Brennendes Indien

This film was screened last night on PBS. The title "Flame over India" caught my attention. Noting that the movie was made in 1959, I thought this would be one of the slow paced older movies. Surprise! The movie keeps you on the edge of your couch all the time. Some salient features:

1) The hero is more credible like the heroes and leaders you see in real-life - not huge and invincible like Arnold. Puts his own life at risk to save a young Hindu prince's life from Muslim rebels all the while knowing that the kid will be coerced to fight against him should the British not cease the occupation of India. Nevertheless, his actions are based on his duty as a soldier and as a compassionate human being.

2) Effective portrayal of opposing views - the gullible British lady, Mrs. Wyndham commenting that peoples not under the British Empire were uncivilized and the extremely polarized view of the cynical Indian journalist who opposes killing in theory. The movie brings out the sentiments from both sides. Also well done was the scene of a train massacre in showing the courage of Ms Wyatt to walk among the slain and save a young child that was still alive.

3) Several thrilling moments and some moments of suspense. The ambushes feel very real.

4) The movie was shot in India and it gives a very realistic look - especially the trains and the rural stations. Contrary to what many in the Western Hemisphere believe, the movie shows that not all Indians in that time were illiterate (Gupta speaks reasonably good English).

All in all a great movie. I would love to watch it again.

1905 India , riots try to overthrow the Maharaja from Norhwest frontier on a rebel-held county . The film portrays a British group on a stronghold being besieged by Indian rebel tribes, banded together against the Brits and they're led by Muslim leaders. The English people are surrounded by Moslems army which spent time in the siege . The governor( Ian Hunter) assigns captain Scott (one of Kenneth More's best) as responsible of protection the young prince , undertaking a dangerous escape . Scott has to save the Maharaja's son , attempting to get the heir to safety and getaway by commandeering a steam train . Along the way they encounter bandits , attackers , treason and sabotage . The Brits contra-attack displaying on the train a machine-gun , making a brutal slaughter . Scott takes the action by aiding the passengers (Lauren Bacall, Herbert Lom, Ursula Jeans ,Deckers, Wilfred Hyde White) throughout four hundred miles of risked travel .

This is a British attempt to match the US adventure's spectacles of the mid-sixties, containing derring-do, romance , old-fashioned action set mostly aboard a train, spectacular battles, gorgeous outdoors and resulting to be quite entertaining . It's a fiery early 20th-century adventure yarn with political connotations that some moments makes little sense but bulges with emotion that keeps coming at you, as action and adventures is maintained throughout . It's one of several adventures-action pictures made in Britain in the sixties that starred such Hollywood stars as Lauren Bacall and previously in the fifties as Victor Mature and Robert Taylor. There are strong performances from Herbert Lom as suspicious journalist and Wilfred Hyde White as feisty old man , who have made few bad films . Lauren Bacall as understanding governess, plays with some of sensitivity , and still successfully acting . Personable interpretation by I.S. Johar who steals the show as likable driver. Latterly, as very secondaries appear Ian Hunter , Alan Cuthbertson and Jack Gwillin, among others . But the main protagonist is the old machine called Empress of India Victoria . Luminous cinematography in rich Eastmancolor by Oscar-winning Geoffrey Unsworth, though with abuse of transparency . The movie was glamorously shot in Guadix , Granada , Andalucia , Spain and interior filmed in Pinewood studios. Emotive and atmospheric musical score by Spoliansky and conducted by the habitual Muir Matheson.

The motion picture is well and blazingly directed by J. Lee Thompson, he's a skill and successfully craftsman . He has directed numerous films ,British comedies, drama , suspense but his most successful films are the fresh and diverting adventures . Lee Thompson directed good Western ( McKenna gold , White Buffalo) and all king of genres as Sci-Fi (Conquest and Battle of planet of apes), terror (reincarnation of Peter Proud, Eye of the devil), adventures (King of the sun, Taras Bulba, and Northwest frontier also titled Fire over India) and Warlike ( Guns of Navarone, Von Braun). J. Lee Thomson working from the 50s in England, finished his career making Chuck Norris (Firewalker) and Charles Bronson vehicles (Evil that men do, Messenger of death, Death Wish 4 : Crackdown, Caboblanco, St Ives) and a string of TV movies until his demise at 2002 . Watchable results for this good adventure movie .

J. Lee Thompson's enjoyably imperialist if dated adventure appeared, from a creative point of view, at the most successful period of his variable 40-year career. Between 1957 and 1962 he directed such striking films as Woman In A Dressing Gown, Ice Cold In Alex and Tiger Bay, before concluding a continuous good run with The Guns Of Navarone and Cape Fear. Squeezed between Alex and Navarone, North West Frontier (aka: Flame Over India) shows many of the same characteristics of bravery and derring-do - the present film only differing in that it wears its old fashioned politics most conspicuously on its sleeve, and sets its adventure amidst the conflicts of an earlier generation, that of 1905 in India.

A stolid Kenneth More plays Captain Scott, charged with escorting a young Indian prince 300 miles to safety through rebel held territory, the principal journey of which is aboard a train filled with a compliment of contrasting passengers. There's a feisty American woman Catherine Wyatt (Lauren Bacall); a suspicious half-caste called Van Leyden (Herbert Lom); Bridie, a stereotypical British gent (Wilfred Hyde-White); the arms dealer Peters (Eugene Dickers), as well as Lady Windham, (Ursula Jeans). Outside of this circle of principals is the amiably compliant engine driver Gupta, played by veteran Asian actor-director I.S. Johar. Johar appeared in relatively few British films, but was to pop up again in another British classic a few years down the line, Lawrence Of Arabia (1962). It was rare for Asian personalities to appear with any great consequence in British cinema at that time, and it is a tribute to Johar that he brings a modicum of dignity to a role otherwise written full of typical obsequiousness.

It's the driver who fills the vacuum between the rebellious natives, their sympathisers and the humane smugness of the British ("Half the world mocks us, and half the world is only civilised because of us," says Lady Windham). Despite his subservience Gupta declines to do more to further his own cause or join in the Hindu Muslim strife fomenting around him: "Guns for Gupta? Oh no sir... other man has different religion, why should Gupta mind?" By constantly referring to himself in the third person, 'Gupta' assumes a greater significance than a single personality - perhaps even more than Little India the train also carries safely or the fleeing prince, Gupta is a symbol of his country, a moderate whose survival is paramount if the British are to be justified.

As gorgeously photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth, the setting in Thompson's film is a dusty, treacherous environment, the hills and plains home to bloodthirsty rebels, ruthless hordes seeking to destroy civilisation. A decade later, Unsworth was to work on Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. In North West Frontier we are confronted with another hostile environment, much of which is equally inscrutable to the Europeans who travel through it. As previously noted, much of the action takes places in the environs of the train; its engine nicknamed 'Victoria' which soon assumes the worthiness of England itself. As Van Leyden acidly observes: "Our little train is like our little world, trundling through space." Surrounded by revolting locals, facing a series of physical obstacles to progress, the 'little world' has to fall back on itself, sustaining itself with bravery and improvisation to some how 'make it'.

Like Hauptmann Otto Lutz in Thompson's Ice Cold In Alex of two years before, Van Leyden is an outsider, brought within the bosom of a small, travelling, British orientated community. Similarly, he provokes an ethical debate that provides the most interesting dialogue of the film. Unlike Hauptmann however, he eventually proves a rotten egg - but not without first providing some lines which to the modern ear seem far less threatening and radical than the original writers intended them to be. With ironical relish Van Leyden reads Gibbons' Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, and along the way loses few chances to snipe sarcastically at those around him: "You think God is only on the side of the British?" he jibes, "See what happens when the British are not around to keep order?" all the while arguing that those who oppose them are "not children (but) grown men… fighting for the freedom of their own country." Van Leyden is also a key player in many of the most memorable scenes of the film - inncluding the one that most remember, as he stands menacingly just behind the young prince who's playing close to the dangerous, whirling spokes of a pump wheel.

If Van Leyden eventually oversteps the mark of a reasoned (and reasonable) response to British occupation, then he finds a suitable opponent in Captain Scott. As played by the More, the bluff and unimaginative soldier has some explaining to do himself, principally to Wyatt, who is less than impressed by his rigid adherence to his martial calling. Despite her growing romantic interest in him she is not entirely convinced by his protestation that soldiers "are not machines... we're humans like anyone else." Van Leyden's bitter comment on British-led civil order in mind, it is she who leads the most striking sequence in the film, as the Empress of India encounters the massacre of the refugees at Bihvandi Pura. In these post-Rwandan, post-Reverend Jim Jones days, the massacred innocents in North West Frontier can still shock, if now sickeningly familiar. Thompson's viewers would probably have had to cast their minds back to Second World War atrocities to gain a context and the sight almost jolts matters to radical attention.

But this is a jolly old adventure; the British can clearly not be implicated in what is a native tragedy, wrought by natives, and so the audience is not permitted to stay at Massacre Halt too long. By the time the train reaches the end of its journey there's been time to sing the boating song from the Henley Regatta without a trace of irony, to outsmart the attacking insurgents and finally see off Van Leyden's dastardly sort. Despite the last minute appearance of caricatured British officer, Thompson's film ends aptly enough on a Kipling quote, and once again all seems so clear cut and right in the world... some will miss the cynicism of a modern film. Others will revel in it.

We are in British India, Moslem rebels want to kill a young Hindu prince and thus killing his family blood line. The British army are charged with the task of ensuring the prince is safely escorted from the troubled provinces. The duty falls to one intrepid Captain Scott, the only chance to achieve the aim is by train, with his allies on board being a rather unique group of individuals, can Scott achieve the mission against the mounting odds?.

North West Frontier has everything a great action adventure should have, whilst also adding in tension, drama and an array of wonderfully colourful characters. The opening to the film is pulsating, as Scott has to fight off the rebels whilst smuggling the prince and his governess out to safety. From then on we are on a train journey that is rich with enjoyment, the tension mounts among the passengers, not least because of the class and cultural differences, and perhaps allmotives are not in alignment? But they must club together if they are to survive this dangerous journey.

Kenneth Moore, Lauren Bacall, Herbert Lom and Wilfrid Hyde-White (comedy gold when under attack) are all pulling together to make a cracking yarn. Directing duties falls to J. Lee Thompson, whose CV boasts "Ice Cold In Alex", "The Guns Of Navarone" and "Cape Fear", so this material was thankfully in very safe hands. The photography from Geoffrey Unsworth is top notch, barren and desolate landscapes beautifully realising the peril of the passengers' journey, whilst the music from Mischa Spoliansky leaves a lasting impression.

This train may well be crammed full of genre stereotypes, and sure enough the patronising nature of the piece is dated at the edges, but this remains a gloriously enjoyable film that the whole family can readily digest. 9/10

Just one heck of a fun film with a nice bit of writing in the script. The theme of the British being stuck between two fighting groups of people, Hindus and Islamic is so right for the times now (Feb 2003). Then give Miss Bacall a decent part, with Wilfred Hyde Write and Herbert Lom and the rest of a wonderful group of character actors made my train ride across the Northwest frontier a most moving experience.