(Note: This piece was originally published on April 25, 2023 and is being republished on the occasion of Satyajit Ray's birth anniversary)
Satyajit Ray’s ‘feel’ for the documentary format may perhaps be traced back to his work with Harisadhan Dasgupta when Ray penned the screenplay for Dasgupta’s A Perfect Day in 1948. This was an ad film shot in the documentary style. It unfolded a day in the life of a smoker who buys a pack of cigarettes in the morning. The camera follows him till the end of the day when the packet is empty.
Ray’s rapport with Dasgupta continued through a few more ad and corporate films. He scripted the latter's Tata Iron and Steel and wrote the musical score of Quest for Hell made for Sandoz. They produced two films jointly. One, made for the Dunlop group, was titled Our Children Will Know Each Other Better and the other, The Brave Never Die, was for the West Bengal State government on floods.
“He could have created a storm even if he had made documentaries alone,” said the late Harisadhan Dasgupta, a friend of Ray and a brilliant documentary filmmaker.
If Ray’s documentaries on Tagore, Binode Bihari Mukhopadhyay, and his blind painter-teacher from Santiniketan are examples, if his short film Two for French television and Three Daughters (Teen Kanya) are illustrations, then Dasgupta’s comment was simply a statement of fact without exaggeration.