Richard Wilson Movies

Victor Banerjee, the India-born star of David Lean's A Passage to India, is the central figure of director Ronald L. Neame's Foreign Body. Jobless in Calcutta, Banerjee steals money from his own father to afford passage to Britain. There he makes contact with his cousin Warren Mitchell, who arranges for Banerjee to get a job as a bus conductor. But when he begins to ardently pursue a lovely young white woman, Banerjee loses his job at the behest of the girl's influential father. His luck changes radically when Banerjee administers mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a bus accident victim, whereupon he is mistaken for a doctor by friendly model Amanda Donohoe (probably the nicest she's ever been on film). Donohoe talks up the skills of this "new Indian doctor", and before he knows what has hit him, Banerjee is head physician to the Prime Minister of England--with virtually every woman in the land vying for his services in bed! Never letting on where it is heading next, Foreign Body is adapted from an equally tricky novel by Roderick Mann. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A Passage to India, director David Lean's final film (for which he also received editing credit), breaks no new ground cinematically, but remains an exquisitely assembled harkback to such earlier Lean epics as Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter. Based on the novel by E. M. Forster, the film is set in colonial India in 1924. Adela Quested (Judy Davis), a sheltered, well-educated British woman, arrives in the town of Chandrapore, where she hopes to experience "the real India". Here she meets and befriends Dr. Aziz (Victor Banerjee), who, despite longstanding racial and social taboos, moves with relative ease and freedom amongst highborn British circles. Feeling comfortable with Adela, Aziz invites her to accompany him on a visit to the Marabar caves. Adela has previously exhibited bizarre, almost mystical behavior during other ventures into the Indian wilderness: this time, she emerges from the caves showing signs of injury and ill usage. To Aziz' horror, he is accused by Adela of raping her. Typically, the British ruling class rallies to Adela's defense, virtually convicting Aziz before the trial ever begins. Though he is eventually acquitted due to lack of evidence (in fact, director Lean never shows us what really happened), Aziz is ruined in the eyes of both the British and his own people-as is Adela. Woven into these proceedings is a subplot involving Adela's elderly travelling companion Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft), who through a series of plot twists too complex to describe here becomes a heroine of the Indian Independence movement. A Passage to India was nominated for several Academy Awards, scoring wins in the categories of Best Supporting Actress (Peggy Ashcroft) and Best Original Score (Maurice Jarre). A theatrical version of A Passage to India, written by Santha Rama Rau, was previously adapted for television by the BBC in the mid-1970s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A single woman still living with her boring parents secretly dreams of sexual passion in this erotic drama. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi