The film stars Peggy Ashcroft, Judy Davis, James Fox, Alec Guinness, Nigel Havers, and Victor Banerjee.
Upon its release, A Passage to India was met with widespread critical acclaim, with some praising it as Lean's finest since Lawrence of Arabia.
They are encouraged when the local school superintendent, Richard Fielding, introduces them to the eccentric elderly Hindu Brahmin scholar Professor Narayan Godbole.
Mrs. Moore meets by chance another Indian local, Dr Aziz Ahmed, a widower who is surprised by her kindness and lack of prejudice.
Aziz vows to find a new job in another Indian state away from British rule; he opens a clinic in the lake area near Srinagar, Kashmir.
However, Donald Parry, his executor, turned down all approaches, including those of Joseph Losey, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, and Waris Hussein, who after adapting Santha Rama Rau's play for the BBC in the 1960s now wanted to make a feature film.
[9] He and his business partner, Richard Goodwin, had produced Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968) and films based on Agatha Christie's mysteries, including the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express.
Since then, Lean had fought to make a two-part epic telling the true story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, for which he could not obtain financing (the budget was an estimated $50 million), and had given some thought about doing a film adaptation of Out of Africa, from the book by Isak Dinesen, which Sydney Pollack ultimately directed in 1985.
Lean did not want to present a poor man's pre-independence India when for the same amount of money he could show the country's visual richness.
Following the same method he had employed adapting Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, he went through Rau's original script and his copy of the novel, picking out the episodes that were indispensable and passing over those that did not advance the plot.
Lean wanted Celia Johnson, star of Brief Encounter, to play Mrs Moore, but she turned down the part and died before the film was released.
Although she had recently worked in India on the TV miniseries The Jewel in the Crown, she said, "I thought, 'Oh dear, I really don't want to do it', but it's very difficult to turn down a Lean film".
Satyajit Ray, who had hoped to direct his adaptation of A Passage to India, recommended 38-year-old Bengali actor Victor Banerjee for the role of Dr Aziz.
Despite having quarrelled with Lean in the 1960s about a proposed film about Gandhi that ultimately was scrapped, Alec Guinness agreed to portray Professor Godbole.
The relationship between the two men deteriorated during filming, and when Guinness learned that much of his performance was left on the cutting room floor due to time constraints, he saw it as a personal affront.
[10] In December 1984, Thorn EMI offered investors the chance to invest in several films by issuing £36 million worth of shares.
The films were A Passage to India (1984), Morons from Outer Space, Dreamchild, Wild Geese II and The Holcroft Covenant[13] (all 1985).
Instead he used the hills of Savandurga and Ramadevarabetta some tens of kilometers from Bangalore, where much of the principal filming took place; small cave entrances were carved out by the production company.
Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "[Lean's] best work since The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia and perhaps his most humane and moving film since Brief Encounter.
Though vast in physical scale and set against a tumultuous Indian background, it is also intimate, funny and moving in the manner of a film maker completely in control of his material … Though [Lean] has made A Passage to India both less mysterious and more cryptic than the book, the film remains a wonderfully provocative tale, full of vivid characters, all played to near perfection.
"[17] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times observed that "Forster's novel is one of the literary landmarks of this century, and now David Lean has made it into one of the greatest screen adaptations I have ever seen … [He] is a meticulous craftsman, famous for going to any length to make every shot look just the way he thinks it should.
"[18] Variety called the film "impeccably faithful, beautifully played and occasionally languorous" and added, "Lean has succeeded to a great degree in the tricky task of capturing Forster's finely edged tone of rational bemusement and irony.
"[19] Time Out London thought the film was "a curiously modest affair, abandoning the tub-thumping epic style of Lean's late years.
But he has assembled his strongest cast in years … And once again Lean indulges his taste for scenery, demonstrating an ability with sheer scale which has virtually eluded British cinema throughout its history.
"[20] Channel 4 said, "Lean was always preoccupied with landscapes and obsessed with the perfect shot – but here his canvas is way smaller than in Lawrence of Arabia, for instance … Still, while the storytelling is rather toothless, A Passage to India is certainly well worth watching for fans of the director's epic style.
The website's critical consensus reads, "A Passage to India is a visually striking exploration of colonialism and prejudice, although it doesn't achieve the thematic breadth of director David Lean's finest work.
On 9 September 2003, Columbia Pictures released the box set The David Lean Collection, which included Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and A Passage to India.
In addition to Reflections of David Lean from the 2001 release, bonus features included commentary with producer Richard Goodwin; E.M. Forster: A Profile of an Author, covering some of the main themes of the original book; An Epic Takes Shape, in which cast and crew members discuss the evolution of the film; An Indian Affair, detailing the primary production period; Only Connect: A Vision of India, detailing the final days of shooting at Shepperton Studios and the post-production period; Casting a Classic, in which casting director Priscilla John discusses the challenges of bringing characters from the book to life; and David Lean: Shooting with the Master, a profile of the director.