Stanley Kauffmann

“First, the actors. I think first of them when I think of this film--something I expect to happen recurrently. The principals in A Passage to India do something more than embody what I had always imagined about E. M. Forster's characters. Their art goes some way toward re-creating in another medium the reticent strength of Forster's prose; their acting invites our collaboration in much the same manner as his prose.

“Judy Davis, the Australian who linked arms with the world in My Brilliant Career, is perfect as Adela Quested. An attractive woman, she is actress enough to convey an unattractive woman who becomes attractive through our experience of her. Temperamentally, she embodies the social conditioning intended as proof against uncertainties, along with the uncertainties that made the conditioning necessary.

“… Mrs. Moore… is Peggy Ashcroft… [H]er death in the film is not acting, it is loss….”

Stanley Kauffmann
The New Republic, Jan. 21, 1985
Field of View, p 269