Word: aziz
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Among his guests are a pair of British ladies-who want to see India. One of them, lanky, pink, ditherish Miss Quested (Anne Meacham), who has come from England to be married; and Mrs. Moore (Gladys Cooper), the mother of Miss Quested's fiancé. They meet Dr. Aziz (expertly played by Zia Mohyeddin), a Moslem who is young, charming, overemotional, awkward and desperately anxious to please. His position, India's and Britain's are dryly summed up by two incidents. Before the ladies come, Fielding cannot find his back collar stud, and the puppyish Aziz plucks...
...caves is good-the painful, amusing attempts of a poor young Indian to impress two foreign ladies are nearly successful. Only one thing mars the picnic. Miss Quested, in a disturbed state, leaves the party and they return to Chandrapore without her-to discover that she has accused Dr. Aziz of attempted rape...
...British club, Fielding-convinced that Aziz is innocent-defends him against the noble hysteria of whites who think that one of their own has been insulted by a nigger. He is ostracized and must turn to be Indians in the town, who are enraged over Aziz's arrest. This club scene is not as well handled as others, with the exception of an eloquent speech by Mrs. Moore on the terrifying echo in the caves...
...Aziz's trial is done well. The principles are perfect, and the scene is an ingeniously constructed one in which Adela Quested realizes her mistake and withdraws the charge against Aziz-leaving the British angry and spiteful and the Indians exuberant and spiteful. Fielding and Aziz hold a strained conversation in which it becomes all too apparent that they never will be friends again until the Empire dissolves, and maybe not even then...
...Mohyeddin, a young actor from Karachi and the star of the 1960 English production of the play, brings one of Forster's most brilliant characters to life. He is surely Aziz, whose moods flow like water, who desires to please his friends even at the price of lying, who lives closer to his feelings than ever the British can, whose corroding fear that he has no dignity almost ruins him and provides Forster with his subtlest and angriest plea against the subjection of a race...