KOLKATA: Cine buffs within the metropolis have welcomed Union minister for info and broadcasting Anurag Thakur’s announcement to confer the Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award on movie-makers Istvan Szabo and Martin Scorsese on the 52nd International Film Festival of India (IFFI). According to the Ray household, this can be a becoming tribute to the legend on his centenary 12 months.
Sandip Ray stated, “I have been watching Szabo’s films for a long time. He has been a festival favourite and I loved his ‘Mephisto’. I am not sure if Szabo has watched my father’s films, but Scorsese has spoken about them on a number of occasions. Scorsese has been instrumental in restoring Baba’s films and was really keen that the honorary Oscar be bestowed on my father.”
In world cinema, 78-year-previous Scorsese and 83-year-previous Szabo are two of the best and most influential movie-makers representing the New Hollywood period and European auteurism respectively. Director Anik Dutta, who’s taking pictures a movie based mostly on the making of ‘Pather Panchali’, stated, “Scorsese was deeply inspired by Ray. One can even trace inspirations of Ray’s ‘Abhijan’ in Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’.”
Scorsese has been beneficiant in his admiration of Ray’s cinema and the way he beloved the director’s method of presenting a nuanced perspective about Indian cinema to the worldwide viewers. He was mesmerized the day he watched all three movies of the Apu Trilogy at one go in a Manhattan theatre. From Subrata Mitra’s shut-ups of Apu’s eyes in ‘Pather Panchali’ to Pt Ravi Shankar’s rating, every part took his breath away and left a everlasting impression on him.
Director Atanu Ghosh stated that, in phrases of movie-making, Istvan Szabo and Martin Scorsese are very totally different. “Scorsese is a torch-bearer to Ray because he continued the tradition that Ray and other iconic directors of that generation initiated and propagated. Another interesting turn in the history of film-making came through a group represented by Szabo,” Ghosh stated.
Like Ray, the search for roots and identification, pangs of guilt, redemption and religion affected Scorsese. “Szabo has explored psychological complexity over and over. Films of both Szabo and Scorsese have repeatedly renewed their trust in humanism. Their subjects concerned common people and their surroundings. While Scorsese gained universal acclaim portraying the universality of taxi drivers across the world, tram cars and their passengers have played a dominant role in many of Szabo’s films,” Ghosh stated.
Film scholar Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay stated, “Those like me who grew up with the film society movement in Kolkata in the 70s have a special interest in Szabo’s cinema. His ‘Mephisto’ remains a cult work and inspires our artistic conscience in times of crisis. Conferring an award on the maker of ‘You’ and ‘Budapest Tales’ is a very wise decision.”
