The National Archaeological Museum lead us to «A Passage to India»
For his exquisite swansong, David Lean («Lawrence of Arabia», «Doctor Zhivago») gathered 11 nominations and two Oscar victories (Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the magnificent Peggy Ashcroft and Best Music for Maurice Jarre’s aristocratic score’s), handing over his film as one of the last genuinely sublime movies in the history of cinema.
When: Wednesday, August 23rd | 21:00
Where: National Archaeological Museum (44 October 28th Str., Athens) | Free entrance
It took 14 years and the sudden impact of films like «Gandhi» and «Heat and Dust» to get David Lean («Lawrence of Arabia», «Doctor Zhivago») to return to directing, after the disheartening number of tickets that «Ryan’s Daughter» sold in 1970. In his swansong, as it was destined to be, the renowned British filmmaker confronted a proper literary boulder: a borderline not cinematic novel by E. M. Forster on the multiple inequalities and the yawning gap between East and West, the plot of which foretells the developments in India and the end of colonialism.
Lean, just like Forster in his book, sees beyond the folklore and prejudices of the people of India, even deeper than the hypocrisy of the colonists, and tells the story of the dramatic finale to an elderly Englishwoman’s passage through the Indian town of Tarapur, together with her son’s fiancée’s, during the 20s, and the way in which the two women find themselves in the epicenter of a painful case of rape.
True to the book’s story, and where possible to its spirit, the director accomplishes, according to his contemporaries, one of the best adaptations that classical literature was ever granted in cinema. Meanwhile, he decorates the indulgingly old-fashioned and grandiosely epic «Passage to India» with exotic frames of large scale, but also of unparalleled beauty, and gathers 11 nominations and two Oscar victories (Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the magnificent Peggy Ashcroft and Best Music for Maurice Jarre’s aristocratic score’s). Lastly, he hands over his film as one of the last genuinely sublime movies in the history of cinema – an ideal ending in the career of a perfectionist filmmaker who dared to spread a larger canvas than anybody else for his deeply human stories.
Director: David Lean
Starring: Judy Davis, Victor Banerjee, Peggy Ashcroft
Duration: 164'
With the support of:
Co-organizer, for the third time, is the City of Athens Cultural, Sport and Youth Organization.
Sponsored by Strongbow, cider at its best.
The screening is accessible to people with disabilities.