The Directors: James Ivory

Nobody better exemplifies the thrill I get from following a director's career than James Ivory.  Awaiting his films always aroused my impatience but finally getting to see them produced a euphoria that I rarely had with any other director.  The greatest joy was that Ivory was always a director and storyteller I could count on.  I liked some of his films more than others but never have I seen one I didn't like.  Two of his films appear on my 50 Favorite Films listing and if I had enlarged that to 100, two more would have been included. 

He is known as the father of the elegant heritage film, most of which are adaptations of literary classics.  He gave his undivided attention to details, especially as they relate to period reconstruction.  His movies are gorgeously photographed because beautiful things were part of his DNA.  He saw things through the eyes of a painter which he was. He is also known for his superior casting... the right actor for the right character, which may, in part, explain why he worked with some of the same people more than once.  He knew his actors well, knew what they brought to a role.

It is impossible to write about Ivory without mentioning two other people who made up his production company, Merchant Ivory Films.  He connected very early in his career with Indian producer Ismail Merchant and German screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, each of whom worked with Ivory on most of his films.  When Jhabvala was not working on one of the Merchant Ivory films, Ivory might write the screenplays himself.

Ivory and Merchant kept their longtime romantic partnership largely a secret because of Merchant's conservative Indian Muslim background.  Ivory always claimed it was a magnificent relationship both at work and home.  On work, as the producer, Merchant handled virtually everything that concerned the business of making a film.  He did so Ivory could concentrate fully on the creative side.  They rarely had a problem.

Ivory's first films were all set in India, a country that held a special fascination for him.  He then had a brief New York period (with three films) and finally took on great English literature and became internationally famous and beloved.  I thought of seeing his films as quite the event.  

Ivory was born in Berkeley, California, in 1928, where his father was a sawmill operator.  He grew up, however, in Klamath Falls, Oregon, and attended the University of Oregon majoring in architecture and fine arts.  Later he attended the University of Southern California and received a master's degree in cinema.

He began making documentary films centering on India.  In 1959 in New York, at a screening of his The Sword and the Flute, he met Merchant.  They became lovers almost immediately and two years later they formed their production company.  They planned to set the world on fire.

Their first several films were not terribly successful, certainly not attracting the kind of attention later films would.  One that did cause some ripples was The Europeans, the first of his adaptations of a Henry James work, a 1979 film starring Lee Remick.  It concerns a family of pre-Civil War New Englanders who have a devil of a time getting accustomed to visiting European relatives.

Heat and Dust (1983) was adapted by Jhabvala from her own novel.  Julie Christie stars as a young Englishwoman who arrives in India to learn about her great aunt (Greta Scacchi) who apparently lived a scandalous life there some 50 years earlier.  It became the first internationally famous film for Ivory and his collaborators and I ate it up.  I do not know the key to why I am so taken with stories of the British in India but I undeniably am.  

Three Oscar-winning actresses, Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Tandy and Linda Hunt, along with Christopher Reeve, star in The Bostonians (1984), another gorgeously-mounted period piece based on a Henry James work.  It focuses on the women's suffrage movement with some attention paid to lesbianism.  The acting is just what you might imagine... superb.  

Merchant Ivory got hold of three E. M. Forster novels, period pieces about class difference and hypocrisy, and the movie world is forever grateful.  The first is A Room with a View (1985), a delicious and leisurely comedy of manners involving a young British woman and her prudish aunt & chaperone visiting Italy.  It is a glorious film, winner of three Oscars and five other nominations, one of my all-time favorites, that I reviewed earlier. 

The second Forster story is juicier because of its theme and because he would not allow its publication until after his death.  Maurice (1987) deals with the gay love affair of two Cambridge students in a repressive society that could have resulted in imprisonment.  It is another of my all-time favorite films that I highlighted in these pages earlier.  By this point electric fencing couldn't have kept me from an Ivory film.

Ivory with Paul Newman

Of the 10 costarring big-screen movies of Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990) is my favorite.  They never made a film so different from all their others.  It concerns a family of five during WWII... a conservative, staunch lawyer-husband, his too-dependent wife and their recently-adult children who forge a more modern way of living with not-always-pleasing results.  It's one of the best family movies for adults I've ever seen and as a team, the Newmans were never better. 

Nominated for nine Academy Awards, Howards End (1992) is the third film based on a Forster novel, this one his masterpiece.  I always remember the word of mouth on this film being unbelievable, really... everyone was asking have you seen Howards End?  At the dawning of the 20th century, England was a society in painful transition with its class system and prejudices under a microscope.  The story's focus is on two free-wheeling, middle-class sisters who attempt to hinder an aristocratic family's takedown of a working class family.  The sensational Anthony Hopkins, Oscar-winning Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter and Vanessa Redgrave star. 

The Remains of the Day (1993) remains one of Ivory's most flawless films.  It should be shown in all film classes.  It's the story of a butler who has sold his soul to his stuffy employer and who, after a new housekeeper falls in love with him, realizes how misguided his loyalty has been.  Hopkins and Thompson are back as is Christopher Reeve with James Fox topping it all off like the cherry on a sundae.  Actors loved getting another shot at working on a Merchant Ivory film.  Their sets were highly collaborative and their actors gave some of the best performances of their careers.  

Ivory, Hopkins and Merchant

Jefferson in Paris (1995) was not a great success but I loved it because I am so taken in by this particular brief period in Thomas Jefferson's life... history and biography buff that I am.  The story focuses on the five years in the late 1780s, before he was president, that Jefferson served as the ambassador to France.  

France hopes Jefferson will lead it out of corruption from the court of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette but he is more involved in French culture and romance.  Recently widowed, he has a relationship with a painter-musician and also Sally Hemings, an enslaved maid and companion to one of his daughters and also a half-sister to his late wife.  

Nick Nolte surprised me playing Jefferson.  When I heard of his casting, I thought someone had gone mad but I was wrong.  It worked nicely for me.  Greta Scacchi, Gwyneth Paltrow and Thandie Newton filled the other primary roles.

Surviving Picasso (1996) was another film I so enjoyed because it is told from point of view of Picasso's lover Françoise Gilot.  She excoriates him for his cruelty, his demeaning ways as a partner, his serial womanizing while showing admiration for his great talent.  It seems so unusual that a biography of such a great artist reveals so much of his talent for being a monster.  

I'm sorry the critics were so lukewarm.  Ivory's penchant for beauty is much in evidence here.  Hopkins is back in the fold and turns in another blazing performance.  Natascha McElhone is a marvel as Gilot and Julianne Moore as Dora Maar and Dominic West as Paulo Picasso bring it home.

Ivory did like his expatriate stories and A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (1998) is another one.  It is based on the life of author James (From Here to Eternity) Jones, here called Bill Willis, who lives with his wife, son and daughter in Paris.  Its a bohemian life complicated by Willis' alcoholism and health issues.  Both children have issues which come more into light when the family moves to North Carolina.  I think the film generally escaped the notice of the public.  Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey and Leelee Sobieski are the stars.

The Golden Bowl (2000) is about a rich American tycoon visiting Europe with his daughter when he ups and decides to buy her a husband.  His quarry accepts the invitation even though he is in love with someone else.  All the characters are deliciously flawed.  I am sure I'm the only one who ever saw this film.  It bombed at the box office... I can imagine that a lackluster title helped although it is based on another Henry James novel.

The acting once again meets all expectations with actors such as Nolte, Kate Beckinsale, Jeremy Northam, Uma Thurman, Angelica Huston and James Fox.

A triumphant trio... Merchant, Jhabvala & Ivory

A large and impressive cast didn't seem to help Le divorce (2003) with the critics or the public.  It was one of the director's least successful films.  It concerns a young American woman who visits her sister living in Paris at the time the latter is filing for divorce.  It's a comedy-drama again about the clash of cultures.

I thought it had its fun moments even if the overall film doesn't quite click.  Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson are the sisters and the noble assemblage of costars includes Glenn Close, Leslie Caron, Stephen Fry, Sam Waterston, Stockard Channing and Bebe Neuwirth.  The film main star is The City of Light.

Ivory's penultimate film, The White Countess (2005), is the last Ivory film I saw and again I was captivated by the story, the period, the beautiful, soulful look and the acting, especially from Natasha Richardson.  She plays an impoverished Russian refugee in 1936 Shanghai as the city is about to be invaded by the Japanese.

To support her family she takes on odd jobs such as a bar girl and taxi dancer at a nightclub called The White Countess.  She takes up with the blind owner, Ralph Fiennes, a former diplomat, with interesting results.  Richardson's own family, mother Vanessa Redgrave and aunt Lynn Redgrave play her family here.

The White Countess was the final Merchant Ivory production,  In 2005 Ismail Merchant died at age 69 of complications from ulcer surgery.  Ivory would direct only one more film.  They had been together for over 40 years.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala wrote the screenplay for Ivory's final film, The City of Your Final Destination in 2009 at which time she retired.  Might Ivory have told her he was through with directing and she elected to call it a day as well?  She passed away at age 85 in 2013.

Ivory received Oscar nominations for his direction of A Room with a View, Maurice, Howards End and Remains of the Day.  Eight years after his last directing assignment and 14 years after his last screenplay, he wrote a new one, Call Me by Your Name, one of my favorite gay-themed films in years.  Ivory won an Oscar for his efforts (a popular choice) and became the oldest Oscar recipient ever at age 89.

Collecting his Oscar

I was sorry to see him quit directing but am thrilled that Merchant Ivory gave the world so many beautiful, thoughtful and well-acted films featuring classy actors.

Ivory today lives in New York.  The following link from the NY Times and writer Nancy Haas has some fun stuff to say about Ivory's life and his homes, particularly one.  

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/t-magazine/james-ivory-house.html



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