A Passage to India
This great classic film will be shown in Corrie Hall on Sunday, March 8th, starting at 8.00 pm. Shot in 1984 and based on E.M.Forster’s novel, it was David Lean’s final film. He had made nothing in the 14 years since Ryan’s Daughter, and many critics regard A Passage to India as his crowning triumph. It received eleven nominations at the Academy Awards, and Peggy Ashcroft, then 77, won the Best Supporting Actress award for her unforgettable role as Mrs Moore.
The film is set in the India of the 1920s, when the British Raj was beginning to feel the effect of the Independence movement. Mrs Moore has come to join her son, who is the magistrate in the provincial town of Chandrapore. They meet the eccentric elderly Brahmin scholar Professor Godbole (played by Alec Guinness) through whom they befriend Dr Aziz Ahmed (Victor Banerjee), an impoverished widower who is touched by their sensitivity and unprejudiced attitude toward the Indian people. Mrs Moore and Adela, her soon-to-be daughter in law, have no interest in the expat diversions of polo and afternoon tea and want to see the ‘real’ India, so Aziz offers to take them to the remote Marabar Caves.
Mrs Moore finds the caves claustrophobic and comes out, leaving Adela and Aziz to explore, with just one guide. Aziz pauses to smoke a cigarette, then sees Adela running headlong down the hill, bleeding and dishevelled. Nobody believes his story, and Aziz is jailed to await trial for attempted rape. An uproar ensues between the Indians and the Colonials. Mrs Moore refuses to testify against Aziz, so it is decided she should return to England. To everyone’s astonishment, Adela changes her plea in court and clears Aziz, but suspicion remains, and the tangled relationship between India and its colonial occupiers is thrown into uncomfortably sharp focus.
A Passage to India remains thought-provoking and controversial to this day, and demonstrates Lean’s astonishing ability to provoke fresh thought while providing no easy answers. The screening starts at 8.00 pm, and admission is free, though contributions to the upkeep of the hall will be warmly welcomed.
