A Road in India

A landslide traps a group of actors in a small theatre in Wales. The cashier is killed, who will be next?

Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian moutain climber, escapes from a British POW camp in India and flees north across the Himalayan mountains into Tibet. There he meets and befriends the young Dalai Lama.

Filmed in 1938, less than a decade before Indian independence, Delhi has a curious tale to tell. ‘Delhi’, the viewer is informed, ‘is the cockpit of the Indian Empire’, it provides the ‘gateway to the riches of the south’. The opening sections of the film focus upon those who have tried and failed to establish a lasting power in the capital. ‘At Delhi’, the commentator states, ‘successive cities have been built by conquering invaders – each has fallen into disuse and decay’. The camerawork focuses on the ‘impressive ruins’ of these earlier invaders. Although the film also depicts the enduring architecture of Muslim rulers, such as Akbar and Shahjahan, it is stressed that their power has been superseded. Legend has it that it will be the ninth city of Delhi that ‘will endure and will rule forever’. Shahjahan had built the eighth.

Hindu temples at Benares and Belur and the mythologies associated with them.

A moving anti-war drama in which a father explains the futility of war to his young son. The film includes flashbacks from the father’s own nightmare experiences alongside documentary footage from Verdun, Arras and Ypres with the message that War is not a glorious adventure but ‘“a hideous ugly thing, involving sacrifices on the part of the finest manhood of every combatant nation”.

Technicolor scenes from an Indian Durbar, held for the Maharaja of Alwar in Rajasthan.

Technicolor tour of Mt. Vesuvius and surrounding area.