Shashi Kapoor

The passion, violence, mystery, and beauty of India are rapturously evoked in Merchant Ivory Productions' acclaimed HEAT AND DUST, based on the novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and starring Julie Christie, Shashi Kapoor, and Greta Scacchi. Blending east with west, and moving effortlessly between the vibrant world of modern-day India and the magnificent splendors of the Raj, HEAT AND DUST concerns Anne, a young woman drawn to India by her desire to unravel the scandal surrounding her great-aunt Olivia's seduction in the 1920s by a handsome and charismatic, if not entirely scrupulous, Indian prince.

Starring Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendal, BOMBAY TALKIE is Merchant Ivory's affectionate, bemused view of Bollywood-India's huge dream factory. The film is like a brightly colored, sumptuous Indian sweet covered in gold foil, and cameraman Subrata Mitra's ravishing photography has never been surpassed in any other of James Ivory's films. The story, set off by elaborate studio numbers, is a melodrama echoing those of Bombay's mass audience movies and the sexy best sellers of the film's heroine, American authoress Lucia Lane (Jennifer Kendal). Visiting India in search of "new material," she becomes romantically involved with handsome movie star Vikram (Shashi Kapoor). When that doesn't work out, she flees to an ashram to take up the spiritual life. That also, hilariously, doesn't work out, and the ill-fated couple get together again with explosive results.

Elegiac and atmospheric, SHAKESPEARE WALLAH was the feature film that really put Merchant Ivory Productions on the international movie map. Starring Shashi Kapoor, Madhur Jaffrey, and a young Felicity Kendal, the film is inspired by the real-life adventures of Ms. Kendal's family as a traveling theater group in India during the final days of English colonial rule. The Buckingham Players try to uphold British tradition by staging Shakespeare plays for the general public, boarding schools, and local royalty, but are unable to compete with the wildly popular Bollywood film industry.