Pather Panchali was released 60 years ago today in India, and the little film by a debutant director named Satyajit Ray, based on Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel and featuring unknown actors, changed the face of Indian cinema forever. Since then, the story of Apu and Durga has continued to resonate with viewers and artists worldwide. Incidentally, the Apu trilogy has just been restored to its pristine glory.

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the film, let’s look at how some of the great minds of our time have admired Apu’s debut in cinema.

John Huston (actor, director of The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

When I saw the footage of Pather Panchali in Calcutta in 1954 I was deeply impressed and recognised it as the work of a great filmmaker.

Salman Rushdie (writer of Midnight’s Children)

Rushdie has been ardent admirer of Pather Panchali, so much so that he has always placed it above Citizen Kane as the best film ever made. When he visited Calcutta to meet Ray’s family after his death, he held Ray’s work notebook in his hands, an experience he considers extraordinary.

Watch Rushdie talk about the greatness of the film in this video.

Akira Kurosawa (director of Seven Samurai, Rashomon)

I can never forget the excitement in my mind after seeing it (Pather Panchali). It is the kind of cinema that flows with the serenity and nobility of a big river.

Saul Bellow (winner of Nobel Prize for Literature)

In one of the most famous novels of the last century, Herzog, Bellow mentions his protagonist Moses watching Pather Panchali.

Two things affected me greatly - the old crone scooping the mush with her fingers and later going into the weeds; and the death of the young girl in rains.

Wes Anderson (director of The Grand Budapest Hotel)

A lifelong fan of Ray, Anderson dedicated his film, The Darjeeling Limited to the man who made him want to come to India through his films. The scene where Jack, Peter and Francis run after the train is an allusion to Apu and Durga in the iconic train scene.

Arthur C. Clarke (science fiction writer)

Pather Panchali is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful films ever made. There are scenes which I need never view again because they are burnt upon my memory.

MF Hussain (painter)

I have a fascination for Satyajit Ray’s films. My first experience of them was Pather Panchali. I was so taken with it that I sketched many drawings inspired by it. The world of the Bengali villages stirred me. My 1986 exhibition, ‘From Gitanjali to Pather Panchali‘, was my tribute to Ray’s film.

J M Coetzee (winner of Nobel Prize for Literature)

In his fictionalised autobiography, Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II, Coetzee mentions Ray’s Apu trilogy.

He watches the Apu trilogy on successive nights in a state of rapt absorption. In Apu’s bitter, trapped mother, his engaging, feckless father he recognizes, with a pang of guilt, his own parents. But it is the music above all that grips him...

Shyam Benegal (film director)

The first time Benegal saw Pather Panchali in 1956, he was so struck by it that he watched it back to back until he saw it a dozen times. He considers this as that one film that changed his life.

Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons)

Apu Nahasapeemapetilon (voiced by Hank Azaria), the proprietor of Kwik-E-Mart, in The Simpsons got his name from Ray’s Apu.

I’m a big fan of Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar. And Ravi Shankar’s music for these movies is just priceless,”

Roger Ebert (film critic)

The great, sad, gentle sweep of “The Apu Trilogy” remains in the mind of the moviegoer as a promise of what film can be.

Martin Scorsese (director of Raging Bull, Taxi Driver)

I will always remember the scene in Pather Panchali where young Durga and Apu run through the village meadows and notice a train whistling by in the distance.

I was in high school and I happened to see ‘Pather Panchali’ on television. Dubbed in English. With commercials. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

There are numerous occasions where he has spoken on Pather Panchali and Ray.

Richard Attenborough (director of Gandhi)

I was absolutely bowled over when I first saw Pather Panchali. The whole trilogy to me is extraordinary.

Girish Kasaravalli (director of Ghatashraddha, Dweepa)

We can call ourselves as Pather Panchali’s children.

You can see James Ivory (director of Howards End, A Room with a View), Govind Nihalani, Attenborough, Kasaravalli, Saeed Jaffrey, Bhaskar Chandavarkar (musician) and many others talking about Pather Panchali’s enduring influence in this documentary.

Amitav Ghosh, (writer of The Shadow Lines, The Hungry Tide)

Ghosh considered Pather Panchali as the greatest of Ray’s films. And his admiration is evident in this letter he wrote to Ray.

The Japanese have a custom which allows people to pay homage to artists they admire by standing outside their houses, alone and in silence, until they are invited in. You are the only person in the world for whom I would gladly do that...