The influences of the Italian cinema on Satyajit Ray are quite clear. [Aparajito (The Unconquered)] … confirms the significance of the two influences we perceived two years ago at Cannes in Pather panchali (The Song of the Road), the first episode of the trilogy: first, the Zavattini and De Sica of Bicycle Thief and The Children Are Watching Us …, and, second, the lyric documentary quality of Flaherty and of the Renoir of The River. But Ray's "universities"—in the Gorkian sense—are wider and more extensive….

Aparajito is not, in fact, the story of a maternal love, of a mother who sees the withdrawal of the object of her love, but a story, or, better, part of a story, of greater scope and views: it represents a portion of the "human comedy" of modern India. Ray's artistic method … is descriptive rather than narrative … and uncertainties of cinematic language are...