I don't remember any other movie where story was largely based on a family/set of people and they acted in it. Do you remember any movie? Shakespeare Wallah, loosely based on Kendal family, is one such example. Bollywood knows this family by virtue of their strong bond with the Kapoors. Jennifer – wife of Shashi Kapoor – was a Shakespeare Wallah. A Merchant Ivory movie, directed by James Ivory, is sort of a folklore in India Crossover Cinema.Movie is about a family of English actors – Buckinghams - who stage plays in India. Story showcases an evolving India where a nomadic family tries to accommodate themselves. Story has an pivotal plot of family's daughter falling in love with an Indian, played by Shashi Kapoor, who is in a romantic relationship with a Bollywood actress. Largely autobiographical, film achieves a lot in terms of storytelling and performances. Movie highlights the downfall of theatre culture in India and rise of Bollywood.Shakespeare Wallah will be remembered for many things. Satyajit Ray's music will be one of them. In fact, a large part of the crew was Ray's and that includes a familiar name – Subrata Mitra. Story is brilliantly carved by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Her being close to Kendal and Kapoor added the realism such movies demand. Like typical Ivory movies, movie is subtle statement of filmmaking.

"Shakespeare-Wallah" is a rather wistful view of the last remaining vestiges of British India. The film is set less than two decades after the independence of India and follows a small company of British expatriates who travel this huge nation putting on Shakespearean productions. The problem is that with the British Empire a thing of the past, interest in India in Shakespeare has clearly waned and the new king of entertainment, Bollywood, is contrasted in the film. It's all a bit sad for some to look at these people desperately trying to hold on to the past--though others, such as modern Indians, might look at things VERY differently. As for this American, it's a strange film as you are looking at a movie that glamorizes the past--a past folks in my country cannot relate to nor appreciate. My guess is that this film (directly, oddly, by an American, James Ivory) would be much greater appreciated by older Brits who can remember when India was the crown jewel, so they said, of the Empire.As for the quality of the film, the acting and direction are good though the pace and subject matter of the film left me flat. Not a bad film but a far cry from the beautiful Merchant-Ivory productions to come. I did notice that the style of the film and focus on more ordinary folks was reminiscent of the films of Satyajit Ray and not like the more contemporary Indian musical we've come to expect from this nation.

Frankly, I caught this early Merchant-Ivory flic to see Felicity Kendal in her debut movie. I was disappointed-- her cuteness works much better as a nearly 60 year old detective in the Rosemary and Thyme BBC series, than as a teen-aged actress, where it makes her just too unserious.The movie concerns a small troupe of Shakepearean actors, some English and some Indian, but anchored by the Buckingham family, touring India to ever diminishing audiences. An Indian playboy, already involved with a Bollywood actress, sees young Lizzie Buckingham, and the usual romantic conflicts arise.The movie has the normal pacing of a Merchant-Ivory. Black and white. For me the background bits of Indian and ex-pat life were more interesting than the movie itself. The actors playing Felicity Kendal's character's parents were her real life parents.

This early (if not first) Merchant-Ivory collaboration anticipates what the team was later able to do with larger budgets and color cinematography. Set in post-independence India, it tells the story of a small, though thoroughly professional traveling Shakespeare company fallen on hard times. The troop, built on the talents of the three Buckingham family members, including the young and fetching daughter Lizzie, is slowly dissolving in a culture increasingly hostile to their art and readier to worship the queens of the silly Indian pop cinema.The main thread of the plot concerns a rather thin romance between Lizzie and a young Indian playboy quite under the thumb of a local movie vixen named Manula. Meanwhile we are given snippets from various Shakespeare plays: Hamlet, Othello, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra.Fine B&W photography, though much in this film seems dated now.