Merchant Ivory

The Delhi Way --produced, written, photographed, and directed by Ivory--was begun before The Householder but completed after it. A documentary of Delhi, it scans the city's historic past that includes successive Afghan, Moghul, and English invasions, while it reveals its variegated life of the present. At the opening a train moves along a landscape in darkness to evoke (as in a film by Ray) the passage of time; and past and present are thereafter anchored in contrasting views of Shah Jahan's Red Fort and King George V's new capitol. The film, in which time has a devouring quality, is impressionistic as it takes in the new capital. An army of civil servants in white garments ride to work on bicycles, while an anonymous beggar sits nodding by a roadside tree; an upper-middle-class flower show on the grounds of a private club appears side by side with views of dust storms, constricted slum dwellings, crowded bazaars, and posters of Indian film idols. Ivory evokes the bewildering legacy of Delhi, and the film acts as an effective bridge to Shakespeare Wallah, in which time and change are central concerns.