7/8/2023 0 Comments A passage to india novelistA cut reveals the girders of a steel bridge across a river sliding past the train window. Near the beginning, two English ladies are having drinks on a train and the delicate conversation is suddenly interrupted by a slow, elephantine kathoom, kathoom, kathoom. "Passage to India" isn't his best film but it's a good thoughtful one, with his usual attention to details of weather, furniture, and wildlife. We get to know the people marching along the skylines. He was in some ways like John Ford writ large. (It's hard to believe that more than twenty years have passed since his last work.) His interests were in the story of people involved in cultural clashes and tended to be set against vast landscapes. But, whew, what a resume! From "Great Expectations" to this, his last film, and although some are slower than others there is not a clunker among them. He was impatient with crews too, snapping at them because he was losing the light, as if it were the photographer who was turning them down. He was so sadistic to Sessue Hayakawa on "The Bridge on the River Quai," blaming Hayakaway's flawed English for all the delays that Hayakawa's breakdown scene was real. When Guiness arrived on the set, Lean told him he'd been hoping for another actor for the part of Godbole. David Lean wasn't an especially likable guy, despite his over-sized ears.
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