 Ray gathered an inexperienced crew , although both his cameraman Subrata Mitra and art director Bansi Chandragupta went on to achieve great acclaim . The cast consisted of mostly amateur actors . He started shooting in late 1952 with his personal savings and hoped to raise more money once he had some passages shot , but did not succeed on his terms . As a result , Ray shot Pather Panchali over three years , an unusually long period , based on when he or his production manager Anil Chowdhury could raise additional funds . He refused funding from sources who wanted a change in script or supervision over production . He also ignored advice from the government to incorporate a happy ending , but he did receive funding that allowed him to complete the film . Ray showed an early film passage to the American director John Huston , who was in India scouting locations for The Man Who Would Be King . The passage was of the vision which Apu and his sister have of the train running through the countryside , the only sequence which Ray had yet filmed due to his small budget . Huston notified Monroe Wheeler at the New York Museum of Modern Art ( MOMA ) that a major talent was on the horizon . 
