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Critics Consensus: A film that requires and rewards patience in equal measure, Pather Panchali finds director Satyajit Ray delivering a classic with his debut.
Critic Consensus: A film that requires and rewards patience in equal measure, Pather Panchali finds director Satyajit Ray delivering a classic with his debut.
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All Critics (42) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (41) | Rotten (1) | DVD (2)
Beautiful, sometimes funny, and full of love, it brought a new vision of India to the screen.
It is a pastoral poem dappled with the play of brilliant images and strong, dark feelings, a luminous revelation of Indian life in language that all the world can understand.
Satyajit Ray's beautiful first feature.
Film justly won the 'most human document award' at the 1956 Cannes Film Fest, unveiling a mature film talent in director Satyajit Ray.
A masterpiece, inarguably.
There are lovely little threads in the strange fabric. It's a film that takes patience to be enjoyed.
Ray put his passion into the film and created a nuanced and delicate film.
Extremely touching in its simplicity, emotional range and visual beauty, it's no wonder it became the first Indian film to achieve widespread international acclaim and establish Ray as a master filmmaker.
Incredibly, Ray had never directed a scene before Pather Panchali, Mitra had never shot one, and the children who were cast hadn't even been tested. Just how this team of novices fashioned one of cinema's enduring classics is a miraculous mystery.
Apu (Subir Banerjee) gets a real childhood, despite the family's poverty, with time to play and to learn that he can make choices, and the results of having those simple opportunities will become evident in the two later films.
The rewards are rich and unforgettable.
Satyajit Ray's glowingly hardscrabble debut
Nothing spectacular at all. Entirely overrated. I like old movies (and foreign films) but hardly anything happens in this one!
Super Reviewer
An impressive achievement considering that this was Ray's first film, and he displays an enormous confidence in the direction of this hypnotizing and realistic look into the life of a Bengali family struggling with poverty as witnessed by the eyes of an eight year-old boy.
it's hard to believe satyajit ray and his cinematographer had never worked on a film before this. they had observed renoir filming the river and with his encouragement and the inspiration of italian neorealism made this poetic masterpiece about life in a small bengal village circa 1920, a really timeless film. i love films about india and i'm looking forward to the rest of this series. there's huge natural talent at work here
[font=Century Gothic]"Pather Panchali" is the first part of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy. This film focuses on a poor family with a prestigious past living in rural India. The father has dreams of becoming a writer/poet/playwright, even as he accepts a job to do a landowner's accounts to support his family.(It should be noted that we rarely see him or any of the other men of the village.) However, he does have a kind heart, one that clashes with the reality of the situation.[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]"Pather Panchali" is really a simple, uiniversal story, about a struggling family. There is not a lot of plot to speak of; it is much more character driven. I thought the camerawork was very graceful. The film quietly builds up to its powerful climax. [/font]
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