''The Alien'' was an unproduced Indian-American

science fiction film Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses Speculative fiction, speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as Extraterrestrial life in fiction, extraterrestria ...

in development in the late 1960s which was eventually cancelled. It was to be directed by Indian filmmaker

Satyajit Ray Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian film director, screenwriter, author, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligraphy, calligrapher, and composer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influ ...

and co-produced by

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Trade name, doing business as Columbia Pictures, is an American film Production company, production and Film distributor, distribution company that is the flagship unit of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group ...

. The script was written by Ray in 1967, loosely based on ''Bankubabur Bandhu'' (''Banku Babu's Friend'' or ''Mr. Banku's Friend''), a Bengali science fiction story he had written in 1962 for '' Sandesh'', the Ray family magazine, which gained popularity among

Bengalis Bengalis ( ), also rendered as endonym and exonym, endonym Bangalee, are an Indo-Aryan peoples, Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of South Asia. The current population is divi ...

in the early 1960s. ''Bankubabur Bandhu'' was eventually adapted into a

television film A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie, telefilm, telemovie or TV film/movie, is a film with a running time similar to a feature film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a Terrestr ...

by Satyajit Ray's son Sandip Ray, and a play by the theatre group Swapnasandhani Kaushik Sen, in 2006.

Plot

The plot revolves around a spaceship that lands in a pond in rural

Bengal Bengal ( ) is a Historical geography, historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the Eastern South Asia, eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. The region of Benga ...

. The villagers begin worshiping it as a temple risen from the depths of the earth. The alien, known as "Mr Ang", establishes contact with a young village boy named Haba (meaning "Dumb" in Bengali) through dreams and also plays a number of pranks on the village community in the course of its short stay on planet

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. The plot contains the ebullient presence of an

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

n businessman, a journalist from

Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...

and an American engineer. Ray's biographer W. Andrew Robinson describes one particular scene from the screenplay as follows: "In a series of fantastically quick, short steps over the lotus leaves, the Alien reaches the shore of the pond. He looks down at the grass, examines the blade and is off hopping into the bamboo grove. There the Alien sees a small plant. His eyes light up with a yellow light. He passes his hand over the plant, and flowers come out. A thin, soft high-pitched laugh shows the Alien is pleased."

Production

''The Alien'' had

as producer for this planned US–India co-production, and Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando acting in lead roles. However, Ray was surprised to find that the script he had written had already been

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

ed and the fee appropriated by Michael Wilson, a Colombo-based producer who acted as Ray's representative in Hollywood. Wilson had copyrighted the script as co-writer, despite not being involved in any way in its creation. Marlon Brando later dropped out of the project and though an attempt was made to bring James Coburn in his place, Ray became disillusioned and returned to Calcutta. Columbia expressed interest in reviving the project several times in the 1970s and 1980s but nothing came of it.

Legacy

When the film '' E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' was produced in 1982, Ray noted similarities in the movie to his own earlier script. Ray discussed the collapse of the project in a 1980 '' Sight & Sound'' feature, with further details revealed by his biographer Andrew Robinson (in ''The Inner Eye'', 1989). Ray claimed that Steven Spielberg's film "would not have been possible without my script of ''The Alien'' being available throughout America in mimeographed copies." When the issue was raised by the press, Spielberg denied this claim and said "I was a kid in high school when his script was circulating in Hollywood." ''Star Weekend Magazine'' disputes Spielberg's claim, pointing out that he had graduated from high school in 1965 and began his career as a director in Hollywood in 1969. ''The Times of India'' noted that ''E.T.'' and '' Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' (1977) had "remarkable parallels" with ''The Alien''. These parallels include the physical nature of the alien. In his screenplay, which Ray wrote entirely in English, he described the alien as "a cross between a gnome and a famished refugee child: large head, spindly limbs, a lean torso. Is it male or female or neuter? We don't know. What its form basically conveys is a kind of ethereal innocence, and it is difficult to associate either great evil or great power with it; yet a feeling of eeriness is there because of the resemblance to a sickly human child." The 2003

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

film '' Koi... Mil Gaya'', directed by Rakesh Roshan, appears to be based on Satyajit Ray's ''The Alien''. In particular, the film appears to parallel ''The Alien'' more closely than ''E.T.'' in that it revolves around an intellectually disabled person coming in contact with a friendly alien. In 2003, Satyajit Ray's son Sandip Ray began working on adapting Ray's original 1962 story ''Bankubabur Bandhu'' into a Bengali television movie of the same name. The adapted film, directed by Kaushik Sen, was eventually shown on television in India in 2006. This version is based on Ray's original story ''Bankubabur Bandhu'' where the protagonist was a school teacher named Banku Babu, in contrast to his script for ''The Alien'' where the protagonist was a boy named Haba.

Notes

References

* (discusses ''The Alien'' and ''E.T.'')
"Satyajit Ray and the Alien"
Obaidur Rahman. '' The Daily Star''. 4 May 2009. * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Alien, The 1960s Bengali-language films 1960s Indian films 1960s children's films 1960s coming-of-age films 1960s science fiction adventure films 1960s science fiction drama films 1960s science fiction films Bengali films remade in other languages Bengali-language Indian films Cancelled films Children's science fiction films Columbia Pictures films Cultural depictions of American people E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial English-language Indian films Films about Indian Americans Films about alien visitations Films about disability in India Films about extraterrestrial life Films about friendship Films about intellectual disability Films about telekinesis Films about telepathy Films based on short fiction Films involved in plagiarism controversies Films set in Kolkata Films set in West Bengal Films with screenplays by Satyajit Ray Indian coming-of-age films Indian children's adventure films Indian science fiction adventure films Indian science fiction drama films Krrish Religious science fiction films UFO-related films Unproduced screenplays 1960s science fiction works 1962 short stories Adventure fiction Bengali-language literature Children's short stories Coming-of-age fiction Extraterrestrial life in popular culture Kolkata in fiction Religion in science fiction Science fiction about first contact Short stories adapted into films Short stories adapted into plays Fiction about telekinesis Fiction about telepathy UFO-related literature Works about educators Works about friendship Works about intellectual disability Works originally published in Indian magazines 2006 television films Films about educators Indian television films Television films based on short fiction 2006 plays Bengali-language plays Plays set in India