Product Details

• Actors: Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger, Bill Travers, Abraham Sofaer, Francis Matthews
• Directors: George Cukor
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Warner)
• VHS Release Date: March 7, 1994
• Run Time: 109 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302224306
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,258 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

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

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Ava Gardner !!!!, November 1, 2001

By	Daniel G. Madigan (Redmond, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ava Gardner once more shows how good she can be in a dramatic part with this role as an Anglo Indian trying to exist in a world where she is respected by neither the British nor the Indians. Her performance captures the plight of a character on the verge of losing her identity and deciding to become totally Indian, while sensing that she belongs to the colonial world that has created this dichotomy of racial selfhood she lives in.

Ava is spectatcular in portraying the two sides of this tricky coin, and her acting is enhanced by her remarkable beauty, her brunette hair and beautiful eyes and luminous face, and her gestures which suggest so much of these two worlds that torment her.

Stewart Granger, always underestimated, is very good as a man who pursues Ava with negative ideas about her Anglo-Indian role, and who, through this negativity, hopes that she will seee him as the savior, again the colonial solution.

Bill Travers is excellent as an Anglo, chasing Ava to the point of madness, insisting on his sexual power and his sense of the real India she must live in.

There are racial issues struggling to get out in this script, and George Cukor, who directed this and many Hepburn /Tracey films, keeps the politically correct posture that he does in every film he ever made. A hack of the first order, but Ava keeps way ahead of this guy and makes Bhowani Junction a great film. (Note her rape scene, and how modern her approach to it is.)

This film was cut drastically by Metro Goldwyn Mayer, and Cukor approved of all the cuts, as he did with Judy Garland's A Star Is Born, claiming he suffered over all the cuts.Nonsense. The cuts do not hurt the performances here, as they stand in this film version of the novel; but the film shows what a lousy studio Metro was and what a great star Ava was. The director Cukor would go on to try and direct the great Marilyn Monroe in two films, one she saves and the other he falls apart making. So, there are these big odds in Bhowani Junction( a terrible studio and a ghastly director)but the viewer should enjoy watching Ava and the rest of this very good cast beat the odds.

Buy it and cherish it..but, wait for DVD and cinemascope, lbx versions/.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sign of the times, October 24, 2006

By	A. Paton (Scotland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Bhowani Junction (DVD)

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.

27 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Choas of India's Independence, November 13, 2002

By	Roger Kennedy - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.