Merchant-Ivory

Interviews

Laurence Raw

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781496853707
• eBook ISBN: 9781628469714
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Merchant-Ivory: Interviews gathers together, for the first time, interviews made over a span of fifty years with director James Ivory (b. 1928), producer Ismail Merchant (1936–2005), and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1927–2013). Beginning with their earliest work in India, and ending with James Ivory's last film, The City of Your Final Destination (2009), the book traces their career, while offering valuable insights into their creative filmmaking process. The volume serves as a corrective to the prevailing critical orthodoxy attached to Merchant-Ivory's work, which tends to regard them as being solely concerned with historically accurate costumes and settings. As independent filmmakers, they have developed an idiosyncratic approach that resists facile classification. Merchant-Ivory have insisted on maintaining their independence.

More importantly, this book shows how Merchant-Ivory have always taken considerable care in casting their films, as well as treating actors with respect. This is a deliberate policy, designed to bring out one of the triumvirate's principal thematic concerns, running throughout their work—the impact of the "clash of cultures" on individuals. Partly this has been inspired by their collective experiences of living and working in different cultures. They do not offer any answers to this issue; rather they believe that their task is simply to raise awareness; to make filmgoers conscious of the importance of cultural sensitivities that assume paramount significance in any exchange, whether verbal or nonverbal.

Index

actors, xii–xiii, xv, 12–18, 80–92, 104, 116–19, 122–25, 128–29, 131–32, 148–51, 152–53

Adjani, Isabelle, 103

American International Pictures, 9, 40, 52–55, 57, 72, 75

Arbuckle, Fatty, 48, 52

Arkoff, Sam, 53–54, 57–58

Bates, Alan, 103

BBC, 33, 35, 67, 72, 74, 139

Beckinsale, Kate, 150

Beruh, Joseph, 54, 56–57, 60

Bonham Carter, Helena, 102

Cameron, Peter, 164–65

Chaudhuri, Nirad, xiv, 33, 35–36

Christie, Julie, 102, 104–5

clash of cultures, xiii–xvi, 14–15, 40, 41–43, 47–48, 96–97, 113–14, 152–53, 157

Close, Glenn, 83–85

Coco, James, 40, 48, 57, 74

Columbia Pictures, 8–10, 24, 34, 41, 72, 126, 133

Connell, Evan S., 108–12, 139, 146, 159

Constanzo, Anthony Roth, 131–32

Danner, Blythe, 83

Dutt, Utpal, 12, 35

Edel, Leon, 70

Elliott, Denholm, 102, 116

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 34

Ford, Ford Madox, 75

Forster, E. M., xi, xv, 14–15, 81, 95, 101–3, 110, 113–15, 119, 130–31, 133–34, 136, 146, 153, 158, 160, 167

Fox, James, 117–18, 132

Gainsbourg, Charlotte, 164

Garnett, Gale, 112

Gilliatt, Penelope, 33

Goodridge, Mike, xi–xii

Harrison, George, 12, 44

Hepburn, Katharine, 82

Higson, Andrew, ix–x, xiii

Hill, Caroline, xv

Hiller, Dame Wendy, 88

Hopkins, Anthony, xii, 116–17, 119, 123–24, 164–66

Jaffrey, Madh...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chronology
• Filmography
• James Ivory and Ismail Merchant: An Interview
• Interview with James Ivory
• Merchant-Ivory
• The Merchant-Ivory Synthesizers
• Hollywood versus Hollywood
• Where Could I Meet Other Screenwriters? A Conversation with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
• Ismail Merchant: Snowballs to Eskimos
• James Ivory: An Interview
• The Trouble with Olive: Divine Madness in Massachusetts
• Interview with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
• Dialogue on Film: Merchant and Ivory
• A Film of Two Halves
• A Truly Flourishing Plant
• Buttling Under
• The Elegance of James Ivory: 1994 D. W. Griffith Award Winner
• Ismail Merchant: The Maker of Dreams
• James Ivory
• Conversation with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
• James Ivory Interview
• Ismail Merchant Transcript
• Interview with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
• James Ivory on His Final Destination and Working without Ismail Merchant
• Additional Resources
• Index