For a film maker, an Oscar is like a Nobel Prize, you know. So I am very happy… delighted. There is nothing more after this. I cannot hope to get anything more prestigious.
SATYAJIT RAYI’ve made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.
More Satyajit Ray Quotes
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I was interested in both Western and Indian classical music.
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Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens.
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I don’t start a film with the heroine but with the cinema subject. If there is a woman in the story, she has to be of a particular type. It’s not as if I start with Madhuri Dixit and then think what kind of film.
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When I’m shooting on location, you get ideas on the spot – new angles. You make not major changes but important modifications, that you can’t do on a set. I do that because you have to be economical.
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I’ve made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.
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My films play only in Bengal, and my audience is the educated middle class in the cities and small towns. They also play in Bombay, Madras and Delhi where there is a Bengali population.
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Well the Bombay film wasn’t always like how it is now. It did have a local industry. There were realistic films made on local scenes. But it gradually changed over the years.
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I wouldn’t mind taking a rest for three or four months, but I have to keep on making films for the sake of my crew, who just wait for the next film because they’re not on a fixed salary.
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The only solutions that are ever worth anything are the solutions that people find themselves.
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It was only after Pather Panchali had some success at home that I decided to do a second part. But I didn’t want to do the same kind of film again, so I made a musical.
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There’s always some room for improvisation.
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When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I’m familiar with. I don’t write stories about the nineteenth century.
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The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.
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Particularly in the final stages I always find that I’m rushed. It’s dangerous when you’re rushed in the editing stage, most of my early films are flawed in the cutting.
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At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music.
SATYAJIT RAY