District Officer shows the work of an Indian District Officer, who is part of the Indian Civil Service, as he mediates local disputes and manages local affairs in the district of Bengal. The film has a conventional two part form, the first section which lasts nearly 3 minutes, portraying the regional setting and moving from a map and statistics to generalised shots of the region. The second longer section of 9 minutes focussing on the individual who lives within this setting. ’The film uses an authoritative British male voice-over throughout to structure the scenes and which promises knowledge both of an unknown place and its inhabitants’. The ideology of the film is best described as liberal imperialism at the end of Empire. The general narrative is one of progress in which the historical reclamation of land from the sea which signals man’s triumph over Nature blends seamlessly into the new forms of transport and communication, particularly railways and telephones. Thus the historical facts of British conquest and domination are transformed into natural progress. The film was made two years after the disastrous Bengal Famine, caused not by shortage of food but by maladministration (Sen 1981). The film never mentions the famine but it portrays a picture of an efficient and humane administration that would never let another such disaster happen.

Within this general narrative of progress we are introduced to the District Officer administering the affairs of 3 million people and then in a flashback we look at him arriving for his first job. Both the initial shot of the District Officer appearing in a court and the flashback which has him dismounting from a train, has him emerging from an unknown and solitary space into a crowded social one. The emphasis from the beginning is that the District Officer is a man apart – one who through hard work and study is able to exercise judgment. He is a man without family or background – that is to say he is a man outside any history except that of progress. The progress is signified by the usual tropes of medicine and clean water bringing the natives out of a dangerous primitivism.

What is interesting about this particular film is how it portrays the liberal imperialist dream of India ruling itself without any British direction but in a completely British manner. There are only two Europeans portrayed in the film : the police chief who is shown as a subordinate of the District Officer and one of the army officers with whom the District Officer is on the level of equality. Perhaps the most evident marker of this absence comes when the District Officer goes to Calcutta to report to his superior. We do not, however, see this superior- at this moment the film anticipates an independence still more than 2 years away.

However, perhaps the most striking feature of this film is what it does not contain – any explicit discussion of Independence. We know that it is exactly in this period that the District Officers began to prepare for Independence by establishing political alliances with both the Congress Party and other local centres of power. Not, however in this film which represents an imaginary self government completely dominated by British norms and independent of any local context or contacts.

Perhaps the most enigmatic sequence of all comes at the end when for the first time we see the District Officer in an unofficial setting with his friends, a group judiciously made up of a Hindu, a Muslim and a fellow Westernised Indian. The scene coming just after the District Officer’s visit to Calcutta would exactly suggest a political discussion – but of that discussion we hear nothing. The film has high production values and many of the semi-staged scenes contain a great deal of period detail. There is a complex musical track using both Indian and European music.

Colin MacCabe (December 2008)