hiscast. He knew that for a film ofhis kind he would need profession-al actors. He found most of themin Bombay's cinema industry. San-jeev Kumar he had thought of assoon as he decided to make thefilm. He had appreciated ArnjadKhan's role in Sholay and ShabaeiaA/mi's in Atikv? H^ h^A - e w i nrtitiu s in Anfcur* He rtad seenSaeed Jaffrey, an Indian actor liv-ing in London, play a small partin Guru and was immediatelystruck by his '.'interesting face."

Clearly the waking of ShatranjKe Khilari has been an exciting ex-perience for them. Take the case ofSanjeev Kumar. He is a busy actorin the Bombay industry rushingfrom studio to studio, playing thepart of a lawyer in the morning, adoctor in the afternoon, a loverlater on and an old father in theevening. But here he spent all histime only playing Mirza. And hedoes so with consu mm ate skill.iLHere I feel like an actor,'1 he says."1 am treated as an actor. Starsfade bat actors do not,"

For Sated Jaffrey, too., workingunder Ray has been a most ins-tructive exercise. "He is like a gar-dener who had chosen his flowers.He knows their nature and so hegives them enough air and light so(hat they can grow in an organicway," he says. And he adds: "Shiva'seye sees all."

Small wonder that all the mem-bers of the un it beginn ing fromthe producer, Suresh Jindat, downto the clapper-boy and productionassistants are confident that SatranjKe Khilari promises to strike a dif-ferent note in the gene ral caco-,phony of Hindi films. If the filmturns out to be a success it willgo some way to silence the big pro-ducers of the film industry who jus-,tify their big-budget extravaganzason the ground that they "give theaudiences what they want."

Ray himself speaks about theprospects of his film with, quietoptimism. "I think it will run*" he^saysi "I do feel that there is a dif-ferent kind of audienc e for in sHindi film." Then , after a pau se,}"it v*'i!l run and it will still b re-cogni*:rt as my