Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker

Description

Akira Kurosawa said of the great director: 'Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon.' Martin Scorsese remarked on Ray's birth centenary in 2021: 'The films of Satyajit Ray are truly treasures of cinema, and everyone with an interest in film needs to see them.' Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye is the definitive biography, based on extensive interviews with Ray himself, his actors and collaborators, and a deep knowledge of Bengali culture. Andrew Robinson provides an in-depth critical account of each film in an astonishingly versatile career, from Ray's directorial debut Pather Panchali (1955) to his final feature Agantuk (1991). The third (centenary) edition includes new material: an epilogue, 'A century of Ray', about the nature of his genius; a wide-ranging conversation with Ray drawn from the author's interviews; and an updated comprehensive bibliography of Ray's writings.

Andrew Robinson is the author of more than two dozen books on a wide range of subjects. They include biographies of artists and scientists such as Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein, a large-format photographic study, Satyajit Ray: A Vision of Cinema (2005), and The Apu Trilogy: Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic (2011). He has also written about Ray for major newspapers and magazines, such as the Financial Times, the New York Times, American Cinematographer and Sight and Sound.

Extremely thorough, often perceptive and at times highly entertaining. It is good to have a sympathetic portrait of one of the giants of the cinema. -- Salman Rushdie, London Review of Books A signal salute to integrity. -- Lindsay Anderson, The Spectator Mr Robinson's close analysis of the warp and woof of Mr Ray's work makes an almost unanswerable case for the defense. -- The Economist A glorious book, a feast of research and insight. -- Films and Filming Andrew Robinson has managed to combine research with knowledge and analysis to produce what could become an enduring work of reference on the technique and narrative brilliance of the cinema of Ray. -- India Today