Saeed Jaffrey Movies

Tom Pickle (Michael York) is the British rock star who travels to India to learn the sitar from Ustad Zafar Khan (Uptal Dutt). Much to the dismay of his aggressive agent Chris (Barry Foster), he leaves the money-making music world behind to learn about the exotic Indian instrument. Khan believes Tom lacks focus but has the talent, and a young hippie girl arrives (Rita Tushingham) who has the focus but not the natural talent that Tom possesses. There is a romantic angle between the hippie-girl Jenny and Tom, but it is more implied than demonstrated. Soon the Guru Khan is besieged by women who all try to capture his attention. He becomes frustrated over the lack of spiritual commitment of his students, as the rocker contemplates his return to swinging London town. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The Wilby Conspiracy is set in South Africa, at a time when Apartheid was the order of the day. Political activist Shack Twala (Sidney Poitier) finds an unlikely -- and reluctant -- ally in the form of the British Keogh (Michael Caine). Both Twala and Keogh are scrutinized by racist police official Horn (Nicol Williamson), who hopes that they'll lead him to the hideout of chief activist Wilby (Joe De Graft). Based on the novel by Peter Driscoll, The Wilby Conspiracy abandons its sociological overtones early on in favor of an extended chase. The film reteams Poitier and director Ralph Nelson, who, 12 years earlier, had collaborated on Lilies of the Field. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on a story by Munshi Premchand, and much influenced by Vsevolod Pudovkin's 1925 film Chess Fever, this satirical film by noted Indian director Satyajit Ray is set in colonial India in 1856. The British Resident of the East India Company (Richard Attenborough) has observed that the monarch of Lucknow, which is in his trading region, seems to be completely uninterested in government. He tries to arrange things so that he can annex the province. Embroiled in a long-running chess rivalry, two local noblemen (played by Sanjeev Kumar and Saeed Jaffrey) cannot be bothered with such minor issues as who is governing whom. Meanwhile, conditions in the kingdom go from bad to worse. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The Last Giraffe was adapted by Sherman Yellin from the book Raising Daisy Rothschild by Jock and Betty Leslie-Melville. Put two and two together, and you'll figure out from the above information that the giraffe of the title and Daisy Rothschild are one in the same. Filmed in Kenya, the fact-based story details the efforts of married-couple Susan Anspach and Simon Ward to save an injured baby Rothschild giraffe and to rescue the animal's herd from nasty poacher Gordon Jackson. It turns out that Jackson is not the only threat to the Rothschilds: the expanding human population of Kenya is unwittingly stripping the land of the precious foliage upon which Daisy and the other giraffes must feed. Thankfully, the film avoids sappy sentiment and Disneyesque preciousness. Made for television, The Last Giraffe premiered June 7, 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It was Richard Attenborough's lifelong dream to bring the life story of Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi to the screen. When it finally reached fruition in 1982, the 188-minute, Oscar-winning Gandhi was one of the most exhaustively thorough biopics ever made. The film begins in the early part of the 20th century, when Mohandas K. Gandhi (Ben Kingsley), a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance from the British government, Gandhi adopts a policy of "passive resistance," endeavoring to win freedom for his people without resorting to bloodshed. In the horrendous "slaughter" sequence, more extras appear on screen than in any previous historical epic. The supporting cast includes Candice Bergen as photographer Margaret Bourke-White, Athol Fugard as General Smuts, John Gielgud as Lord Irwin, John Mills as the viceroy, Martin Sheen as Walker, Trevor Howard as Judge Broomfield, and, in a tiny part as a street bully, star-to-be Daniel Day-Lewis. Gandhi won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Hindi social drama stars Naseerudin Shah as a family man whose everyday domestic life is turned upside down when he discovers that he has an illegitimate child (Jugal Hansraj) from an affair with a past mistress. When the boy's mother dies, he is sent to live with his father. The child's father attempts to hide the truth from his own daughters, but the past eventually catches up with him. ~ Jonathan E. Laxamana, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

An embittered policeman pushed far beyond the brink of tolerance, Officer Kapil (Naseeruddin Shah) grows not simply disgusted with the Indian drug trade (and the burgeoning problem of drug abuse in Indian society) but hell-bent on cleaning it up, as a one-man vigilante. So begins Pankaj Prasar's ultra-violent action opus Jalwa (1987). Kapil hits the inner city, arsenal in tow, and vows to exterminate the one drug lord whom he pinpoints as responsible for the slew of recreational drugs plaguing the Indian streets. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

The inmates of an insane asylum and Indian bureaucrats react to the sweeping political changes of 1947 when over a million people died in the conflict that led to the establishment of Pakistan. Actors often play dual roles as they portray bureaucrats and the hopelessly insane. Little insight of the historical causes for the partition is given in the feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This historical drama, based on a novel by John Masters that was in turn inspired by actual events, follows William Savage (Pierce Brosnan), a British agent of the East India Company, as he is sent with his new wife to India in the early 19th century. While Savage holds the unusually progressive view that the people of India are human and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, he is still a very proper subject of the British empire and behaves accordingly. One night, when he sees a group of seemingly crazed men rob and kill a defenseless woman, he demands to know what has happened. He learns that the killers were members of a bizarre cult called the Thugees; Savage is determined to do something about them, and he works his way into the group by disguising himself as one of their number; however, the more Savage tries to win the trust of the Thugees, the more he must act as one of them, which leads him into a murderous secret life of his own. The Deceivers was produced by Ismail Merchant, his first film with a director other than James Ivory. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide