Blu-ray, DVD Release: Shakespeare Wallah

By
Laurence
– March 29, 2018Find Others: Blu-ray, DVD, Movie, New Release, NewsGet More: ,

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: April 3, 2018
Price: DVD $25.99, Blu-ray $30.99
Studio: Cohen Media

Merchant Ivory Productions’ 1965 drama Shakespeare Wallah, the team’s breakthrough film, returns to disc in a new 2K digital restoration.

Madhur Jaffrey in Shakespeare Wallah.

In 1960s post-colonial India, Tony Buckingham (Geoffrey Kendal) and his wife, Carla (Laura Liddell), are the British actor-managers of a troupe of English, Irish and Indian actors who travel about the country mounting stage performances of Shakespeare’s works. Times are changing and things are beginning to get tough for the Buckinghams who find themselves grappling with a diminishing demand for their craft as the English theatre on the subcontinent is supplanted by the emerging Bollywood film movement. Meanwhile, Lizzie Buckingham (Felicity Kendal), the couple’s daughter, falls in love with Sanju (Shashi Kapoor), a wealthy young Indian playboy who is also romantically involved with the glamorous but vain Bollywood movie star Manjula (Madhur Jaffrey). And so, the Buckinghams, for whom acting is a profession and a lifestyle, must weigh their devotion to their craft against their concern over their daughter’s future in a country which, it seems, no longer has a place for them.

With music by the great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray (The Apu Trilogy) and memorable performances by cinema icons Shashi Kapoor and Madhur Jaffrey (who won the Silver Bear award for Best Actress at the 1965 Berlin International Film Festival), the DVD and Blu-ray incarnations of the fim include such bonus features as a conversation with the filmmakers, an original trailer and a 2017 re-release trailer.

Buy or Rent Shakespeare Wallah

Related titles:

  1. Blu-ray, DVD Release: The Attack
  2. Blu-ray, DVD Release: Confession of a Child of the Century
  3. Blu-ray, DVD Release: Standing Tall
  4. Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD Release: Heal The Living
  5. Blu-ray, DVD Release: Daughter of the Nile

About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.