Many Indians were employed as extras on the film, but in non-speaking roles. The exception was I. S. Johar who played Gupta the engine driver. Johar had been imprisoned by the British after the Second World War, but played an Indian character from the 1930s empire genre — faithful and comic (Chibnall, 2000,210). Dialogue otherwise belongs only to whites and includes a range of discussions of war and empire in which some criticisms of empire are voiced. Lady Windham is perhaps the strongest supporter of the imperial project, declaring in the face of criticism that: ‘Half the world mocks us, and half the world is only civilised because we have made it so’. The film does not wholly endorse this verdict, but critics of the British empire win no arguments. Whatever they may say, their actions do them little credit. Van Leyden’s ambition to kill Kishan hardly recommends his views on the empire, which are ardently anti-British.

In a period of decolonisation, North West Frontier offers a nostalgic image of empire. The steam train which is called Empress of India, and affectionately known as Victoria by its driver, needs careful attention at all times to coax it into life, and is ancient even in the Edwardian period in which the film is set. Steam-trains were increasingly becoming objects of nostalgia in Britain in the 1950s, as railway lines — especially small branch lines — were closed under modernisation schemes and diesel trains were introduced. Gupta, the engine driver, as well as Captain Scott address the steam train patting and praising it/her. Gupta claims that ‘Victoria talks to me, I understand her language’. Scott calls her ‘the old girl’. Gupta comments on one of her many eccentricities — a habit of whistling unprompted — ‘she shouts too much when she is happy’. With such a central character the empire is necessarily benign.

Despite such nostalgic images, North West Frontier also modernises an empire that in the post-war period was increasingly seen as an outmoded enterprise. In the late 1950s, there was disenchantment with Commonwealth ideals, and in some contexts in the 1960s the imperial hero became a figure of fun, widely lampooned (Ward, 2001). North West Frontier presents an imperial hero in a non-traditional mode — one who engages in childcare. The sequence where Van Leyden is positioned behind a gun justifying his intention to kill Kishan to other passengers is intercut with shots of Scott at the front of the train, oblivious to this danger, promising Kishan that he will teach him how to be an engine-driver. The Guardian commented that the representation of Scott embodying ‘amiable toughness’ and ‘unprecedented urbanity’ made him ‘an Imperialist very much to the modern taste’.

Scott’s relationship with Wyatt also introduces a romantic plot that softens the image of the British hero. An Edwardian context appropriate to the setting of the film is sketched, as Scott asks Wyatt whether she is ‘one of those emancipated women we’re having so much trouble with at home?’ and dismisses them as ‘just a lot of cranks’. She retorts that: ‘A woman who has a mind of her own is a crank! Well, I think men who spend their lives obeying orders are cranks!’ But their companionate relationship, acting as co-nurturer of the Indian prince and later of the baby they name ‘India’, suggests contemporary rather than Edwardian ideas of familial relationships.

The most serious moment of the film — the discovery of the massacre of passengers on the refugee train — takes on an ‘end of empir’e resonance recalling the communal violence and massacres prompted by the partition of India in 1947. Scott’s stern rebuke addressed to Van Leyden also has a similar resonance: ‘Have a good look and see what happens when the British aren’t around to keep order’.

Wendy Webster