Satyajit Ray's The Alien and the History of a Lost Movie

Abstract

143 BOOKS IN REVIEW Satyajit Ray’s The Alien and the History of a Lost Movie. Satyajit Ray. Travails With the Alien: The Film That Was Never Made and Other Adventures With Science Fiction. Ed. Sandip Ray, Dhritiman Chaterji, Arup K. De, Riddhi Goswami, and Deepak Mukherjee. Delhi: Harper Collins and Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives, 2018. x+214pp. Rupees 699, $34.99 pbk. Almost all fans of Bangla kalpavigyan (sf) are aware of The Avatar, more commonly known as The Alien, a Hollywood film that was to be made by Satyajit Ray, that giant of Indian cinema, in the 1960s. The film would star Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando, and would bring the trope of the friendly alien to the sf imaginary. The film never got made, but themes, designs, and other plot elements from Ray’s original script surfaced in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and then, more importantly, in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), by Steven Spielberg. The story has been told, and retold, in contexts popular and academic. The possibility that Spielberg borrowed elements from Ray’s unmade script serve as the explicit or implicit backdrop to discussions about what the history of Bangla kalpavigyan might have been had the film been made. Travails brings together, for the first time, Ray’s unmade script, other writings by Ray on sf, facsimiles of Ray’s correspondence about the film with actors, Hollywood studios, and other people such as Arthur C. Clarke, who also noticed the strong similarities between Ray’s and Spielberg’s visions, documents from the Bangla sf Cine Club, as well as several translations of Ray’s sf. While some of this material has been published before—for instance, the script was published previously by Faber & Faber in The Chess Players and Other Screenplays (1989)—and some of the stories have appeared as well, no other book in English has managed to bring all the source material around the film together, collect all of Ray’s writings on sf in one place, or bring to light the fascinating 1960s era of Bangla kalpavigyan. Perhaps this is what makes this book invaluable to sf researchers, over and above the case of The Alien itself. The book is divided into three main sections, “Thoughts on Science Fiction” by Satyajit Ray features Ray’s writings, interview transcripts, and documents from the Cine Club. The second section highlights “Bankubabur Bondhu” [Bonkubabu’s friend, 1962], a short story that was the springboard for The Alien, featuring a translation as well as the script of the television adaptation written by Ray and directed by his son Sandip Ray in 1986, along with production stills. The third section focuses entirely on The Alien, featuring the script, interview, Ray’s famous article on the whole affair, and the article by Aseem Chhabra in The Times of India that created a lot of controversy about its plagiarism charges. The sections are preceded by a foreword by Sandip Ray, who is also currently engaged in bringing one of Ray’s most iconic kalpavigyan heroes to life on screen, the scientist-sage Professor Shonku. The book closes with an appendix featuring two fiction translations, including work by Ray’s father, Sukumar Ray, and another related story by Ray himself. 144 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) The first section presents Ray’s interest in sf cinema and literature. In the articles Ray offers brief synoptic histories: Wellsian and Vernian sf and a history of sf film from Méliès to Kubrick. In his extended All India Radio interview, Ray speaks about influences on his work and his own methods when writing characters such as Professor Shonku. The Cine Club documents provide a fascinating history of the 1960s post-independence era in Bengal and Ray’s own influence. Among the stated objects of the club were: To organize shows for science fiction and fantasy films and allied performance exclusively for members. To propagate, spread and further the study of science-fiction and fantasy films. To increase the appreciation of such films for the common good of the society as a whole. To help encouraging scientific imagination through scientific films...