A Road in India is not a conventional travel film. It does not focus on a core group of protagonists moving towards their goal. There is no sense of destination or of advance. In each scene the camera primarily remains rooted in one position; rather than heading forward it allows the disparate traffic of India to pass before it. On display there are Muslims and Hindus and paupers and princes: this road is meant to be reflective of all India. No major landmarks are featured and the location of the road is never given.

All this serves the filmmakers well. Progress is not a concern of this documentary. Instead it depicts an India in which ‘the dawn of the world is just around the corner’. The road serves as ‘a ribbon of the present, threading the fantastic centuries of ancient India’. For the filmmakers the east is ‘enigmatic and disturbing’, and the people who populate it ‘are of yesterday and all the ages back into the remote times’. Thus it delivers a retinue of snake charmers, street entertainers, yogis and rajas. The film even attempts to discern the native factor that ‘made mechanical invention unnecessary’, hitting upon the idea that ‘it may well be due to the working elephant that in India the science of dynamics never got beyond the wooden wheel’.

There are in addition practical reasons why there is no forward motion in this film: the heavy Technicolor equipment would not have facilitated shots filmed from a moving vehicle. Jack Cardiff’s cinematography is instead dependent on the dynamics that can be achieved with panning shots, tracking shots and the movement on the road itself. These devices are employed to deliver one of the film’s recurring tropes: the commentary talks of ‘that weird contrast which is India’ and the ‘contrast which forever typifies the Indian road’. Cardiff delivers these contrasts by the use of panning movements, which surprise us with the unexpected combinations that they bring to the screen. One panning movement takes us from half-naked yogis towards a richly attired raja, while another moves from camel-yoked carts towards a Muslim decorating his sheep as part of his Ramadan observance. Elsewhere Cardiff films an overheated omnibus being overtaken by a palanquin, ‘a type of vehicle which has not changed for more than 2000 years’. He uses his tracking shots to gradually unveil various aspects of village life: covered women, al fresco barbers, cotton spinning, gossiping travellers.

As with other films in the World Window series, the film’s content has been determined by the company’s desire to make best use of the Technicolor process. Jack Cardiff delivers the ‘kaleidoscope of colour’ that is outlined in the commentary, most notably by focussing on the vibrant materials that make up the Indians’ clothes. His work received praise in contemporary reviews. Today’s Cinema, for example, remarked upon the film’s ‘exquisite Technicolor production’ (TC, 22 May 1940, 21). Today, it is the element of the film that is most highly valued. Robin Baker has talked of the cinematography providing ‘compelling viewing’ (Baker).

At times it can be compelling for unintended reasons. This film describes India being a land in which ‘fact and fantasy are yoked together’, but one of its problems is that these ingredients have been deliberately assembled. It is clear that the juxtapositions captured by Cardiff’s camera haven’t occurred by chance, but have been intentionally arranged and choreographed. Similarly, the combination of colours has been put together with forethought. Moreover, if the ‘fantasy’ elements of this film can be called into question, so can its ‘facts’. Of particular note is the relentless concentration on the ‘backwardness’ of India. The film is also clumsy when it attempts to provide background details. For example, on witnessing a Muslim woman in burqa the viewer is informed that her religion forbids the world ‘the smallest inkling of her charms’. Finally, what further undermines the film is its neglect of one of contemporary India’s most vivid contrasts: at no point in this documentary do the British enter the frame.

Richard Osborne (October 2009)