Massey Sahib

Massey Sahib (1986)

In a small, tribal district town of Central India in 1929, Francis Massey is the 'English Type Babu' at the Deputy Commissioner's office. Massey believes that because he is Christian and can speak English, he is a cut above other Indians and not very different from the white sahibs he serves. For a man of lowly birth, Massey has risen to a dizzying height. On the other hand, he acknowledges no realistic limits to his own free spirit. Whenever the real world fails him, he improvises - boldly, imaginatively. Alas, the unsmiling, implacable machinery of the Raj has no room for Massey Sahib, the travelling salesman, road foreman and entertainer. Right up to the bitter end, Massey believes that Deputy Commissioner Adam Sahib will step in and save him.

Date of release
1986-04-29
TMDB
8.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
1h 59m
Genres
Drama
Director
Pradip Krishen

Casting

Interesting facts

Massey Sahib is a 1985 Hindi drama film directed by Pradip Krishen, starring Raghubir Yadav in the title role. It was Krishen's first film, and was an adaptation of Joyce Cary's 1939 novel Mister Johnson. It won Yadav two international acting awards. The film also stars Arundhati Roy, who was yet to write her first novel and win the Man Booker Prize, along with Barry John and Virendra Saxena.

Production

In 1980, Pradip Krishen won the first prize in a script-writing competition organised by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC). This encouraged him to make the film, which would be produced by NFDC. The budget for the film, which was approved by NFDC was Rs 9.2 lakh, which was meagre for a period film. Nevertheless, Krishen went ahead with the project.

Originally, Siddhartha Basu was supposed to play the lead, and a sample scene was shot with him. Then Basu went abroad and Krishen chose Raghubir Yadav, at that time an unknown young theatre actor. NFDC urged Krishen to get "known names" for the cast, but Krishen stuck to his choices, using theatre actors from Delhi, as well as debutante Arundhati Roy. The choice of Yadav for the lead turned out to be doubly beneficial.

The film was shot on location in and around Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh, during the winter of 1982–83. In an interview, Raghubir Yadav said that he was very nervous about facing the camera for the first time, but was reassured by Barry John, with whom he had worked on the stage. He added, "Till we reached Pachmarhi for the shoot, I was not clear how I would play this complex character.

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