In 1992, Satyajit Ray received an honorary Academy Award for an extensive career of soulful, thoughtful realist dramas that included films like The Music Room, An Enemy of the People, and Devi, as well as his most celebrated contribution to the fabric of world cinema, his beloved Apu trilogy (1954 – 1959). When the Apu films (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, and Apur Sansar) were shown, in clips, at the Oscar telecast, the producers winced at their poor quality. The prints of the Apu trilogy were shipped to London shortly after the broadcast for immediate restoration. There was, in London, a nitrate fire in the film vault (older nitrate prints are notorious for how fragile and immensely combustible they are), and the only known prints of the Apu trilogy were severely damaged. At the time, the Academy deemed the prints to be unsalvageable, and we would have to content ourselves to watch Ray's masterpieces on old VHS tapes. For decades, it seemed like the films were more or less lost.
In 2013, the venerable Criterion Collection and the Academy Archive, armed with updated technology and a fervent obsession with cinema and posterity – not to mention the cooperation of an Italian restoration house – began the epic project of meticulously restoring the Apu trilogy to its original glory. The work that was done is nothing short of miraculous. The films are clean and gorgeous and do not show a single sign that they had ever been damaged. Only an errant scratch here or there marks their age.
The three films in The Apu Trilogy are, not to put too fine a point on it, among the best films ever made. They are a biography of a young boy who grows into a man, but free of the grandiose narrative histrionics or obscene melodrama that dominated Indian cinema at the time (Bollywood is often known for overwrought romantic musicals). They are quiet and realistic. they feel intimate and personable, as if we're spending time with a friend, or perhaps even living in this world ourselves. They ache with sadness and loss, as when the young Apu loses his elderly aunt, his sister, his father, his mother, his bride.
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