Until a few years ago, stories swirled about advertising professionals shooting with a vintage camera that was much more than a piece of equipment. It was a priceless piece of memorabilia that could get most Bengalis misty-eyed – an elderly Arriflex35 supported by a well-worn wooden tripod and used by Satyajit Ray for the Apu trilogy.
The camera’s legend has only grown in time, and just when you think it is likely to turn up in a museum or an archive, it has popped up in the unlikeliest of places: next to the front desk of the Tolly Tales restaurant in South Kolkata. The eatery boasts of a movie theme and an owner who is one generation and several sensibilities removed from the master filmmaker’s Apu.
Tolly Tales is owned by Dev, Bengal’s hottest young film star (the kind who takes his shirt off and shoots song sequences in Austria and Cape Town), one of the Trinamool Congress party’s most popular legislators, and Chief Minister Mamata Banerji’s blue-eyed boy. The hip 70-seater resto-lounge serves Indian, Continental and Chinese cuisine in a film-inspired setting. There are movie posters on the walls, old film magazines, LPs, murals of Ray and the star-owner and Bengali cinema’s classic pair, Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen, and, of course, the Arriflex35.
“This is the same camera Satyajit Ray used for Apu’s trilogy,” said two young women at the reception in chorus. “Ray’s family gifted it to Mr Dev.”
Satyajit Ray’s son, filmmaker Sandip Ray, did not return calls for a comment on how the equipment made it to Tolly Tales.
The camera was the stuff of myth. Some said the Arriflex, when used to shoot outdoors, was always accorded royal treatment. A handler stood guard, holding aloft an umbrella. Sometimes a crowd would gather to take a closer look.
In his book The Chronicle of a Camera: The Arriflex 35 in North American, 1945-1972, Norris Pope names Satyajit Ray as one of the first overseas filmmakers to use the Arriflex as a “principal camera”. The trilogy’s cinematographer, the celebrated Subrata Mitra, has said in several interviews that the Arriflex 35 became popular after it was used to shoot Aparajito. Ray loved the camera so much that he took many shots himself – a passion he shared with the likes of Luis Bunuel and Jean-Luc Godard.
The girls at the reception at Tolly Tales radiate youthful eagerness as they share more of the camera’s pedigree. The Arriflex, conspicuous by its vintage, chooses to look the other way.
