Pather Panchali is director Satyajit Ray's first film, and perhaps his best known. A longtime admirer of film, Ray took a great deal of inspiration from Italian neorealism, particularly Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thief. Ray wanted to make a film that felt as immediate and emotionally affecting as some of the European cinema he enjoyed, but also wanted to imbue his narrative with a distinctly Indian perspective.
Ray faced issues with funding throughout his direction of the film, which made the shooting a process a three-year ordeal. With the help of Monroe Wheeler, who worked for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Government of West Bengal, Ray was able to make his film. In an article about the film in The Guardian, film critic Stuart Jeffries writes, "On the first day of the shoot, the director had never directed, the cameraman had never shot a scene, the children in the leading roles hadn't been tested and the soundtrack was composed by a then-obscure sitarist (the great Ravi Shankar). Perhaps this inexperience gave everyone involved the freedom to create something new." This novelty of the filming process led to several roadblocks, but also to a freshness of perspective that can be felt viscerally in the film, a sense of wonder that mirrors the child protagonists of the film and imbues it with a liveliness and humanity that got honored with the Best Human Document award at Cannes.
Ray's first film set him up for a successful career in cinema. While some critics disparaged the film, most cinephiles appreciated its raw honesty and affecting storytelling. In a write-up of the film on the website for MoMA, curator Charles Silver writes, "After Ray’s film was shown at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, his reputation was established and his career as a director was launched—even though the film did not begin its record-breaking run at the Fifth Avenue Playhouse in New York until 1958. It had been an enormous critical and commercial success in India."
