Bhowani Junction (1956)

An Anglo-Indian woman (Ava Gardner) is caught between India and England

During the chaotic final days of British rule in northwest India in 1947, the beautiful daughter (Gardner) of an English train engineer and an Indian mother struggles to find her identity while pursued by three men: a rail-traffic superintendent (Bill Travers), his Sikh subordinate (Francis Matthews) and a British colonel (Stewart Granger). Meanwhile Indian supporters of Mahatma Gandhi campaign for independence while Communists, led by a revolutionary called Davay (Peter Illing), fuel unrest.

“Bhowani Junction” (1956) is an exotic drama with adventure elements similar to the future "A Passage to India" (1985), although not as good as that one. It features most of the elements you’d think of when India comes to mind — never-ending throngs of people in (usually) white garb, trains, street commotion, etc.

Ava is beautiful, Granger makes for a stalwart male protagonist, the locations are authentic and the historical setting is interesting. But I rolled my eyes at the subplot regarding a certain person feeling guilty about something, which didn’t make sense since what that person did was in self-defense and the perpetrator was an ignoble scumbag.

The movie runs 1 hour, 50 minutes, and was shot in Lahore, Pakistan, which is just across the border from northwestern India; the train wreck sequence was done 35 miles outside London to the southwest; another sequence was shot at Tram Tunnel, Kingsway, London, while studio stuff was done at the MGM British Studios just north of the city.

GRADE: B-/C+