Merchant Ivory
Stephen Soucy’s rewarding survey of the work of a major filmmaking team is also a remarkable love story.
James and Ismail
Image courtesy of Curzon.
Merchant Ivory Productions was a company that made a significant contribution to cinema and gave us over forty films following its foundation in 1961. In its heyday there was always much talk by those involved of how working for Merchant Ivory was like being in a family and Ismail Merchant himself was famous for cooking at gatherings of cast and crew. However, the strength of this new documentary by Stephen Soucy lies in its revelation of what it was really like to be part of a Merchant Ivory production. There's evidence here of all the love and affection that was felt but equally the other side of the coin is revealed too: the extent to which chaos often reigned due to inadequate funding leading to Merchant as the producer paying his artists badly or belatedly. Indeed, more than one voice is heard asserting that Merchant had great charm and a personality that made one love the man, a fact that didn’t prevent one from hating him too. Furthermore, when off the set, but never on it, Merchant would have violent arguments with James Ivory who was usually the director (Merchant himself would in his later years direct four feature films but with only moderate success although I admired the first of them, 1994’s In Custody, taken from Anita Desai’s novel). Ivory’s directorial style giving freedom to his players is linked to a crucial feature, his very special ability at casting each role.
The very fact that Merchant Ivory were so prolific over the years inevitably means that a single feature film about them cannot possibly cover all of their work in detail. In that sense omissions were inevitable and it is probably also the case that Soucy’s film will work better for those familiar with the oeuvre than for any relative newcomers who approach Merchant Ivory as a way of discovering their work. There are plenty of film extracts incorporated (all seem in mint condition) but, while the quality of the performances within them is self-evident, for those as yet unfamiliar with them they would be more meaningful if more details of the plots were given. It's also the case that one omission is regrettable in that all too little is said about the very last Merchant Ivory production, 2009’s The City of Your Final Destination. It was never released in the UK and does not have a good reputation, but because many of us know nothing about it one would have liked to learn more. What we are told is that Anthony Hopkins who starred in it sued when he failed to receive his due payment (Hopkins is not one of the interviewees here but his performance in The Remains of the Day comes in for very special praise).
However, the only real weakness in Merchant Ivory is its opening segment presented as a prologue leading to six titled chapters which for the most part tell the story in chronological order. To have an introduction made up of bits and pieces is not necessarily an error, but to be effective they need to intrigue us or to build in some way rather than to remain odds and ends that seem all over the place which is what happens here. But from then on everything is fine. The film has a wide range of contributors including costume designers Jenny Beavan and John Bright and as one would expect many actors who worked for Merchant Ivory (see the credits below) but the most pleasing presence of all is that of James Ivory himself, now well into his nineties but buoyed up by a new energy following his Academy award in 2018 for his screenplay for Call Me By Your Name.
The various recollections and comments are never allowed to outstay their welcome and from time-to-time information emerges that may take one by surprise. I did know that the great Indian director Satyajit Ray took a sympathetic interest in the very first Merchant Ivory feature, 1960’s The Householder, but I had no idea that he re-edited it and gave it a flashback format not originally envisaged. Especially revealing are the comments about the attitude of the team’s regular writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala to the decision to film E.M. Forster’s Maurice (both her reason for questioning that choice and her response on reading the draft screenplay by Kit Hesketh Harvey are unexpected and revealing). It is interesting too to hear James Ivory finding an autobiographical element within Mr & Mrs Bridge and to find him declaring a particular fondness for Jefferson in Paris among his later films. For the most part the film makes the obvious choices when contributors pick the best of Merchant Ivory (The Remains of the Day, Howards End and Maurice) but at least one choice for a top place surprises: The Golden Bowl. Failures are certainly acknowledged but there is a spirited and justified counter-attack on those critics who at one time looked down on Merchant Ivory films as old-fashioned period pieces dismissing them as the Laura Ashley school of filmmaking. It is stressed here that the films are often critical of the well-off classes and that gay elements can be detected well before the making of Maurice and at a time when to put such material on screen was in advance of what was generally accepted.
But, however much Merchant Ivory provides an opportunity to remember their films, its greatest value is as a portrait of two gay men, one American and one Indian, who were from very different backgrounds and of very contrasted temperaments (the yin and the yang as somebody says) but whose relationship was at the core of their lives in both a professional and personal sense. There's a great moment when it is pointed out to Ivory that those critical of Ismail Merchant concluded that he was a con man. Rather than taking offence at this, Ivory agrees: "Of course he was – to be a successful producer you have to be ". Ivory is one of the executive producers of this film but, along with his new openness, about his sexuality (his contribution to Call Me By Your Name made him something of a gay icon), there is an admirable willingness to speak frankly. The film regards Merchant Ivory at its heart as being a team of four given the close and lasting bond that Merchant and Ivory had with the novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and with the man who became their regular composer, Richard Robbins. Consequently, it incorporates at intervals sequences which, however briefly, look at the background of each of them. In the case of Robbins, it goes on to acknowledge that in time he and Merchant became lovers but without challenging Merchant’s attachment to Ivory as the bedrock of their lives. Talking about this without rancour Ivory, who also had other lovers on occasion, compares his ties with Merchant as being akin to a wife who knows that her husband has mistresses but also knows which bond will last. Indeed, despite being of interest in so many other ways too, Merchant Ivory is first and foremost a portrait of how two men who might have seemed incompatible could accept and balance their differences to a degree that made it evident that they were made for each other.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring James Ivory, Ava Jhabvala Wood, John Pym, Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, Kit Hesketh Harvey, Hugh Grant, Simon Callow, Jenny Beavan, Madhur Jaffrey, Paul Bradley, Felicity Kendal, Rupert Graves, Greta Scacchi, James Wilby, Samuel West, John Bright, Natascha McElhone, James Fox, Patrick Godfrey, Tama Janowitz, Nickolas Grace, with the voices of Stephen Soucy and Jacqui Rossi and with archive footage of Ismail Merchant, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Richard Robbins.
Dir Stephen Soucy, Pro Stephen Soucy and Jon Hart, Screenplay Jon Hart and Stephen Soucy, Ph E. Matthew Cady, Sefa Karatekin, Adam Lewis and Jean-Marc Selva, Ed Jon Hart, Music Ryan Homsey.
Modernist Films/Cohen Media Group-Curzon.
112 mins. USA. 2023. US Rel: 30 August 2024. UK Rel: 6 December 2024. Cert. 12A.
