Arquivo

The first film Satyajit Ray directed in 1955 tells the story of a poor Brahmin family living in an ancestral villa in Bengal. The father is a poet and a dreamer who keeps the family in abject poverty. The mother is the very image of a pragmatic woman struggling with difficulties in day-to-day life to support her children. Durga, a six-year-old daughter, in the habit of stealing mangoes from the neighbor?s orchard. Apu, the boy, is an intelligent boy, under his mother?s protection. All would seem to improve when the father finds a new job with the Treasury of India. Six years later, the dream has turned sour, and the Brahmin family is in greater need than ever before with the house falling to pieces. The mother is exhausted by her husband?s successive failures and exerts pressure on him to find his way in the world. He then decides to seek refuge in the big city from where he sends a postcard to the effect that he is only returning when he has saved enough money to repair the house where they live.