A Passage to India (film)

A Passage to India is a 1984 epic period drama film written, directed and edited by David Lean. The screenplay is based on the 1924 novel of the same name by E. M. Forster and the 1960 play adaptation by Santha Rama Rau. The film stars Peggy Ashcroft, Judy Davis, James Fox, Alec Guinness, Nigel Havers, and Victor Banerjee.

Set in the 1920s, in the British Raj, the film follows the interactions of Dr. Aziz, Mrs. Moore, Adela Quested, Ronny Heaslop, and Richard Fielding in the fictional city of Chandrapore, which is split between the British elite and the native underclass. However, their relationships become strained due to cultural tensions and personal misunderstandings.

This was Lean's final film and marked his return to directing after a 14-year hiatus since Ryan's Daughter (1970). Upon its release, A Passage to India was met with widespread critical acclaim, with some praising it as Lean's finest since Lawrence of Arabia. The film received 11 nominations at the 57th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress for Davis. It won Best Supporting Actress for Ashcroft, making her, at 77, the oldest actress to win the award, and Best Original Score for Maurice Jarre, his third award in that category.

Plot Adela Quested is sailing from England to British-ruled India with Mrs. Moore, the mother of her intended bridegroom, Ronny Heaslop, Mrs. Moore's son from her first marriage. Ronny 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 has separated themselves from, and alienated, the native 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 Hindu Brahmin scholar Professor Narayan Godbole. Mrs. Moore meets, by chance, another Indian, Dr Aziz Ahmed, a local doctor and widower who is surprised by her kindness and lack of prejudice. Anxious to please Mrs. Moore and Adela, Aziz offers to host an excursion to the local Marabar Caves, and plans it with the help of his friends. In the meanwhile, Adela explores the foreign surroundings, yearning to see something of the "real India" instead of staying within the cushioned and isolated British community in Chandrapore. At a garden party intended to bridge the gap between the British and native Indian communities, Mrs. Moore berates her son Ronny for adopting the common British attitude of alienating Indians, debating the role of British rule in India.

When the garden party initially explores one of the caves, Mrs. Moore suffers from claustrophobia and the noise from the large entourage echoes exponentially inside the caves, showing that the size of the party should be limited. Mrs. Moore encourages Adela and Aziz to continue their exploration of the caves alone with one guide, while she goes to get some rest.

Adela and Aziz 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 startled to find himself 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 Mr. McBryde, 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 breaks down and recants. Aziz is freed and his innocence celebrated by the local population, though he begins to deeply resent the British for having been humiliated at court. 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 finds a new job in another Indian state away from Chandrapore; 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.

Cast

Production

Background 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.

A Passage to India deals with the delicate balance between the English and the Indians during the British Raj.Phillips, Beyond the Epic , p.406 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.Phillips, Beyond the Epic , p.403

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.

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.Phillips, Beyond the Epic , p.407

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.

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. 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. 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". Lindsay Anderson later claimed he turned down a chance to direct the film of the novel.LINDSAY ANDERSON BREWS SOME CHAOS New York Times17 Jan 1982: A.19.

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 that time, Lean had fought to make a two-part epic telling the true story of the Mutiny on the Bounty from the book by Isak Dinesen (which Sydney Pollack ultimately directed in 1985), but could not obtain the estimated $50 million financing. He had, however, also given some thought to doing a film adaptation of Out of Africa, and by September 1981, Lean was approved as director and Santha Rama Rau completed a draft of the script.

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". In addition to Ashcroft, actor Art Malik also appeared in "The Jewel in the Crown".