Set in the 1920s during the period of the British Raj, the film tells the story of the interactions of several characters in the fictional city of Chandrapore: Dr Aziz, Mrs Moore, Adela Quested, and Richard Fielding. When newcomer to India, Adela, accuses Aziz of an attempted rape in the Marabar Caves, the city is split between the British elite and the native underclass as the budding friendship between Aziz and Fielding is tested. The film explores themes of racism, imperialism, religion, and the nature of relationships both friendly and marital.
Adela Quested is sailing from England to British Raj India with Mrs. Moore, the mother of her intended bridegroom, Ronny Heaslop, Mrs. Moore's son from her first marriage. Heaslop is the City magistrate in Chandrapore, and Adela intends to see if she can make a go of it.
The ladies are disappointed to find that the British community is very much separated from the Indian population and culture with a growing Indian independence movement in the 1920s. They are encouraged when the local school superintendent, Richard Fielding, introduces them to the eccentric elderly HinduBrahmin scholar Professor Narayan Godbole. Mrs. Moore meets by chance another Indian local, Dr Aziz Ahmed, a widower who is surprised by her kindness and lack of prejudice. Aziz offers to host an excursion to the local Marabar Caves.
The initial exploration of the caves shows that the size of the party should be limited when Mrs. Moore suffers from claustrophobia and the noise from the large entourage echoes exponentially inside the caves. Mrs. Moore encourages Adela and Aziz to continue their exploration of the caves alone with one guide.
They reach the caves at a higher elevation some distance from the group and, before entering, Aziz steps away to smoke a cigarette. Adela enters one of the caves on her own, lights a match, and inexplicably begins to cry. Aziz returns to find Adela has disappeared. Shortly afterwards, he sees her running headlong down the hill, disheveled. She is picked up by the doctor's wife, Mrs. Callendar, and taken to the Callendars' home. Adela is bleeding from cactus needles and delirious. Dr. Callendar medicates Adela with a hypodermic syringe.
Upon his return to Chandrapore, Aziz is accused of attempting to rape Adela inside the caves and is jailed awaiting trial. The incident becomes a cause célèbre. Mr. Fielding, who has befriended Aziz, insists he is innocent. Mrs. Moore also firmly believes Aziz did not commit any offence and departs India for England. Seemingly enjoying her passage at sea, Mrs. Moore suddenly suffers an apparent heart attack and dies.
In court, Adela is questioned by the prosecutor, who is stunned when Adela replies that Aziz never entered the cave, where the supposed attempted rape took place. It becomes clear to Adela that her earlier signed accusation of attempted rape was false, so she recants. Aziz is freed and his innocence celebrated. Adela is abandoned to her own devices by the British except for Mr. Fielding, who assists her to safety at the college. She plans to return to England at the earliest moment. Aziz vows to find a new job in another Indian state away from British rule; he opens a clinic in the lake area near Srinagar, Kashmir.
Meanwhile, through Adela, Fielding has married Stella Moore, Mrs. Moore's daughter from her second marriage. Aziz eventually reconciles with Fielding, and Aziz writes to Adela asking her to forgive him for taking so long to come to appreciate the courage she exercised when she withdrew her accusation in court.
E. M. Forster began writing A Passage to India during a stay in India from late 1912 to early 1913 (he was drawn there by a young Indian Muslim, Syed Ross Masood, whom he had tutored in Latin), completing it only after he returned to India as secretary to a maharajah in 1921. The novel was published on 4 June 1924.[5] It differs from Forster's other major works in the overt political content, as opposed to the lighter tone and more subdued political subtext in works such as Howards End and A Room With a View.
A Passage to India deals with the delicate balance between the English and the Indians during the British Raj.[6] The question of what actually happened in the caves remains unanswered in the novel. A Passage to India sold well and was widely praised in literary circles. It is generally regarded as Forster's best novel, quickly becoming a classic of English literature.[7]
Over many years several film directors were interested in adapting the novel to the big screen, but Forster, who was criticised when the novel was published, rejected every offer for the film rights, believing that any film of his novel would be a travesty. He feared that whoever made it would come down on the side of the English or the Indians, and he wanted balance. However he did allow Indian author Santha Rama Rau to adapt it for the theatre in 1957.[8]
David Lean had read the novel and saw the play in London in 1960, and, impressed, attempted to purchase the rights at that time, but Forster, who rejected Santha Rama Rau's suggestion to allow Indian film director Satyajit Ray to make a film, said no.[9]
Following Forster's death in 1970, the governing board of fellows of King's College at Cambridge inherited the rights to his books. However, Donald Parry, his executor, turned down all approaches, including those of Joseph Losey, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, and Waris Hussein, who after adapting Santha Rama Rau's play for the BBC in the 1960s now wanted to make a feature film. Ten years later, when Professor Bernard Williams, a film enthusiast, became chief executor, the rights for a film adaptation became available.[10]
Development
Producer John Brabourne, also known as John Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne, whose father had been Governor of Bombay and later Governor of Bengal, and who was married to the daughter of Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy, had sought the film rights for twenty years.[9] He and his business partner, Richard Goodwin, had produced Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968) and films based on Agatha Christie's mysteries, including the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express. In March 1981, Brabourne and Goodwin obtained the rights to make a film adaptation of A Passage to India.[9] The contract stipulated that Santha Rama Rau write the screenplay and it reserved the right to approve the director.
"Forster gave us a verbal go-ahead", remembered Goodwin later, "but my partner (John Brabourne) and I never got it in writing. So it was another 10 years before the Forster estate arranged the sale of film rights".[4]Lindsay Anderson later claimed he turned down a chance to direct the film of the novel.[11]
Brabourne, an admirer of the film Doctor Zhivago, wanted David Lean to direct the film. Lean was ready to break his 14-year hiatus from filmmaking following mostly negative reviews received for Ryan's Daughter in 1970. Since then, Lean had fought to make a two-part epic telling the true story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, for which he could not obtain financing (the budget was an estimated $50 million), and had given some thought about doing a film adaptation of Out of Africa, from the book by Isak Dinesen, which Sydney Pollack ultimately directed in 1985. By September 1981, Lean was approved as director and Santha Rama Rau completed a draft of the script.[10]
Writing
The contract stipulated that Santha Rama Rau would write the screenplay. She had met with E. M. Forster, had successfully adapted A Passage to India as a play, and had been charged by the author with preserving the spirit of the novel. However, Lean was determined to exercise input in the writing process. He met with Rau in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, and over ten days they talked about the novel and discussed the script.
The initial script pleased neither the producer, John Brabourne, nor Lean. They considered it too worldly and literary, the work of a playwright, and unsuitable for a film. Most of the scenes took place indoors and in offices while Lean had in mind to film outdoors as much as possible. With India in the title of the film, he reasoned, audiences would expect to see many scenes filmed of the Indian landscape. Lean commented: "We are blessed with a fine movie title, A Passage to India. But it has built in danger; it holds out such a promise. The very mention of India conjures up high expectations. It has sweep and size and is very romantic". Lean did not want to present a poor man's pre-independence India when for the same amount of money he could show the country's visual richness.
During 1982, Lean worked on the script. He spent six months in New Delhi, to have a close feeling for the country while writing. As he could not stay longer for tax reasons, he then moved to Zurich for three months, finishing it there. Following the same method he had employed adapting Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, he went through Rau's original script and his copy of the novel, picking out the episodes that were indispensable and passing over those that did not advance the plot. Lean typed out the whole screenplay himself, correcting it as he went along, following the principle that scripts are not written, but rewritten.
Casting
The director cast Australian actress Judy Davis, then 28, as the naive Miss Quested after a two-hour meeting. When Davis gave her interpretation of what happened in the caves — "She can't cope with her own sexuality, she just freaks out" — Lean said that the part was hers. Davis had garnered international attention in Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career (1979) and had appeared in A Woman Called Golda (1982) as a young Golda Meir.
Lean wanted Celia Johnson, star of Brief Encounter, to play Mrs Moore, but she turned down the part and died before the film was released. The director then offered the part to Peggy Ashcroft, a stage actress who had appeared in films only sporadically. She was not enthusiastic when Lean asked her to be Mrs Moore. "Mr Lean, I'm 75 years old", she protested. "So am I", he replied. Although she had recently worked in India on the TV miniseries The Jewel in the Crown, she said, "I thought, 'Oh dear, I really don't want to do it', but it's very difficult to turn down a Lean film".
Satyajit Ray, who had hoped to direct his adaptation of A Passage to India, recommended 38-year-old Bengali actor Victor Banerjee for the role of Dr Aziz. The character required a combination of foolishness, bravery, honour and anger. After some hesitation, Lean cast Banerjee, but the director had to overcome the restrictions of British equity to employ an Indian actor. Lean got his way, and the casting made headlines in India. "It was a matter of national pride that an Indian was cast instead of an Asian from England" observed Banerjee.
Peter O'Toole was Lean's first choice to play Fielding. The role eventually went to James Fox. Despite having quarrelled with Lean in the 1960s about a proposed film about Gandhi that ultimately was scrapped, Alec Guinness agreed to portray Professor Godbole. The relationship between the two men deteriorated during filming, and when Guinness learned that much of his performance was left on the cutting room floor due to time constraints, he saw it as a personal affront. Guinness would not speak to Lean for years afterwards, patching things up only in the last years of Lean's life.[12]Nigel Hawthorne was cast as Turton but fell ill and was replaced on-set by Richard Wilson.
Financing
Financing the film was difficult. EMI provided some initial money, but Lean paid his own expenses scouting locations and writing the screenplay. Eventually the budget was raised from EMI, Columbia and HBO.[10]
The film's score was composed by longtime Lean collaborator Maurice Jarre. According to Jarre, the director told him, "Maurice, I want you to write music right from your groin for this very long scene in the cave. This isn't a story of India, it's a story of a woman. I want you to write music that evokes awakening sexuality".[4]
Jarre wrote 45 minutes of music in two and a half weeks. He said, "David talks to me in images. A film artist never asks for an oboe to cover up a bad scene; a film artist doesn't think of music as medicine for a sick movie. David talks to me as he would talk to an actor."[4]
Reception
Critical response
Lean's final film received widespread critical acclaim, and became a critics' favourite of 1984. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "[Lean's] best work since The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia and perhaps his most humane and moving film since Brief Encounter. Though vast in physical scale and set against a tumultuous Indian background, it is also intimate, funny and moving in the manner of a film maker completely in control of his material … Though [Lean] has made A Passage to India both less mysterious and more cryptic than the book, the film remains a wonderfully provocative tale, full of vivid characters, all played to near perfection."[16]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times observed that "Forster's novel is one of the literary landmarks of this century, and now David Lean has made it into one of the greatest screen adaptations I have ever seen … [He] is a meticulous craftsman, famous for going to any length to make every shot look just the way he thinks it should. His actors here are encouraged to give sound, thoughtful, unflashy performances … and his screenplay is a model of clarity."[17]
Variety called the film "impeccably faithful, beautifully played and occasionally languorous" and added, "Lean has succeeded to a great degree in the tricky task of capturing Forster's finely edged tone of rational bemusement and irony."[18]
Time Out London thought the film was "a curiously modest affair, abandoning the tub-thumping epic style of Lean's late years. While adhering to perhaps 80 per cent of the book's incident, Lean veers very wide of the mark over E.M. Forster's hatred of the British presence in India, and comes down much more heavily on the side of the British. But he has assembled his strongest cast in years … And once again Lean indulges his taste for scenery, demonstrating an ability with sheer scale which has virtually eluded British cinema throughout its history. Not for literary purists, but if you like your entertainment well tailored, then feel the quality and the width."[19]
Channel 4 said, "Lean was always preoccupied with landscapes and obsessed with the perfect shot – but here his canvas is way smaller than in Lawrence of Arabia, for instance … Still, while the storytelling is rather toothless, A Passage to India is certainly well worth watching for fans of the director's epic style."[20]
On Rotten Tomatoes, A Passage to India holds a rating of 77% from 30 critics, with an average rating of 7.20/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A Passage to India is a visually striking exploration of colonialism and prejudice, although it doesn't achieve the thematic breadth of director David Lean's finest work."[21] The film is assigned an average score of 78 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 14 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[22]
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the first DVD on 20 March 2001. It was in anamorphic widescreen format with audio tracks and subtitles in English, French, and Spanish. Bonus features included Reflections of David Lean, an interview with the screenwriter/director, cast biographies, and production notes.
On 9 September 2003, Columbia Pictures released the box set The David Lean Collection, which included Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and A Passage to India.
On 15 April 2008, Sony released A Passage To India (2-Disc Collector's Edition). In addition to Reflections of David Lean from the 2001 release, bonus features included commentary with producer Richard Goodwin; E.M. Forster: A Profile of an Author, covering some of the main themes of the original book; An Epic Takes Shape, in which cast and crew members discuss the evolution of the film; An Indian Affair, detailing the primary production period; Only Connect: A Vision of India, detailing the final days of shooting at Shepperton Studios and the post-production period; Casting a Classic, in which casting director Priscilla John discusses the challenges of bringing characters from the book to life; and David Lean: Shooting with the Master, a profile of the director. On 15 April 2008, Sony released a Blu-ray HD Collector's Edition with a restored print and new digital mastering.
Edward Morgan Forster was an English author. He is best known for his novels, particularly A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). He also wrote numerous short stories, essays, speeches and broadcasts, as well as a limited number of biographies and some pageant plays. He also co-authored the opera Billy Budd (1951). Many of his novels examine class differences and hypocrisy. His views as a humanist are at the heart of his work.
Sir David Lean was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor, widely considered one of the most important figures of British cinema. He directed the large-scale epics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ryan's Daughter (1970), and A Passage to India (1984). He also directed the film adaptations of Charles Dickens novels Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), as well as the romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).
A Passage to India is a 1924 novel by English author E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of 20th-century English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time magazine included the novel in its "All Time 100 Novels" list. The novel is based on Forster's experiences in India, deriving the title from Walt Whitman's 1870 poem "Passage to India" in Leaves of Grass.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was a British and American novelist and screenwriter. She is best known for her collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of film director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant.
Victor Banerjee is an Indian actor who appears in English, Hindi, Bengali and Assamese language films. He has worked with directors such as Roman Polanski, James Ivory, Sir David Lean, Jerry London, Ronald Neame, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, and Montazur Rahman Akbar. He won the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Ghare Baire. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award, in 2022 for his huge contribution to cinema by the Indian Government in the field of art.
Dhanvanthi, Lady Rama Rau (1893–1987) was founder and president of the Family Planning Association of India and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. She was married to Sir Benegal Rama Rau, the noted civil servant, and was the mother of Santha Rama Rau, the writer.
Santha Rama Rau was an Indian-born American writer.
John Ulick Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne,, professionally known as John Brabourne, was a British peer, television producer and Oscar-nominated film producer. Married to the elder daughter of 1st Earl Mountbatten, Brabourne was a survivor of the bombing which killed his father-in-law, mother and son.
Waris Hussein is a British-Indian television and film director. At the beginning of his career he was employed by the BBC as its youngest drama director. He directed early episodes of Doctor Who, including the first serial, An Unearthly Child (1963), and later directed the multiple-award-winning Thames Television serial Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978).
Heat and Dust is a 1983 British historical romantic drama film, with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala based on her novel, Heat and Dust (1975). It was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant. It stars Greta Scacchi, Shashi Kapoor and Julie Christie.
Sir Benegal Rama Rau CIE, ICS was the fourth Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 1 July 1949 to 14 January 1957.
Harry Black is a 1958 British adventure film adaptation of the novel Harry Black by David Walker, released by 20th Century Fox.
The following is a filmography of David Lean, whose body of work in the film industry spanned the period from 1930 to 1984. This list includes the release year of the film, the role(s) Lean had in the production of each film, and additional notes such as awards and nominations. Lean directed 17 feature films in total. Lean often directed the large-scale epics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984). He also directed two adaptations of Charles Dickens novels, Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), as well as the romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).
Bankipur is a neighbourhood and residential area in Patna, in the Indian state of Bihar. It is located on the bank of the river Ganges. The prime attraction is the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library built by Khan Bahadur Khuda Bakhsh in 1891 and Golghar granary that was built by Captain John Garstin in 1786. Patna Dental College and Hospital is also located here.
The Marabar Caves are fictional caves which appear in E. M. Forster's 1924 novel A Passage to India and the film of the same name. The caves are based on the real life Barabar Caves, especially the Lomas Rishi Cave, located in the Jehanabad District of Bihar, India which Forster visited during a trip to India.
The Room on the Roof is a novel written by Ruskin Bond.
Richard B. Goodwin is a British film producer. As a producer, he received an Academy Award nomination for A Passage to India (1984).. His other films include The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Death on the Nile (1978), The Mirror Crack'd (1980), Evil Under the Sun (1982), Little Dorrit (1987), and Seven Years in Tibet (1997).
Ernest Day, B.S.C. was a British cinematographer and director of film and television, known for his collaborations with David Lean and Lewis Gilbert. He spent the majority of his career as a camera operator, often referred to Lean as his "eyes", and was the first British cameraman to operate a 70mm film camera. He was nominated for an Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Lean's final film A Passage to India (1984).
A Passage to India is a stage play written by Indian-American playwright Santha Rama Rau (1923–2009), based on E.M. Forster's 1924 novel of the same name.
Shiraz is a 1928 silent film, directed by Franz Osten and starring Himansu Rai and Enakshi Rama Rau. It was adapted from a stage play of the same name by Niranjan Pal, and based on the story of the commissioning of the Taj Mahal – the great monument of a Mughul prince for his dead queen. Due to the public's apathy towards silent films, a sound version was also produced in 1929. While the sound version has no audible dialog, it features a synchronized musical score with sound effects along with a theme song.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
