Satyajit Roy’s crisp dialogues were influenced by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s writing style.
“Bankim liked short conversations, terse responses. He found a technique by which the respondent did not repeat the information in the question,” said Ujjal Chakraborty in course of his talk on Ray at the New Town Book Fair on March 2.
Chakraborty, who worked with Ray at the children’s magazine Sandesh and received tips in illustration from him, gave examples from novels of both to show their minimalist approach to the spoken word. “This helped speed up pace of the events,” he said.
He also pointed to the presence of witnesses to every key event in a Ray film. “Without an observer there is no emotion in the scene. It may even appear staged. It is the observer who creates the reality,” said the author of The Director’s Mind and other books on Ray.
