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Bhowani Junction [VHS] | ![Bhowani Junction [VHS]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/210FCTBMXDL._SL160_.jpg) | Director: George Cukor
Actors: Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger, Bill Travers, Abraham Sofaer, Francis Matthews
Studio: MGM (Warner)
Category: Video
List Price: $19.98
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New (3) Used (20) Collectible (2) from $11.89
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 12135
Format: Color, NTSC
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: VHS Tape
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 109 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 6302224306
UPC: 027616071835
EAN: 9786302224306
ASIN: 6302224306
Theatrical Release Date: May 1, 1956
Release Date: March 7, 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
A landmark title in the evolution of CinemaScope, Bhowani Junction is a fascinating but exasperating instance of a provocative film running head-on into studio interference and censorship. This would be the next-to-last project in George Cukor's long history as an MGM director, and despite its rejection at the time, admirers regard it as one of his most personal achievements. What's irreducibly admirable is Cukor's sensuous embrace of India as both the film's location and its "major character." With F.A. Young as cinematographer (six years before Young shot David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia), this director chiefly associated with intimate settings and soundstage productions created rich, gold-brown canvases surging powerfully with vast crowds and unrest. Ava Gardner plays a half-British, half-Indian woman trying to find an identity for herself at that moment in 1947 when Great Britain was preparing to withdraw from the country it had ruled for two centuries. Her dilemma is focused through her relationships with several men: a fellow half-caste (Bill Travers) who's been her longtime lover, a slimy British junior officer (Lionel Jeffries), a pure-blood Indian aspiring to make her his bride (Francis Matthews), and the senior British officer (Stewart Granger) whose fierce ambivalence must inevitably mutate into passionate love. If it's sensuousness you're after, you can do a lot worse than having the luscious Gardner at the center of your movie, and the actress responded beautifully to both the exotic setting and Cukor's direction. Alas, Granger was mostly a stick (Cukor wanted Trevor Howard), and the script is awful--structurally incoherent and endlessly recycling bald-faced declarations of the divided-ethnicity theme. The situation is made worse by the studio's decision to reedit the film as a flashback, with Granger narrating. Still ... Ava, India, and CinemaScope carry the day. --Richard T. Jameson
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
 Great movie November 28, 2009
B. Duncan (Springville, UT United States)
I think this is a pretty good movie. (I always think movies about British India are very interesting, and pretty Ava G. is a definite plus.) By the way right now you can get this at the Warner Bros website shop for 14.95 with free shipping. I think this Archive Collection of theirs is awesome for offering hard to find movies in a widescreen DVD format. Be sure to snag Green Mansions from them as well while you're at it, which was formerly unavailable for many years (and in widescreen format to boot!)
 BHOWANI JUNCTION November 11, 2009
VD Santangelo (Ellmont, New York United States)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
THIS REMAINS AN EXCELLENT STORY, CAST, ETC. BUT I DO AGREE THAT THE PRICE AND PACKAGING OF THESE MGM FILMS IS DOWNRIGHT RIDICULOUS. FIRST OF ALL THE PACKAGE SHOULD HAVE ORIGINAL POSTER ON FRONT AND THE ONLY EXTRA IS THE ORIGINAL TRAILER. NOTHING MORE. THE PRICE OF $28-$30 IS MUCH TOO HIGH FOR THE VALUE YOU GET. THERE WAS SO MANY WAYS THAT, IF BETTER PACKAGED, I WOULD HAVE PURCHASED MORE TITLES. FOR THIS PRICE I ONLY PURCHASE THREE TITLES AND ALTHOUGH THE MOVIES ARE VERY VERY GOOD, THEY ARE OVERPRICED. THE DVD RELEASING COMPANY SHOULD HAVE DONE A BETTER JOB. SALES VOLUME WOULD HAVE BEEN HIGHER. THE PUBLIC CAN BE FOOLED FOR ONLY A SHORT TIME. ALSO, THERE ARE MANY MORE TITLES THAT COULD HAVE BEEN PUT ON DVD. MANY MGM FILMS WOULD HAVE SOLD, BUT NOT AT THIS HIGH PRICE. SEVERAL TITLES COME TO MIND: MOONFLEET, THE SCARLET COAT, THE SWAN, ETC. POOR MARKETING, HIGH PRICES, CHEAP PACKAGING OF SOME VERY FINE FILMS. THE WARNER BROS. CHEAPNESS SHOWS THROUGH.
A good movie about the British leaving India in 1947 August 13, 2009
Kiwi (Mississauga, Ontario Canada)
Filmed in 1956, Bhowani Junction is based on the book of the same name by John Masters and is set in India during the last days of the British Raj. The book is a minor classic in English fiction and was a best-seller back in the 1950's and 60's. The film, starring Ava Gardner and Bill Travers (a now unknown but then quite famous British actor), was quite a success in it's day. Now however, 50 years on from the events depicted, it's lost a lot of it's immediacy and impact and the historical background is somewhat vague unless you're a student of the history of the British in India. What really makes the film worth seeing is the historic flavor it brings. Back in 1947, India was a nation of 345 million people and about to break away from the British Empire. The British still ruled, but were in the process of departing, albeit slower than the demands of many of the Indian nationalists, who wanted immediate independence.
The setting for the film is the Indian railway town of Bhowani Junction in 1946, a year before Independence. The British administrators are resigned to leaving India, but still hope to exercise an influence over the path the country will take after independence. Hence their preference for the Congress Party over the pro-Moscow Communist Party. After all Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress leader, was a wealthy, patrician Fabian socialist, a lawyer by training, and educated at public school and Oxbridge (Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge)- just like the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee (Haileybury and University College, Oxford). Meanwhile, both the Congress Party and the Communist Party are doing all kinds of sabotage to persuade the British quickly get out of India. Each party is doing it for their own reasons - the Communists are attempting to frustrate the handover of power to the Congress Party by acts of sabotage, hoping to create chaos which will enable them to seize power themselves. And some Congress activists are also trying to hasten the departure of the British by non-violent acts of resistance, although these often play into the hands of the Communists. The British meanwhile are left attempting to maintain a semblance of law and order. Unusually for a film about the Raj, the film does not concentrate solely on relations between the British colonialists and the native peoples of India. Several of the leading characters are drawn from a third group, the country's Anglo-Indian, or mixed race, community. The Anglo-Indians were, and are, a distinct community within India, bound together by the English language, an Anglo-centric culture and the Christian religion.
The main character is Victoria Jones (played by Ava Gardner), the daughter of an Anglo-Indian train driver, and the film depicts the entangled relationships between Victoria and the three men in her life, Colonel Rodney Savage (played by Stewart Granger), a senior British army officer, Ranjit Singh, a Sikh active in the Indian independence movement, and Patrick Taylor (played by Bill Travers), an Anglo-Indian railway official. (Many Anglo-Indians worked on the railways). The fact that Victoria's lovers are drawn from the three different communities is symbolic of her uncertainty about her own cultural identity. The Anglo-Indians tended to identify culturally with Britain rather than India, although few of them had ever visited Britain, but were not fully accepted by either the British or the native Indians, both of whom referred to them by the same derogatory term, "chee-chee". It is noticeable that Victoria's attempts to fit in with British culture are not always successful. She refers to her parents by the Latin terms "pater" and "mater", unaware that in Britain this is an upper-class affectation; no British engine driver's daughter would speak in this manner. Patrick is also torn between different identities. He dislikes the British, largely because they will not accept him as one of them, but also despises full-blooded Indians, whom he refers to as "wogs" (another derogatory term). Savage is far more liberal and tolerant about matters of race.
The crisis of the story comes when Victoria kills a British soldier while he is attempting to rape her. Although the killing was clearly in self-defence, she fears that the British authorities will not, on account of her mixed-race origins, believe her version of events, so she tries to conceal the incident, thus allowing herself to be blackmailed by the Communists into assisting with one of their schemes, an attempted assassination of the country' spiritual leader Mohandas Gandhi and future prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The movie works very hard to distinguishes between Gandhi's peaceful and passive resistance movement and the communist and nationalist-inspired violence that in the event caused a bloody civil war between the Hindu's and Moslem's in 1947-48. The violence went on to lead to the assassination of Gandhi, by a Hindu no less, and is still going on today with the partitioned former Indian province of Kashmir today as an ongoing flashpoint between India and Pakistan.
Back to the movie: Victoria feels that she doesn't fit into the new and soon to be formed Indian nation and is torn between her both fathers British and her mothers Indian roots. Together with her Anglo-Indian fiancée Pat Taylor, (Bill Travers), they fear that they'll be left out when the native Indians take over the government and that leaves them both in a bind with regard to either staying or leaving the country. Victoria at first slowly gravitates towards her Indian nationality when she's attacked by British army officer Graham McDaniel (Lionel Jeffries), who had been eying her since she arrived at Bhowani Junction as a British/Indian transportation officer. Trying to fight the wild and lecherous McDaniel off Victoria, bashes his head in with an steel rod, killing him. Being taken in by Ranjit Kasel (Francis Matthews), who works with her at the transportation office, and his mother Sadani (Freda Jones), the two together with mutual friend Ghanshyam (Peter Illing), cover up McDaniel's death by hiding his body in a town garbage dump. It later turns out that there was also an Indian sentry murdered at the scene of McDaniel's killing and even worse, Ghanshyam turns out to be none-other then the communist rabble-rouser and terrorist Davay! Victoria is now in danger of being implicated in not only a terrorist act but also in giving aid and comfort to the wanted terrorist leader, Davay.
Davay is trapped in Bhowani Junction and uses Victoria, by blackmailing her, to get him out by rail, which alerts her former lover and fiancée Taylor who, together with her now current lover Col. Savage, and a platoon of British/Indian soldiers, corral the train. A desperate Davay takes off on foot into a nearby train tunnel. Having Davay trapped in the ensuing shootout Taylor gets hit and later dies from his wounds but Davay is blown away by Col.Savage who also disarms the sticks of dynamite that he left on the tracks to explode under the next train. It's then that Col. Savage realizes that he, Taylor and the soldiers under his command, prevented the murder of India's future leaders, Gandhi and Nehru, who were passengers on that very train. The film ends with Victoria in love with Col. Savage, and him with her. At the same time Victoria still does not want to leave India with him - a slightly different end to the film as opposed to the book and one that is not that convincing at all.
The book and the film attempt to meld the historical, and the inter-racial quandary posed for the Anglo-Indian community, with historical events. The issues the book (and the film) deal with are both complex and now historical, and this makes the story a little confusing and convoluted throughout, as well as posing a problem for the director in how to include all the relevant information. Masters' novel offered everything needed to make an epic, and overall the film is a pretty good one, combining an exciting adventure story with an intelligent look at some serious issues. Perhaps, however, I should have said say that it offered everything needed to make an epic bar one thing - a major role for a big-name American star. Hence the rather eccentric casting of Ava Gardner as Victoria, who never seems convincing as an Anglo-Indian and whose accent wavers between British, Indian and American. There were, in fact, two big-name Anglo-Indian cinema actresses around this period, Merle Oberon and Vivien Leigh, but both would probably have been too old for the role, and both normally passed as white. (Oberon, in particular, denied having any connection with India and claimed falsely to be Australian).
Two people who may have given the outstanding performances of their careers are Ava Gardner and Bill Travers. Both play bi-racial people who don't fit in either society. But they react differently. Gardner is going through a whole lot of angst, really seeing both the British and Indian point of view. How she missed an Oscar nomination here is beyond me as she gives arguably the best performance of her career as the chee-chee Victoria Jones, the Anglo-Indian daughter of a Welsh train driver and an Indian woman, managing to convey with understated skill the frustrations and torment of being dismissed by the Indians as an Englishwoman, and by the English as an Indian (or `wog' as they so succinctly put it). Perhaps she saw the way Bill Travers decided to handle his role as her male counterpart - and initial romantic interest - and chose a path diametrically opposed to his outrageously over-the-top performance. Considering the fact that she also battles against a script that is sometimes a little turgid, and which fails to really capture the ordeal of her kind in those tumultuous times, her performance is to be admired.
However, I personally thought this was one of Ava Gardner's better acting performances. In part because she had a character with some meat and not just all cheesecake and sex appeal. In her biography, Ava herself says it is one of her better roles. Bhowani Junction is one of the few movies where Ava Gardner was allowed to be more than just a beautiful, but inanimate statue. As Victoria Jones, she emotes in ways that one rarely sees her do. Like her character Julie in 'Showboat' Victoria is moxed-race, which is the main theme of the movie. She detested the locations shooting due to the heat, stench from the open sewers and nearly poverty level accommodations they had. She even contracted dysentery - so it was apparently not a great memory. She said the worst part was the rape scene which was so realistic in the portrayal, that it caused her nightmares for some time. It looked rather tame o me (but this is 50 years later and we've seen a lot worse). Also in her biography, Ava states that they were allowed to use a sacred Sikh temple in the filming of the ceremony with Rajit. She said it was the first time they let non-Sikh's into the temple.
Bill Travers plays the railroad station manager and his whole life is his job. He focuses narrowly on that and his tunnel vision leaves him oblivious to the momentous changes around him. Except for the fact that when the British leave he might lose that little piece of authority where he is, that which gives him stature in the Raj society. Stewart Granger, as the British Colonel in charge of the whole mess in Bhowani, said that Bhowani Junction was one of the few films he was really proud to be associated with. In the film, his character really does see the Indians as human beings and not just "wogs." He's quite knowledgeable about their customs in the book, and this makes it through clearly into the film..
The issues are complex, but in the hands of a good director like George Cukor, the characters and their struggles become real and even more important, the story is still interesting. The film's obviously a bit dated now, the story is complicated but for all that it's well told and paced. The characters are interesting, well presented and well-acted and the film is beautifully shot. It's almost faithful to the book and a good portrait of the chaos in India at the end of the second world war. Ava Gardner is luminous as always, and Stewart Granger makes good foil for her.
Over all, it's a good movie from the fifties. Not a classic, but if you're interested in India, and the British in India, it's worth watching..
Pros:
Location: Interestingly, permission to shoot the movie in India was refused, so Pakistan was used as a substitute. The Pakistani backdrop is gorgeously photographed and it's certainly a testament to location shooting as opposed to studio backdrops. Cukor deserves full credit for capturing the ambiance of the romantic North Western Railways, its first class coaches, the engines and goods wagons. A keen observer will note that some of the shots of goods wagons showed vintage wagons, while others showed contemporary ones (well, contemporary when the film was made anyhow....). As one who has spent some considerable time in India, to me the film caught the Indian ambiance perfectly, right up to the Railway quarters for its staff.
Directing: The film is well directed by Cukor, especially the interior, dramatic scenes that he was so famous for. The final sequence is a break from that, however, with darkly lit chases and murder.
Cons:
Racism: A major drawback is the producers decision to use non-Indian actors in the roles of Indians. Most of the Indian characters were played, with some very dodgy accents, by white actors. Using genuine Indians would have been a real improvement. Considering however when the film was made, I guess it was a sign of the times. Sadly though, no matter how good the accent, and how well the make-up has been applied, the result is always going to be a poor second to the real thing and this detracts somewhat from the film. Perhaps the casting of Gardner seems less eccentric when one considers that the film-makers changed the ending of the novel, in which Victoria ends up marrying Patrick. An ending in which a dashing white officer loses out to a mixed-race railway bureaucrat would not be in keeping with normal cinema conventions, so it was changed; Patrick dies heroically and Victoria marries Savage. Racially mixed romances were, however, a controversial subject, for some reason felt to be more acceptable on screen if the mixed-race girl who loves the white boy was played by a white actress. The Eurasian heroine of "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing", for example, another American film set in a British colony, is played by Jennifer Jones. It is ironic that films which set out to expose racism in the British Empire should also have unconsciously revealed some of the racist attitudes which prevailed in Hollywood instead.
Cuts to the film: Apparently the film was also cut unmercifully in the editing room and some of the better sequences were left out, which seems a real shame. Guess it's filmed too long ago now to make a "Directors Cut" for a DVD release.
Too many voice-overs: There are also a large number of voice-overs done by Granger's character (Savage). The technique is used to get in all the history and the details behind the political climate of the time but it does drag the film down in places.
Trivia:
Bill Travers, one of the two leading male actors opposite Ava Gardner, served under John Masters in the British Army on the Burma Front of WW2.
The film was shot on location in Pakistan. The studio went to great expense to haul all the necessary equipment and personnel to such a far away place. Apparantly this was the nail in studio head Dorry Sherry's coffin. Because Bhowani Junction didn't have great box office success and cost quite a bit, he was soon kicked out. Much in the same way Louis B Mayer was 5 years previous. No loyalty in Hollywood.
Hollywood normally left films about British rule in India to the British themselves ("The Drum", "Black Narcissus", "North West Frontier"), but "Bhowani Junction" is an exception. Certainly, John Masters' novel offered everything needed to make a thinking man's epic - an exotic setting, plenty of action, a thrilling finale and a serious theme - in this case racism. When Hollywood examined racial issues, it often preferred to do so in the context of European colonialism rather than in the context of America itself.
A good movie about the British leaving India in 1947 August 13, 2009
Kiwi (Mississauga, Ontario Canada)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Filmed in 1956, Bhowani Junction is based on the book of the same name by John Masters and is set in India during the last days of the British Raj. The book is a minor classic in English fiction and was a best-seller back in the 1950's and 60's. The film, starring Ava Gardner and Bill Travers (a now unknown but then quite famous British actor), was quite a success in it's day. Now however, 50 years on from the events depicted, it's lost a lot of it's immediacy and impact and the historical background is somewhat vague unless you're a student of the history of the British in India. What really makes the film worth seeing is the historic flavor it brings. Back in 1947, India was a nation of 345 million people and about to break away from the British Empire. The British still ruled, but were in the process of departing, albeit slower than the demands of many of the Indian nationalists, who wanted immediate independence.
The setting for the film is the Indian railway town of Bhowani Junction in 1946, a year before Independence. The British administrators are resigned to leaving India, but still hope to exercise an influence over the path the country will take after independence. Hence their preference for the Congress Party over the pro-Moscow Communist Party. After all Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress leader, was a wealthy, patrician Fabian socialist, a lawyer by training, and educated at public school and Oxbridge (Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge)- just like the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee (Haileybury and University College, Oxford). Meanwhile, both the Congress Party and the Communist Party are doing all kinds of sabotage to persuade the British quickly get out of India. Each party is doing it for their own reasons - the Communists are attempting to frustrate the handover of power to the Congress Party by acts of sabotage, hoping to create chaos which will enable them to seize power themselves. And some Congress activists are also trying to hasten the departure of the British by non-violent acts of resistance, although these often play into the hands of the Communists. The British meanwhile are left attempting to maintain a semblance of law and order. Unusually for a film about the Raj, the film does not concentrate solely on relations between the British colonialists and the native peoples of India. Several of the leading characters are drawn from a third group, the country's Anglo-Indian, or mixed race, community. The Anglo-Indians were, and are, a distinct community within India, bound together by the English language, an Anglo-centric culture and the Christian religion.
The main character is Victoria Jones (played by Ava Gardner), the daughter of an Anglo-Indian train driver, and the film depicts the entangled relationships between Victoria and the three men in her life, Colonel Rodney Savage (played by Stewart Granger), a senior British army officer, Ranjit Singh, a Sikh active in the Indian independence movement, and Patrick Taylor (played by Bill Travers), an Anglo-Indian railway official. (Many Anglo-Indians worked on the railways). The fact that Victoria's lovers are drawn from the three different communities is symbolic of her uncertainty about her own cultural identity. The Anglo-Indians tended to identify culturally with Britain rather than India, although few of them had ever visited Britain, but were not fully accepted by either the British or the native Indians, both of whom referred to them by the same derogatory term, "chee-chee". It is noticeable that Victoria's attempts to fit in with British culture are not always successful. She refers to her parents by the Latin terms "pater" and "mater", unaware that in Britain this is an upper-class affectation; no British engine driver's daughter would speak in this manner. Patrick is also torn between different identities. He dislikes the British, largely because they will not accept him as one of them, but also despises full-blooded Indians, whom he refers to as "wogs" (another derogatory term). Savage is far more liberal and tolerant about matters of race.
The crisis of the story comes when Victoria kills a British soldier while he is attempting to rape her. Although the killing was clearly in self-defence, she fears that the British authorities will not, on account of her mixed-race origins, believe her version of events, so she tries to conceal the incident, thus allowing herself to be blackmailed by the Communists into assisting with one of their schemes, an attempted assassination of the country' spiritual leader Mohandas Gandhi and future prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The movie works very hard to distinguishes between Gandhi's peaceful and passive resistance movement and the communist and nationalist-inspired violence that in the event caused a bloody civil war between the Hindu's and Moslem's in 1947-48. The violence went on to lead to the assassination of Gandhi, by a Hindu no less, and is still going on today with the partitioned former Indian province of Kashmir today as an ongoing flashpoint between India and Pakistan.
Back to the movie: Victoria feels that she doesn't fit into the new and soon to be formed Indian nation and is torn between her both fathers British and her mothers Indian roots. Together with her Anglo-Indian fiancée Pat Taylor, (Bill Travers), they fear that they'll be left out when the native Indians take over the government and that leaves them both in a bind with regard to either staying or leaving the country. Victoria at first slowly gravitates towards her Indian nationality when she's attacked by British army officer Graham McDaniel (Lionel Jeffries), who had been eying her since she arrived at Bhowani Junction as a British/Indian transportation officer. Trying to fight the wild and lecherous McDaniel off Victoria, bashes his head in with an steel rod, killing him. Being taken in by Ranjit Kasel (Francis Matthews), who works with her at the transportation office, and his mother Sadani (Freda Jones), the two together with mutual friend Ghanshyam (Peter Illing), cover up McDaniel's death by hiding his body in a town garbage dump. It later turns out that there was also an Indian sentry murdered at the scene of McDaniel's killing and even worse, Ghanshyam turns out to be none-other then the communist rabble-rouser and terrorist Davay! Victoria is now in danger of being implicated in not only a terrorist act but also in giving aid and comfort to the wanted terrorist leader, Davay.
Davay is trapped in Bhowani Junction and uses Victoria, by blackmailing her, to get him out by rail, which alerts her former lover and fiancée Taylor who, together with her now current lover Col. Savage, and a platoon of British/Indian soldiers, corral the train. A desperate Davay takes off on foot into a nearby train tunnel. Having Davay trapped in the ensuing shootout Taylor gets hit and later dies from his wounds but Davay is blown away by Col.Savage who also disarms the sticks of dynamite that he left on the tracks to explode under the next train. It's then that Col. Savage realizes that he, Taylor and the soldiers under his command, prevented the murder of India's future leaders, Gandhi and Nehru, who were passengers on that very train. The film ends with Victoria in love with Col. Savage, and him with her. At the same time Victoria still does not want to leave India with him - a slightly different end to the film as opposed to the book and one that is not that convincing at all.
The book and the film attempt to meld the historical, and the inter-racial quandary posed for the Anglo-Indian community, with historical events. The issues the book (and the film) deal with are both complex and now historical, and this makes the story a little confusing and convoluted throughout, as well as posing a problem for the director in how to include all the relevant information. Masters' novel offered everything needed to make an epic, and overall the film is a pretty good one, combining an exciting adventure story with an intelligent look at some serious issues. Perhaps, however, I should have said say that it offered everything needed to make an epic bar one thing - a major role for a big-name American star. Hence the rather eccentric casting of Ava Gardner as Victoria, who never seems convincing as an Anglo-Indian and whose accent wavers between British, Indian and American. There were, in fact, two big-name Anglo-Indian cinema actresses around this period, Merle Oberon and Vivien Leigh, but both would probably have been too old for the role, and both normally passed as white. (Oberon, in particular, denied having any connection with India and claimed falsely to be Australian).
Two people who may have given the outstanding performances of their careers are Ava Gardner and Bill Travers. Both play bi-racial people who don't fit in either society. But they react differently. Gardner is going through a whole lot of angst, really seeing both the British and Indian point of view. How she missed an Oscar nomination here is beyond me as she gives arguably the best performance of her career as the chee-chee Victoria Jones, the Anglo-Indian daughter of a Welsh train driver and an Indian woman, managing to convey with understated skill the frustrations and torment of being dismissed by the Indians as an Englishwoman, and by the English as an Indian (or `wog' as they so succinctly put it). Perhaps she saw the way Bill Travers decided to handle his role as her male counterpart - and initial romantic interest - and chose a path diametrically opposed to his outrageously over-the-top performance. Considering the fact that she also battles against a script that is sometimes a little turgid, and which fails to really capture the ordeal of her kind in those tumultuous times, her performance is to be admired.
However, I personally thought this was one of Ava Gardner's better acting performances. In part because she had a character with some meat and not just all cheesecake and sex appeal. In her biography, Ava herself says it is one of her better roles. Bhowani Junction is one of the few movies where Ava Gardner was allowed to be more than just a beautiful, but inanimate statue. As Victoria Jones, she emotes in ways that one rarely sees her do. Like her character Julie in 'Showboat' Victoria is moxed-race, which is the main theme of the movie. She detested the locations shooting due to the heat, stench from the open sewers and nearly poverty level accommodations they had. She even contracted dysentery - so it was apparently not a great memory. She said the worst part was the rape scene which was so realistic in the portrayal, that it caused her nightmares for some time. It looked rather tame o me (but this is 50 years later and we've seen a lot worse). Also in her biography, Ava states that they were allowed to use a sacred Sikh temple in the filming of the ceremony with Rajit. She said it was the first time they let non-Sikh's into the temple.
Bill Travers plays the railroad station manager and his whole life is his job. He focuses narrowly on that and his tunnel vision leaves him oblivious to the momentous changes around him. Except for the fact that when the British leave he might lose that little piece of authority where he is, that which gives him stature in the Raj society. Stewart Granger, as the British Colonel in charge of the whole mess in Bhowani, said that Bhowani Junction was one of the few films he was really proud to be associated with. In the film, his character really does see the Indians as human beings and not just "wogs." He's quite knowledgeable about their customs in the book, and this makes it through clearly into the film..
The issues are complex, but in the hands of a good director like George Cukor, the characters and their struggles become real and even more important, the story is still interesting. The film's obviously a bit dated now, the story is complicated but for all that it's well told and paced. The characters are interesting, well presented and well-acted and the film is beautifully shot. It's almost faithful to the book and a good portrait of the chaos in India at the end of the second world war. Ava Gardner is luminous as always, and Stewart Granger makes good foil for her.
Over all, it's a good movie from the fifties. Not a classic, but if you're interested in India, and the British in India, it's worth watching..
Pros:
Location: Interestingly, permission to shoot the movie in India was refused, so Pakistan was used as a substitute. The Pakistani backdrop is gorgeously photographed and it's certainly a testament to location shooting as opposed to studio backdrops. Cukor deserves full credit for capturing the ambiance of the romantic North Western Railways, its first class coaches, the engines and goods wagons. A keen observer will note that some of the shots of goods wagons showed vintage wagons, while others showed contemporary ones (well, contemporary when the film was made anyhow....). As one who has spent some considerable time in India, to me the film caught the Indian ambiance perfectly, right up to the Railway quarters for its staff.
Directing: The film is well directed by Cukor, especially the interior, dramatic scenes that he was so famous for. The final sequence is a break from that, however, with darkly lit chases and murder.
Cons:
Racism: A major drawback is the producers decision to use non-Indian actors in the roles of Indians. Most of the Indian characters were played, with some very dodgy accents, by white actors. Using genuine Indians would have been a real improvement. Considering however when the film was made, I guess it was a sign of the times. Sadly though, no matter how good the accent, and how well the make-up has been applied, the result is always going to be a poor second to the real thing and this detracts somewhat from the film. Perhaps the casting of Gardner seems less eccentric when one considers that the film-makers changed the ending of the novel, in which Victoria ends up marrying Patrick. An ending in which a dashing white officer loses out to a mixed-race railway bureaucrat would not be in keeping with normal cinema conventions, so it was changed; Patrick dies heroically and Victoria marries Savage. Racially mixed romances were, however, a controversial subject, for some reason felt to be more acceptable on screen if the mixed-race girl who loves the white boy was played by a white actress. The Eurasian heroine of "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing", for example, another American film set in a British colony, is played by Jennifer Jones. It is ironic that films which set out to expose racism in the British Empire should also have unconsciously revealed some of the racist attitudes which prevailed in Hollywood instead.
Cuts to the film: Apparently the film was also cut unmercifully in the editing room and some of the better sequences were left out, which seems a real shame. Guess it's filmed too long ago now to make a "Directors Cut" for a DVD release.
Too many voice-overs: There are also a large number of voice-overs done by Granger's character (Savage). The technique is used to get in all the history and the details behind the political climate of the time but it does drag the film down in places.
Trivia:
Bill Travers, one of the two leading male actors opposite Ava Gardner, served under John Masters in the British Army on the Burma Front of WW2.
The film was shot on location in Pakistan. The studio went to great expense to haul all the necessary equipment and personnel to such a far away place. Apparantly this was the nail in studio head Dorry Sherry's coffin. Because Bhowani Junction didn't have great box office success and cost quite a bit, he was soon kicked out. Much in the same way Louis B Mayer was 5 years previous. No loyalty in Hollywood.
Hollywood normally left films about British rule in India to the British themselves ("The Drum", "Black Narcissus", "North West Frontier"), but "Bhowani Junction" is an exception. Certainly, John Masters' novel offered everything needed to make a thinking man's epic - an exotic setting, plenty of action, a thrilling finale and a serious theme - in this case racism. When Hollywood examined racial issues, it often preferred to do so in the context of European colonialism rather than in the context of America itself.
 The star is for the DVD transfer/ Bhowani Junction a great film July 22, 2009
Daniel G. Madigan (Redmond, WA United States)
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
Why is there being marketed this series of very good films (some not) at these sky rocket prices, with no significant art work, no inserts, no trailers, no special features, and no chapters with any logic..every ten minutes there is a chapter break, and are they awful.
These are DVDS from tapes, sold to customers for close to $30.00 each.
Further, the restrictions on playing them are absurd, showing the nature of the copying. They are way over-priced knock offs, of the very bad over seas variety.
Hard to understand, but beware, and if you have B. Junction, Private Lives, Sins of Rachel Cade etc., on VHS, hold on to those copies, they are much better.
At this price..a disgrace.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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