Apu rises from the ashes

In real life, the odds against a tidy ending are staggering, but this story is an inspiring exception. It began with a terrible accident that almost destroyed an important part of India’s cinematic legacy. In July 1993, a fire at the Hendersons Film Laboratories in south London ravaged the negatives of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar. The reels had just arrived from India to the Hendersons lab en route to Hollywood in Los Angeles where it would be stored in the vault of the Academy of Motion Pictures. It was Ray’s wish that the Academy be trusted with his films because back then, and even today, in India, the concept of film preservation is greeted with ridicule and resistance. The blaze at that stage in the journey was sheer bad luck. The badly burnt negatives finally landed up in the Hollywood vault and stayed put for two decades, without a shred of hope of being restored.

Cut to 2012, to a world that had woken up to the importance of film restoration and preservation. The digital revolution has brought in cutting-edge tools which can work wonders on films that earlier didn’t stand a chance. Around that time, the US-based The Criterion Collection had secured the rights to the Apu trilogy after protracted negotiations. But, the video distribution company wasn’t getting the right kind of materials for digitisation. That was when the Academy stepped in. When Lee Kline, the technical director at the Criterion, saw what remained of the three films — 11 reels of Pather Panchali, 9 reels of Aparajito and two reels of Apur Sansar — he was horrified at the extent of the damage.

“The negatives were brittle and warped, the edges were frayed, the perforations were torn. The fire had melted the wax — used for preserving the films in India — into the image area,” said Kline during a session on the restoration of the trilogy at the week-long Film Restoration and Preservation School in Mumbai between February 22 and 28. The event organised by the Film Heritage Foundation in collaboration with Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation and World Cinema Project, Cinetica di Bologna, L’Immagine Ritrovata and the International Federation of Film Archives brought together a committed and talented band of restorers who were instrumental in giving a new lease of life to masterpieces from around the world. Some of them have been closely associated with the trilogy’s rebirth, including Ryan Hullings of the Criterion, who has restored the sound of the films.
Kline figured he had only one chance to set things right. He also realised that L’Immagine Ritrovata in Italy was most competent to take care of the physical imperfections. “The Italian organisation repaired the perforations, removed the glue, tape and wax, hydrated the negatives, scanned them at the highest resolution, and sent them back to Criterion where they would undergo digital repairs and colour grading,” said Kline. 

The work in both Italy and the US demanded several months of hard labour. But, the battle was far from over. Since several reels were beyond repair, the team at the Criterion had to look for the missing parts. Combing the various archives of the world for suitable replacements was a daunting task. Kline’s sleuthing paid off when he spotted some fine grain positives and negatives at the British Film Institute. But those too were incomplete, so some more materials had to be accessed to finally piece together each of the first two films. “In the end only 40% of Pather Panchali’s original negative could be used, but Aparajito had the most usable footage from the repaired and restored negatives. We weren’t as lucky with Apur Sansar because the two reels of the original negative that did survive the fire were so warped that the repairs weren’t considered worthwhile. Instead, we used a 35mm fine-grain in excellent condition for digitisation,” he said.

The process of sound restoration proved to be equally arduous. It was left to Ryan Hullings and his team to scour the world for the best original materials. He evaluated elements from different sources, most of which were severely damaged. “The best surviving sound element that we uncovered for Pather Panchali was a 35mm magnetic track provided by the Academy, which also proved to be a good source for the audio of Apur Sansar,” he said.

Each of the films brought with it a unique set of challenges. Armed with the latest tools, Ryan had to manually remove the clicks, plops, crackle, thumps, hiss, hum, distortion, dropouts — the tell-tale signs caused due to ageing and poor conservation techniques. “The issue of authenticity is paramount to the cause of restoration. Restorers have to be faithful to the director’s vision and the original piece of work because the temptation to smooth out the rough edges can lead to an undesirable compromise on fidelity,” said Hullings. Both Kline and Hullings had to exercise caution time and again. For instance, in Pather Panchali, the occasional abrupt changes in dialogue quality, resulting from overdubbing or coarse audio editing have been retained because these provide insights into how the films were created in that era.

At every step of restoration they had experts to guide them — people who had studied Ray’s work closely, which also includes the auteur’s son Sandip Ray. The mammoth project — spanning three continents — US, Europe and Asia — is work in progress. As Kline puts it aptly: Criterion is still deep in the trenches digitally repairing these films.” Aparajito’s sound restoration was still at a rudimentary stage when the duo had come to India.
They plan to release the films later this year in the US. The Apu trilogy has virtually risen from the ashes, thanks to the untiring efforts of a handful of people who wouldn’t allow Ray’s legacy to diminish.

The author is senior assistant editor with dna