As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The first must-see film of the year.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A film for those who like history and large-scale analog cinematography in the classic mode. While it departs in certain details from the original novel, and while it did not score well at the box office, Bhowani Junction stands in retrospect as a monument to filmmaking excellence in the epic age of Hollywood, with a fine script, great historical verisimilitude, gigantic production values, and excellent performances all around, most especially by a ravishing Ava Gardner as a half-Indian, half-English minor officer in the British colonial corps, and by Stewart Granger as her commanding officer. The star-crossed pair eventually find love amidst the coming departure of the British from India, encountering Gandhi's cadres of non-violent resistors, scheming and marauding Communists directed from Moscow, and the sexual and racial politics and ambiguities of the late colonial period. The titling styles of films in this era can feel dated, but who cares---all in all this is great stuff, and an entirely educational and pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

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 film is set in 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). According to this film 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. Moreover, 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. 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 Anglocentric culture and the Christian religion. The main character is Victoria Jones, the daughter of an Anglo-Indian train driver, and the film depicts the relationships between Victoria and the three men in her life, Colonel Rodney Savage, a senior British army officer, Ranjit Singh, a Sikh active in the Indian independence movement, and Patrick Taylor, 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. I said that 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 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). Stewart Granger is very good as Savage, a man who can be cynical and sardonic but also liberal and humane. I was disappointed, however, that most of the Indian characters were played, with some very dodgy accents, by white actors. 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 the Hollywood Empire. 7/10

I am an Anglo-Indian, and feel many aspects of film were well portrayed, the idea of being "mixed up" was put forth quite well. However, I can't really relate to Victoria, as I am of a younger AI generation, who grew up in independent India, I see myself as Indian first and Anglo second.I have to second the first comment, the use of non-Indian actors, is both annoying and insulting! India produces more films than Hollywood, has quite an extensive roster of actors, surely, George Cukor could have cast Indians in those roles. To think he made a movie about Indians, and not casting Indian actors, is absurd!

'Bhowani Junction' was 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 bi-racial, which is the main theme of the movie. The Pakistani backdrop is gorgeously photographed and it's certainly a testament to location shooting as opposed to studio backdrops. Unsurprisingly, it was well directed by Cukor, especially the interior, dramatic scenes that he is so famous for. The final sequence is a break from that, however, with darkly lit chases and murder. An entertaining diversion; certainly one that fans of Gardner would want to catch.