Speeches & Articles

Remarks
Consul General Beth A. Payne
Satyajit Ray’s Favorite Hollywood Films
Kolkata Film Festival
November 11, 2008

November 11, 2008

Mr. Nilanjan Chatterjee, Director, Kolkata Film Festival
Mr. Peter Rainer, President, National Society of Film Critics
Mr. Josef Lindner, Film Preservationist at the Academy
Ladies and Gentlemen
 
"I have a feeling that, within the commercial set-up in the United States, some films were made that were unmatched in their brilliance in any part of the world."  No, that's not me talking – I’m quoting from the Master himself.  Satjajit Ray said this during a well-known interview with Jyotirmoy Dutta and Karuna Shankar Roy in 1969.

Of course that's not the only time that Ray referred to American cinema, or Hollywood films when asked about movies and directors that might have influenced him.  In many of his writings, Ray paid rich tribute to American films, directors and actors.  He has written extensively about many of these people, and also met some of them personally during his trips to the U.S.

This is the first year that the American Consulate has participated in the Kolkata Film Festival.  I think it is appropriate that our debut honor one of the world’s most talented directors, Satyajit Ray, by highlighting the American films that influenced the Master as he developed his own particular genius.

How did we decide which films to choose?  If you look through Ray’s voluminous writings, it isn’t hard to discover which films he loved because he wrote about them with feeling.  Consult his journals and magazine articles, in both Bangla and English, and the names of certain directors, actors, and films are mentioned repeatedly.  And so, based on his writings, we came up with a list of seven films that Ray talked and wrote about most lovingly, by the master film directors Jean Renoir, Ernst Lubitsch, John Huston, Orson Wells, Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock. 

To this esteemed list, we added the inimitable Marx Brothers.  This gave us the final seven films for the package, with one glaring omission:  no film directed by John Ford.  Despite all our efforts, we could not locate a properly copyright cleared, good print of either The Stagecoach or The Wagon Master, both films beloved by Ray.  Yes, John Ford should surely have been here, but maybe next year!  He demands special attention.  After all, in his book written in 1949, “Our Films, Their Films,” Ray wrote a separate chapter entitled "A Tribute to John Ford.”
 
It was also hard to leave out other films that we know Ray loved; films we would have liked to see screened during the Kolkata Film Festival.  However, many of the films we left out are easily available in Kolkata.  These include famous Charlie Chaplin films such as Gold Rush, City Lights and The Great Dictator.  I’ve noticed that Charlie Chaplin movies are often shown on the Metro station platforms, which is a telling comment on the level of sophistication of the film-watching public here.
 
The only other American filmmaker for whom Ray devotes a whole chapter in that book is Jean Renoir, a filmmaker for whom Ray had lifelong respect.  This chapter, written before Ray had even directed a film, begins with the sentence, "My decision to see Renoir at his hotel was more or less a desperate one.”  Forty-three years later, after all his films were made and just a few months before his death, in his last book “My Years With Apu,” Satyajit Ray wrote, "One of the most dramatic incidents of my life was my meeting with Jean Renoir."
 
We therefore decided that our film package should be inaugurated with a film by Renoir.  And the choice was easy:  In “Our Films, Their Films” Ray wrote that Renoir’s “The Southerner” showed authentic America, with real people.  He considered it Renoir’s best American film.  So, The Southerner it had to be, as it is one of Satyajit Ray's best-loved films, made by one of his favorite directors.
 
Today we are fortunate to have with us Mr. Peter Rainer, an internationally acclaimed film critic, who tells me that his passion is Satyajit Ray.  He is of course much better equipped than I am to speak about Hollywood's influence on Satyajit Ray, which he will do in a moment.
 
Before I end, I would like to thank the UCLA Film Archive which sent this print of The Southerner especially for this festival.  The Academy of Motion Pictures, USA, has given us the prints of all the other films.  I thank the Academy, and especially Mr. Josef Lindner, the Academy's Film Preservationist, who is also here with us tonight. 
 
Joe and the Academy have not only given us this package of Hollywood films, but also a very special package of Satyajit Ray's own films, which the Academy of Motion Pictures have restored.  The prints are all brand new, and will be screened for the first time in Kolkata at Nandan  3, beginning today at 3 PM.
 
Again, our sincere thanks to the organizers of the Kolkata Film Festival, to Mr. Nilanjan Chatterjee and to all his colleagues for organizing this wonderful festival every year.  And a special thanks to West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who has been a strong supporter of the film festival and who has for many years encouraged the U.S. Consulate to participate.  Thank you all.  Happy viewing!