Describing William Meiklejohn’s amateur films, Robin Baker has stated that ‘he had a better eye for composition than most’ and that he was capable of delivering ‘strongly evocative portraits’ (Baker). This is certainly true of this collection of scenes filmed in southern Bengal; Meiklejohn has a talent for capturing human and animal life, as well as landscapes and buildings.

The scenes of village life in the Midnapore District provide an elegant study of the people and homesteads in the region. Meiklejohn films a variety of individual and group portraits of the villagers. In each case they are deliberately posed for the camera. Meiklejohn frames these portraits well and selects good backdrops from the landscape to complement each scene. What is notable is the comfort of the people in front of the camera and the dignity that Meiklejohn allows them. His filming of the villagers’ homes is also thoughtfully undertaken. The camera lingers on an image of the village street, enabling the viewer to realise that this is a deliberate architectural study. He also takes a reverse shot of this original image, giving a sense of the spatial dimensions of the scene.

Meiklejohn is also attracted to the wildlife of the region, in particular when it can provide him with whimsical images. He films monkeys at play in the gardens of an elegant white house, and he captures crabs scuttling across the sandy beach at Cox’s Bazar. In addition, he provides various studies of the Sunderbans, capturing its wide rivers and secluded inlets, as well as the variety of river craft that are used on its waters.

It is, however, his scenes of Indians and British together in the landscape of Bengal that deliver the most evocative portraits. There is a good deal of interaction in evidence. Meiklejohn films a small party of elegantly dressed British men and women who approach some local fishermen in the Sunderbans and ask them about their catch. Later the same group of British people can be seen in a rowing boat which Indians push up a muddy river bank for them, it is then let loose to slide into the waters. Similarly there is a scene in which a large group of Indians help the British party by pushing their motor car across the expanse of Damador River.

Meiklejohn presents a world removed from the nationalist agitation in the Bengal region. In different ways his studies of the Midnapore district villagers and the scenes of British and Indians interacting present the two nations as being at ease in one another’s presence. While it is true that in both instances Indians commonly take the subservient role, what comes across most strongly from Meiklejohn’s films is his wonderment at life in the subcontinent. These are the studies of a man who is enraptured with what he sees. Towards the end of this film he captures a stunning, never to be repeated image. He films from a position on Cox’s beach that enables him to let a surprising procession of characters enter his frame. First to be seen are the workers of the Chittagong Forest Division, dressed in their uniforms, and walking together near the water’s edge; in step behind them there is a group of five elephants, loaded with equipment and ridden by Indians; and then, once the elephants have walked out of view, there is the unexpected image of a group of British cyclists, dressed in their fine clothes and riding their bicycles down the beach.

Richard Osborne (October 2009)