Bombay Talkie - The Merchant Ivory Collection

Bombay Talkie is a highly implausible tale about an obnoxious English woman who, in a nutshell, drives two younger Indian men mad with desire. It's all about her and her sick obsessions, and sheds very little light on the inner workings of the Bollywood film industry. This is disappointment number one.
Disappointment number two is the fact that the giant typewriter dance scene featuring Helen, hinted at in the included documentary "Helen: Queen of the Nautch Girls," is not really part of the feature. In fact, you get less of it there than in the documentary, just a tiny snippet of the rehearsals. What a waste -- one minute of Helen is worth an hour of Jennifer Kendal any day!
Worst of all is disappointment number three. I bought this DVD not so much for the feature but to acquire "Helen: Queen of the Nautch Girls." It is included, but it was mastered from a terribly scratched-up print with no attempt at restoration. As a result, most of the documentary is all but unwatchable.
Stay away from this lemon of a feature, and let's hope that a restored version of "Helen: Queen of the Nautch Girl" is released separately some day!

This is one of my favorite romantic dramas and I dont understand the low ratings. Sure -- the main character is spoiled and unlikable at times but the story flows so well you can't help but get caught up in it. The dialogue's sophisticated and the plot is tight. It ended at exactly the right moment too which is something most films are unable to pull off.
Sensuous and lyrical with superior acting/dialogue/soundtrack.

Hand-held shots--real ones--begin the movie, which has, throughout, a low-budget, technically unsophisticated feel. (There is never anything unsophisticated about the interactions of M-I characters.) The story, of a successful, narcissistic English writer on the loose in India, certainly had traction in the 1970's when the movie was made. The West was just beginning to discover the "magical East" and the ancient sensuality of that culture. Plenty of rock and movie stars were journeying there on spiritual quests. So, for me, the story was not "implausible." In fact, it seems to be about the human problem which absorbs M.I., that being the emotional difficulties of a set of flawed personalities, usually with caste/class inequality which makes the difficulty insurmountable. Here, the miscarriage of intent is heightened by a nasty cross-cultural collision. The handsome Bollywood star and the poor writer both go off their cultural rails, while the western woman is selfish, impulsive, and unaware. As one of the Indian characters who reads her palm says, she's not truly a bad person who acts with intentional malice, but her lack of self-knowledge causes bad things to happen around her. She's as innocent as a spider eating flies--it's just her nature--but her emptiness drains and deforms her lovers. Plot-wise, the story reminded me of "Jules & Jim," where another three-way love affair comes to a bad end. I'm glad I've finally seen this early work of M.I., but the movie shows it's age.