TechnoTV - Bhowani Junction

List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $68.73
Your Save: $ ( % )
Availability:
Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
Starring: Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger, Bill Travers, Abraham Sofaer, Francis Matthews
Directed By: George Cukor

Average Customer Rating:

Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302224306
Format: Color
ISBN: 6302224306
Label: MGM (Warner)
Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Warner)
Release Date: 1994-03-07
Running Time: 110
Studio: MGM (Warner)
Theatrical Release Date: 1956-05-01

Related Items
Scaramouche The Rains Came Green Fire Mogambo Beau Brummell

Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating:

Summary: A sign of the times
Comment: While this movie may not be historically accurate, it stands out for two reasons. The acting of Ava Gardner as she portrays a half Indian, half Welsh young woman during one of the most turbulent times in the history of the Indian sub-continent. She was ably supported by a distinguished cast. The second reason is the portrayal of those times. The British had little to be proud about over their management of the sub-continent, but they did leave behind a fully functioning civil service, including the management of the railways. This movie shows the situation perfectly. All in all, this movie is an event not to be missed. The reader who thinks that all the characters ever did was winge and whine obviously knows nothing about the conditions in which the half-casts lived. I recommend this without hesitation.

Customer Rating:

Summary: bhowani junction
Comment: I read this book 30 years ago & I just read it again, its a fine story by a good English author, so I thought I would watch the video.
Sadly Hollywood has taken this fine story and just about changed it all around & not for the good - it must be to satisfy the film Moguls.
Could do better

Customer Rating:

Summary: Whining and moaning
Comment: It's a somewhat dated, post-WWII India where several lead victims keep whinging and whining and moaning about being racially mixed and not belonging anywhere.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Choas of India's Independence
Comment: This is an interesting flick which shows the choas that created India and Pakistan as two inperfect nations. To view this movie today can give you an insight into what has become modern India. Ava Gardener does a great job showing the plight of the Anglo-Indians. While not Indian herself she looks the part well. Some have complained that having British actors play Indians detracts from the movie. Perhaps this is not politically correct by today's standards, but this viewer found nothing wrong with it. Indian actors might have been harder to understand with their accents than British actors! The real strength of this movie is the political background of India's Independence. The atmosphere of confusion bordering on bloody conflict is captured well. One can see what a thankless job the British had trying to dis-engage from India without leaving a civil war behind. The way Colonel Savage deals with the high caste Brahamins protesting at the railway station is masterful. Even in their decline, the British could always out-smart their Indian opponets! The agitators like Ghandi, Nehru and others who are portrayed by their followers in the movie show how in their eagerness to ride themselves of the British they were careless in regards to possible Moslem /Hindu violence. On the sidelines, but hoping to cause trouble were the Communists, as always. The movie shows all of these forces in play, while allowing us to see India's confusion in the form of Ava Gardner's identity crisis, which mirrors what the impact of Independence was on many.

The Pakistani battalion that is used to portray a Pathan unit provides an interesting snapshot of what the old Indian army was like. The use of bagpipes was popular in their regiments because of the influence of Scottish units and their music on India. Many Indian and Paksistani army pipe bands today owe their musical heritage to the Scottish regiments of the British army who imparted their knowledge of the great Highland Warpipe to these peoples. While Perhaps slightly dated, this movie is still worthwhile, and gives one an appreciation of the history and confusion of the formation of India and Paksistan. Ava Gardener fans will certainly enjoy it as well.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Torpid and turgid trivialisation of important topic
Comment: Ava Gardner once described this as the most difficult film of her career.I tend to assume that she meant the physical grind of location filming in Pakistan,rather than the dramatic demands of her role.She gives a performance of such stultifying dullness that she suggests she ignored them and was primarily concerned to get the whole thing over and done with.and then to get back on the next plane to Hollywood She plays Victoria,an Anglo-Indian woman whose parents are fanatically pro-British and view the impending independence of India with some trepidation.She haerself is more open-minded and seeks a positivee role for mixed race people in the new state

Her fiancee is of the same mind as her parents .She breaks off the engagement and takes up with a young Indian nationalist,en route to a dalliance with the dashing British officer-played with no great flair by Stewart Granger
In the background to this tale is the political dimension of a nation about to become an independent state and facing internal conflict between the non-violence of Ghandi and the more vigorous efforts of the Communists
The acting is poor and the casting of white actors as Indians is embarrassing in this day and age.Only Lionel Jeffries in a rare unsympathetic role as a brutal British officer makes a positive impact
The crowd scenes are well handled but so woeful is the scripting and acting this quickly becomes an ordeal

Still its better than Ghandi -but so too is self-amputation of both legs!

More Reviews

Editorial Reviews:

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