The films of Merchant-Ivory

Maggie Smith was in Howards End?

Sorry: I meant Emma Thompson in [italic]Howards End.[/italic]

I adore "A Room With a View." Still holds up well.

Maurice is the film I most remember about them.

I only remember the later ones, “Howard’s End” and “A Room With A View”. As a dreamy teenage girl, I LOVED them. The costumes and scenery, everything.

I didn’t realize “Slaves of New York” was a Merchant-Ivory! And it makes me think twice “Le Divorce”, which i ignored and dismissed.

Sam West as Leonard Best was a great performance by a young actor. He and the direction brought me to tears a few times, about how he was young and vulnerable and slowly crushed.

Not all their films were prestige projects and they were surprisingly low budget.

I aboso adored Remains of the Day. Perfection.

I like a couple of their earlier movies set in India. The first is [italic]the Deceivers[/italic], starring Pierce Brosnan with Keith Michell. It's about a British East India officer who investigates murders by the Thugee cult. It's an interesting bit of history I knew nothing about, and Brosnan is young and beautiful.

And the other is [italic]the Perfect Murder[/italic] about an ambitious Indian police officer investigating the murder of a Parsee man. He works with a Swedish forensics expert, played by a young Stellan Skarsgard.

The real star was Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who seamlessly adapted the classics for the screen. Her own writing is fabulous too, especially her story collection Out of India.

Heat and Dust with Julie Christie is their best and actually their least known, for some bizarre reason. Maurice falls flat because the lead is a horrible actor with no personality.

Everything DDL was in holds up well.

Remains of The Day might be the best underrated film of all time.

It bums me out classic novels are rarely made into films anymore.

Sadly, few people still read the classics. Or worse, fewer people don't even read novels anymore.

This was enjoyable... and offers a little behind the scenes look at the professional and personal partnership...

One way they saved money was to get actors to work for them really, really cheaply. Which is kind of a scam.

Vanessa Redgrave got tired of it and refused HOWARDS END until they came up with a decent salary. She just couldn’t be bothered anymore.

R4 yeah Maurice is the stand out for me too, absolutely love that film. Set in an utterly different time and social setting to what i grew up in, but I could still relate very much to the lead character and his falling in love with Clive. That scene where he is carressing Clive absolutely defined what I wanted in a lover for me

A side fact. Merchant and Ivory's house in Claverack, about a mile down the road from Hudson, NY

That final scene in Maurice in which Clive (Hugh Grant) looks out his and his wife's bedroom and recalls seeing Maurice wave to him from a similar scene in their university days is just heartbreaking... especially as Richard Robbins' beautiful, melancholy "Clive and Ann" music swells.

So was Robbins in a relationship with Ivory or Merchant... or both of them? Hugh references the relationship in that interview above, but doesn't recall if the relationship was with Merchant or Ivory.

[quote]R21 So was Robbins in a relationship with Ivory or Merchant... or both of them?

Behind the scenes whorishness!!

[R12]: I’ve always loved Heat and Dust, with its parallel stories set in contrasting eras. It has so many insights into East-West connections, until that magical last moment.

And Julie Christie is, as always, superb!

So many great films: The Bostonians, Heat and Dust, A Room with a View, Maurice, Howard's End, Remains of the Day, Slaves of New York, Jefferson in Paris all come to mind. Wonderful filmmakers who more often than not brought out the best in their actors. And they introduced us to Rupert Graves! Sigh......

There should be Nobel Prizes for giving us full frontal scenes of the most glorious twink in history, Rupert Graves, in two different films.

[quote]about how he was young and vulnerable and slowly crushed.

until the end of course, when the bookshelf hurried things up

I remember how exciting it was in KC when Mr. and MRs Bridge was filmed on location

Mmm Paul Newman. The Remains of the Day is a masterpiece.

I loved everything about a Room with the View, but was especially fond of the bathing scene. It was so refreshing having beautiful men be the objects of the director's gaze rather than women (in a mainstream film).

Slaves of New York was a bizarre misstep. Loved their other work, though.

They made three first class films: MAURICE, HOWARD'S END, and REMAINS OF THE DAY. I also disagree with the earlier poster about James Wilby in MAURICE; I thought he was perfect.

A ROOM WITH A VIEW doesn't hold up as well primarily because Bohnam-Carter was too inexperienced an actress to draw you into her character. She's rather off-putting and I just don't care about her character. Plus Julian Sands, gorgeous as he is, is pretty bland (Rafe Spall in the otherwise lousy BBC remake is a much better George). And I think DDL is quite bad actually (a rarity); he had never had a flair for comic characters.

I find THE EUROPEANS and THE BOSTONIANS rather stiff and clunky, in spite of some fine acting. The latter suffers from a fairly wooden Christopher Reeve.

SLAVES is just dreadful with a badly miscast Bernadette Peters.

Don't recall much about HEAT AND DUST other than a hunky Christopher Cazenove and thinking Julie Christie (luminous as ever) didn't have that much to do.

Their early films made in India are kind of interesting, especially SHAKESPEARE WALLAH. But avoid SAVAGES at all costs. It's awful.

Quartet - Alan Bates, Isabelle Adjani and Maggie Smith, very sexy.

The Remains of the Day is the best of their movies that I've seen. They worked with a talented team, so there's often something interesting to see or hear, even in their turkeys: e.g., Richard Robbins' beautiful score for Surviving Picasso.

[quote]r33 The Remains of the Day is the best of their movies that I've seen.

That's their one movie I have no desire to see again. The plot is so small. (Of course it's well done, but...)

Don't fucking mention The Remains Of The Day around me! I was promised that part and set to get away from the kids for a few months (Mamie was at a particular irksome age) then I get dropped in favor of that ferret-face flat chested Thompson!

I was so upset at the time I inadvertently agreed to make a film with Glenn. She naturally played my dowdy, plain sister.

Ivory is "likely too old," OP? He directed The City of Your Final Destination which was released in 2009. He wrote the screenplay for Call Me by Your Name, although he stepped down from directing that. Even at 91, it ain't over till it's over.

Yeah, I highly doubt we'll see Ivory directing again, though, on the verge of 90 at last year's Oscars, I thought he appeared sharp and fully 'with it'. If you'd told me he was in his 70s, I would have believed you.

Bravo to James Ivory for pushing for Timmy and Armie frontal nudity in Call Me By Your Name. His view should have prevailed.

They would have been a lot better if they hadn't kept casting that horrible Helena Bonham Carter, whose only idea of acting was to purse her lips and frown.

If for nothing else...this

Not being American, I always thought the MASTERPIECE THEATRE jibes are as lame as fuck.

No one's saying they're Bertolucci but Howard's End and Remains of The Day have scenes of quiet eroticism.

Loved all their movies.

R41 Indeed. That scene in Remains of the Day where Emma Thompson is trying to get Anthony Hopkins show her the book he is reading is one of the great moments of cinema.

[quote]So was Robbins in a relationship with Ivory or Merchant... or both of them? Hugh references the relationship in that interview above, but doesn't recall if the relationship was with Merchant or Ivory.

No one seems to know. Ivory did an interview with the Daily Beast in conjunction with Call Me By Your Name, in which he revealed that he and Merchant had numerous long-term side relationships during their time together that resulted in their partners being brought into the Merchant Ivory creative fold. Robbins got his start with Merchant Ivory as an assistant to Merchant back in the 70s, so that might tell you something. One of Ivory's affairs lasted for over 40 years, almost as long as his relationship with Merchant (but he wouldn't reveal who it was. Don't think it was Robbins, because that one was married to a woman and had a family, and it doesn't seem like Robbins was ever married with kids.) I don't wish anything to befall Ivory, but after he dies I hope someone dishes and names names.

[quote]A ROOM WITH A VIEW doesn't hold up as well primarily because Bohnam-Carter was too inexperienced an actress to draw you into her character. She's rather off-putting and I just don't care about her character. Plus Julian Sands, gorgeous as he is, is pretty bland (Rafe Spall in the otherwise lousy BBC remake is a much better George). And I think DDL is quite bad actually (a rarity); he had never had a flair for comic characters.

I disagree intensely with this entire paragraph.

Is it true Ruth Prawer Jhabvala refused to write a script for Maurice because she wasn't comfortable with the gay content of the story? She's a gigantic cunt if that really was the case.

R45, that would be weird because around the time that Maurice was made she was writing a novel about twins, one of whom was gay. I haven't read it, but it would just seem weird that she would be uncomfortable with gay content.

R21, what's so sad about that last scene in Maurice is when Clive is getting ready for bed and begins closing the shudders on the bedroom windows, as if he's sealing himself inside his own tomb. In contrast is Maurice out in the open field and associated with nature (and consequently life).

[quote]And they introduced us to Rupert Graves! Sigh......

Ah, yes, who can forget Scudder . . .

There have been multiple stories about why Ruth Prawer Jhabvala didn't write the screenplay for Maurice. The first one was that she considered the story to be a very 'male' one and didn't connect with it - she thought it would be better for a male screenwriter. Then the next story was that she was involved in writing her novel The Three Continents and didn't have time. Both of those were bandied about around the time of the film's release. Then years later it was said that she felt Maurice was an inferior book and just didn't want to do it. More recently comes the story that she was specifically put off by the gay content. Given her decades-long friendship with Merchant and Ivory, not just her professional association with them (she and her husband actually lived in the same house with them at times) it seems really far-fetched that she was homophobic in any way, but who knows what the actual truth is.

[quote]Is it true Ruth Prawer Jhabvala refused to write a script for Maurice because she wasn't comfortable with the gay content of the story? She's a gigantic cunt if that really was the case.

So true. Thus depriving DLers' the opportunity of bitching incessantly about women telling "their" story.

In this article, Ivory says that Jhabvala thought Forster's posthumous novel was a minor work and declined the offer to adapt it.

Helen Mirren would have been great in The Remains of the Day or Howard's End if they'd been made a few years sooner.

I often don't believe people when they tell me they don't like Merchant-Ivory films. Most of them are just parroting the same superficial opinions about the films: that they are pretty period curiosities, too precious and twee.

In actuality, their films tackle huge issues, like British colonialism and imperialism, class stratification, homophobia, and sexism, to name a few. Yes, you can watch these movies and just pay attention to the pretty costumes and fine acting, but there is a lot of social commentary involved. Even in "A Room with a View", watching Lucy struggle with her upper middle class snobbery as she falls in love with lower middle-class George is a gentle jab at the societal hypocrisies of their day. Many of the prejudices depicted in their films are problems today, and ultimately, they make these films timeless. They have all aged well in my opinion.

Why didn't they work with M?

Why work with M when you can work with G?

Howard’s End is a nearly perfect film with an iconic performance by Emma Thompson, and filled with other brilliant turns including Vanessa Redgrave. Room With A View less so, but also wonderful.

Maurice, as flawed as it is, is gorgeous and literally changed my life.

Merchant and Ivory are underrated.

Never understood the raves over Thompson in Howard's End. I thought Anthony Hopkins and Samuel West stole the show.

R54

This is an honest question - not busting balls - I'm interested in why and what you think is flawed about "Maurice"?

I love the film. I'm interested in alternative views.

ROOM WITH A VIEW is one of my favourite films, ever. I don't think I can ever get tired of it. And the bathing scene is so refreshing, I say this as a woman who prefers women! So much freedom in that scene, and fun - love it

R55 It isn't a zero sum game. In my opinion, all the performances in Howards End are extremely high-caliber. Including whoever played Mrs. Bast.

Maurice was a pretty bold film for the homophobic, reactionary 80s. So was the flagrantly homoerotic skinny dipping scene in Room with a View. Both of those made a big impact on me as a teenager. I'd love to go through and watch all of their films one by one. I'm realizing there are many I haven't seen.

R31, where were you ten years ago when I rented "Savages?" That movie was bizarre.

r58, I rewatched Howard’s End a few years ago to figure out why Thompson was so beloved and came up with nothing. It’s a typical fussy Emma Thompson performance to me. Likewise the dizzy Vanessa Redgrave - although she had her history on her side. Whereas the Hopkins and West performances were heartbreaking to me. I really saw into the flaws and sins of the characters and how they dealt with their tragedies with great emotional detail, and I don’t like Hopkins as a general rule.

I’m not trying to be argumentative for the sake of it but could you tell me what you loved about her?

I love it as well R56, it just seems a bit of an editing mess and rambling at times. I think it’s also because I’m impatient that it spends all this time with straight characters that I just don’t care about. It’s not as tight as Room, and HE which I think is an editing masterpiece and brilliantly adapted. Aaannnd the casting is a bit spotty. Although Wilby has grown on me over the years, I always felt he was the weakest link, and he never seemed like Maurice to me.

That being said, of course it was a film that had a great effect on me. I was so stunned by it at 17 that I came out pretty much right after I saw it in college.

What’s incredible about Thompson’s performance is it’s not fussy IN THE SLIGHTEST. She gives a beautifully clean and modern performance that is so smart and put together in a movie that could have been fusty and old that the Academy rightly awarded her for it.

R62

Ahh, I understand all your points. Thanks for your thoughts.

This thread is making me want to watch A Room with a View again.

I just saw it for the first time three weeks ago. I was surprised how good it was, since most Merchant-Ivory films seem so superficial to me.

Though flawed, I still love Maurice. It is a minor work but carries great weight in a time when gay was considered illegal.

R19 You spend more time talking about yourself than the film.

I suspect that Ivory wanted people to free themselves from their own thinking and try to appreciate a culture alien to their own.

R67 You say 'Maurice' is a minor work. And so did EM Forster, he said it was loose and plotless. And so did the scriptwriter detailed in R49.

When Clapham Junction came out on TV, there was a kind of Maurice 20 year reunion with James Whilby, Rupert Graves and Phoebe Nicholls. Whilby and Graves still had great chemistry and Whilby whipped out a stunt cock.

....

I love their movies. A Room With A View, in particular, is a great film. Maurice was marred by bad casting, but still has its moments. Wilby simply is not Maurice, though, for those who've read the book. Better casting would have been Wilby as Clive and Hugh Grant as Maurice. Howard's End, gorgeous movie. I also like The Bostonians and The Europeans though they can be a bit plodding at times. I've never seen the Julie Christie movie. Remains of the Day is lovely as well.

Mr. and Mrs, Bridge is beautifully done. The novels it's based on are even better: Evan S. Connell was a wonderful writer.

[quote]What’s incredible about Thompson’s performance is it’s not fussy IN THE SLIGHTEST.

Yes, exactly. There's no big 'Oscar moment' to it, at all. I remember being thrilled and amazed when she got so much awards love for it, because it's so low key and naturalistic - not the sort of performance that usually nabs statues.

[quote]most Merchant-Ivory films seem so superficial to me.

!!!

I got so much anxiety watching the disdainful servant in Maurice.

I don't like Emma Thompson's acting style in general though I like a few of her high comedy performances. I didn't get the appeal in Howard's End. Vocal tics and self-conscious underplaying galore.

I thought Howard's End was great, but someone's performance or else the screenplay didn't make clear something that I had to read the novel afterwards to understand. Emma Thompson (as Margaret) was so attractive and clever and likable in the film that it didn't really make sense that she'd go with the Anthony Hopkins character (Wilcox) . Only in reading the book and reading between the lines did it become clear to me that she was "old" in society's terms (of 1910 or whenever it's set) and she couldn't be selective. She had to take what was offered or resign herself to permanent spinsterhood, which is a fate she's not quite ready to accept. Only after marriage did the more grotesque aspect's of Wilcox' character reveal themselves fully to her. An unmarried woman of 30 or even 35 doesn't strike us in 2019 as on the shelf and spinsterish - but so it would have been in 1910.

aspects^^^

I think the scene when Thompson is at the huge party and greeting and laughing with the guests and then goes upstairs, closes the door and collapses in tears is brilliant.

This is after she finds out about her husband and Mrs. Bast.

Thank you for your sincere response r78

I didn’t like when she did that in Love Actually and won a BAFTA out of it so maybe it’s just that I’m not an Emma fan, and her style doesn’t appeal. I didn’t dislike her performance - it’s certainly not bad - so much as was surprised by the raves.

I don’t like that brand of “jolly hockey sticks” English actress much - Kate Winsley, Emma Thompson, Imelda Staunton - unless they are extremely camp or foxy or self-loathing.

That said, I haven’t given the HE adaptation with Hayley Attwell a chance, and I don’t plan to.

As for Maurice, James Wilby had a delicacy and straight forwardness that made the character more empathetic than he was in the novel. He’s not as sexual as Julian Sands, but he was beautiful filmed and looked bright and angelic.

[quote]An unmarried woman of 30 or even 35 doesn't strike us in 2019 as on the shelf and spinsterish - but so it would have been in 1910.

Your relative youth is showing.

If you know about the social mores and standards of the past, it goes without saying that Margaret, no matter how lively and attractive, is a spinster at her age and in her time. The screenplay doesn't tell us because it's something they assume the audience would already know. Back in the decade the film was made, most of the audience almost certainly DID know. A woman in her thirties being thought of as being in her prime is a fairly recent phenomenon. Even in the 70s and 80s you'd get side-eye in some circles for being 35 and unmarried.

Ismail Merchant was a classy guy. I worked in Development/ fundraising for Rockefeller non profit ASIA SOCIETY in 1977 when the film ROSELAND was released. Ismail was promoting it / my boss was gay, and the two were both working the upper east side money crowd for their various projects.... they traded tips. Ismail was shrewd but not duplicitous, I would make runs to his office near Columbus Circle / James Ivory would be there....a hole in the wall, a secretary, a file cabinet and a phone...they couldn't have been nicer. Little did I know what was to come .

I still haven't seen Roseland 40 years later......John Simon called Roseland a piece of vulgar and inept filmmaking.....all the more reason to seek it out!!

Great story r82!

R82 wrote a good post, but I do not see any "story" there.

Oh, R84, take the Stick of Disapproval out of your ass. It is unbecoming.

ROSELAND is forgettable and clunky. Only the portion with Christopher Walken is mildly interesting.

I recall likening A SOLDIER’S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES very much in spite of my distaste for Leelee Sobieski.

Ivory is 91, but he is healthy and thriving. He's presently writing a screenplay and hopes to direct an adaptation of Peter Cameron's CORAL GLYNN, using some of the actors from ROOM WITH A VIEW (Julian Sands, Helena B-C, and Rupert Graves). Cameron has been publishing Ivory's memoirs at his Shrinking Violet Press, and one volume, titled LOVE & SEX is all about the affairs Ivory had with men in HS, College, Grad School, and the Army.

My mom was chastised by a Seventh-Day Adventist for letting me watch "A Room with a View" when I was like 9 or 10. My mom just rolled her eyes at him. Since then, I've been in love with the movie.

In college, I was walking in the library one day and there were Merchant & Ivory things displayed all over. It was so cool to see, especially a funny thank you note from Emma Thompson to James Ivory. Ivory had just bequeathed much of his personal papers to the University of Oregon at the time.

So cool to know, R89! University of Oregon it is.

Wow, R88, I had no idea about Ivory's memoirs. Thank you for the link.

And I'm enjoying these personal anecdotes of things like encountering Merchant in the '70s and the University of Oregon M-I display, whether they qualify as 'stories' or not.

I love "A Room With a View" and when I was in college I tried to stay at the pensione on the Arno in the film. This was back in the days when you had to call the hotel directly (I remember having trouble with the concept of what time it was there and didn't want to fuck up and call them at 3am!) and the owner told me they were sold out for the times I wanted to go. She confided that the cast of the film actually stayed in a pensione a few doors down and gave me the number. The owner, Marciella, was so sweet and didn't think I was a total freak when I requested the room Helena Bonham Carter had stayed in. Such a lovely stay and I even bought Marciella cornflowers-oh, yes I did.

The Remains of the Day would have won best picture if it hadn't been up against Schindler's List.

I think The Piano would have won, if not for Schindler's List. I didn't like it, but it was a surprise box office hit, making twice as much as The Remains of the Day, and it won the original screenplay and two acting awards.

R92 What a wonderful memory!

R87 I'm so disappointed that you can't find that film anywhere. I saw when it came out and loved it. I think it was released as a DVD, but it has since gone out of print. I would love to see it again.

The married man Ivory had a 40-year-long affair with was not someone in the biz, but a friend of his youth.

My trouble with their adaptation of A ROOM WITH A VIEW is that the Emersons do not really have lower class accents, and what's so clear in the novel (and what was brought out in the otherwise inferior BBC adaptation of a few years ago) is that the principal objection to George Emerson as a suitor for Lucy is that she is from the wealthy classes and he is not. I don't understand why they downplayed this in the movie. Otherwise I really like it. I disliked Helena Bonham-Carter in it when i originally saw it because I thought she was too peevish and annoying as an actress, but now being used to her as an actress I understand more that she was just emphasizing that Lucy is a peevish and annoying character.

HOWARDS END (note that there is no apostrophe in "Howards") is very good, although I think Vanessa Redgrave did not have the right handle on her character, and made her too luminous and tremulous. But Emma Thompson is absolutely perfect casting-- and so are Bonham-Carter, Samuel West, and Anthony Hopkins. My favorite scene with Thompson is when she has dinner with with Hopkins and his daughter and her fiance at a fancy london restaurant, and she keeps chattering nervously away, and the daughter (one of the Jemma Redgrave) secretly mocks her incessant gabbing with one hand to her fiance. I like that Thompson was not afraid to show the more ridiculous side of the character.

MAURICE is ruined by James Wiltby, who is beautiful but not very interesting--Pauline Kael said (rightly) that he plays Maurice as if being gay were tantamount to being retarded.

QUARTET is highly underrated. It has one of Maggie Smith's best performances in it, as a spiteful jealous bitch (a part she rarely ever played elsewhere), and great evocations of 1920s expatriate Paris.

I very much like THE EUROPEANS. A very charming and complex performance by Lee Remick of one of Henry James's greatest characters, and beautiful costumes and photography. the rest of the cast may not be up to Remick's level, admittedly.

I don't want to get off-topic but I'm sure James Ivory fans will mourn the loss of another homosexual who aimed to bring 19th century alive to us—

Thank you for posting Piero Tosi's obituary. What a career, spanning 60 years and including costumes for Visconti's historical epics and the first Cage aux Folles movie, which earned him an Oscar nomination.

[quote]r52 Why didn't they work with M?

They paid cut-rate salaries for actors, as their films were made on a shoestring. They couldn't afford her.

Vanessa Redgrave is the only performer in a finished film of theirs who held out for more money. She was like, "This is bullshit."

[quote]r59 So was the flagrantly homoerotic skinny dipping scene in Room with a View.

What's homoerotic about that scene? It's not like the camera dwells on the nudity - or sexualizes anything.

[quote]What's homoerotic about that scene? It's not like the camera dwells on the nudity - or sexualizes anything.

I think the use of the anachronistic but sexy "YMCA" on the soundtrack juiced up that flagrant scene.

Well, yes, that was pandering, a little. When In first saw ARWAV, I thought the song was coming from a neighboring cineplex!

The Criterion Collection version (considered definitive) has replaced the song with a different track.

This thread is good timing as I have THE BOSTONIANS sitting on my DVR.

The skinny dipping scene in ARWAV and the nudity in MAURICE is incredibly dignified and straightforward, there’s no coyness or fetishising at all.

Apparently Christopher Reeve attended the premiere of Howards End and and told Ivory and Merchant that he would work with them on anything again if they would have him and they offered him in REMAINS OF THE DAY in which he was perfectly cast. Who better than Superman to play the straight-talking American?

R16 But they read comic books and that seems to be what almost all current movies are based on....

R20 *Shriek*

Hudson? Where DL favorite Kevin Sessums lives?

My Blu Ray of Jefferson in Paris arrived today. I haven't seen it since its first release.

I'm building up my Merchant/Ivory Blu Ray collection. Also have Howard's End, Remains of the Day, A Room with a View, Maurice, Heat and Dust, The Bostonians. Really hoping Mr & Mrs Bridge, Jane Austen in New York, Quartet & Slaves of New York get released soon.

r98 I can see where you're coming from with your criticism of A Room With A View regarding downplaying the class issues in the novel. I think again, like someone wrote earlier about Howard's End, the filmakers expected audiences to know this already.

But there are several moments in the film where you can tell that the Emersons are lower middle class because of their behavior. For instance, Mr. Emerson yelling out to another aquaintance in the dining room, about the dangers of drinking lemonade, which was embarrassing to the lady being address and everyone who witnessed it. Even the beautiful gesture of bringing cornflowers to the Miss Alans would have been considered too forward, not to mention demanding to change rooms with Lucy and Charlotte because "women love a view, men don't!" etc. The Emersons talk and behave directly, in contrast to the Honeychurches, the Miss Alans, and especially the Vyses, who tend to be evasive, and sometimes sarcastic and cruel, like Cecil. Mrs. Honeychurch asking Freddie if the Emersons are the "right sort of people" is another example.

Anyway, I love this thread. Thank you OP for bringing like minded people together to talk about Merchant-Ivory films.

Oh and my favorite: Charlotte thinking George is really lower class because he works in the "railways"

The Emersons aren't lower class (working class); they're borderline lower middle to middle class with the Honeychurches being a step or so above them and then the Vyses another step or so above THEM. That's one of the themes of the book, the ridiculously narrow nature of the class system with all the tiny gradients dividing everyone to ridiculous extremes.

And, I do think Denholm Elliot did a wonderful job as Papa Emerson with an appropriate accent that was decidedly more 'umble than the Honeychurches. And, even the pretty but bland Julian Sands did a nice job in a film that was perfectly cast.

[quote]r108 I'm building up my Merchant/Ivory Blu Ray collection. Also have Howard's End, Remains of the Day, A Room with a View, Maurice, Heat and Dust, The Bostonians.

But do you have the lunchbox?

Thank you, R98, for your ideas but I thought the easily-nonplussed Charlotte Bartlett was disapproving of the Emersons because they were 'non-conformist' rather than working class (and because young George exuded sex-appeal).

My understanding was that Forster named the father and son after the quasi-homosexual Ralph Waldo Emerson (who influenced homosexualists Whitman and Edward Carpenter).

And the filmmakers added in a reference to another American free-thinker Henry David Thoreau (who isn't in Forster's original story).

I remember thinking what an earthy and welcome relief this scene was from all the stodginess and overacting we had to endure up to this point...

There is neither stodginess nor overacting in A Room With A View.

[quote]They couldn't afford her.

Money had nothing to do with it.

Mike Nichols was originally slated to direct The Remains of the Day. Streep badly wanted the role of Miss Kenton, but Nichols cast Thompson, who was hot after her Oscar win, while Meryl was in a bit of a career rut. When James Ivory took over as director, he too wanted Thompson. Meryl REALLY wanted that part - or maybe was just pissed at being denied, since it happened so rarely - and she famously fired her representation (agent, manager) for failing to lock down the role for her. She fell out with Nichols for a time too. But there was never the slightest implication that money was an issue. Everybody knew actors on M-I projects didn't make much money. People worked with them for the quality and the prestige.

[quote]The married man Ivory had a 40-year-long affair with was not someone in the biz, but a friend of his youth.

Ah, interesting. Thanks for that. The Daily Beast piece gave the impression it was someone in his creative orbit.

Thank you also, R99, for posting about Piero Tosi.

R116 The American Streep would have stuck out like a sore thumb in that English film.

Beautiful Julian Sands

I watched "Gothic" recently which is more over-the-top Ken Russell stuff but you get another view of Sands' beautiful ass.

[quote] My favorite scene with Thompson is when she has dinner with with Hopkins and his daughter and her fiance at a fancy london restaurant, and she keeps chattering nervously away, and the daughter (one of the Jemma Redgrave) secretly mocks her incessant gabbing with one hand to her fiance.

I love this scene and all of the ridiculous ordering that takes place. Also, the puppy scene.

It is weird that people are attributing the Emersons' behavior to "class."

It appears to be just their personality.

You’re right. R122. Extravagant, emotional people who were upper class were characters, bom , eccentrics.

Lower class people who behaved like that were total embarrassments.

R118 Not to mention being too old. The joke on ROTD is that the Lena Headey character acts like Miss Kenton is an ancient old hag at 30 when we the audience know whilst she’s not in the first flush of youth she’s, you know, only 30. It shows how authoritarian female servants were de-sexualised, not viewed as women, in order to maintain their position and not be deemed “worthy” of under-the-stairs seduction.

Streep was in her 40s which would have rendered it moot.

I was 15 when the movie Maurice came out and still pretty much confused about my sexuality (I thought I was gay but read everywhere that it was a normal phase and I thought I was in *that* phase). Anyway, I had never really paid attention to posters advertising upcoming movies but when I saw this one, I immediately thought "oh, this Maurice character has to be gay" and "I have to see that movie". Which of course I did. But then when I left the theater I noticed that my older brother was walking just a couple steps ahead of me with another guy. That made me go uh-oh! And seeing him interacting with the other guy I felt the *chemistry* between them. I was so fucking envious. That's when I started to apply Oscar Wilde's advice that the only way to get rid of a temptation was to yield to it. I never looked back. Neither did my brother obviously...

I always thought of George as an eccentric (not to mention his father!) The others are just bores. Love this film.

"Stomach" was not considered a proper word to use back then, hence the woman's shocked reaction when Mr. Emerson says "stomach."

Edward Carpenter, upper middle class and older, and George Merrill, working class and younger, were the inspiration for Maurice Hall and Alec Scudder.

The original Hall & Scudder - older middle class Edward Carpenter and younger, working class George Merrill.

rupert graves was way hotter

Rupert still looks great in the Sherlocks.

We could do a whole thread on Rupert's hotness.

Given Pauline Kael's generally patronizing attitude about gay men, I'd take her review of MAURICE with a pound of salt. She judges Wilby's performance through contemporary eyes as if the character is supposed to behave like a modern gay man. Homosexuality was such a verboten subject at the time depicted in the film l found Maurice's journey quite credible.

R114, that was the point. George was the earthy, sexy, free-thinking alternative to the buttoned-up, sexless (or repressed) suitable Cecil. Lucy chooses pleasure and sex; the movie ends with them about to fuck again while on their honeymoon.

And R102, I beg to differ.

The bathing scene is natural and zesty. Not unlike Europeans being nude on the beach. It just is.

Whereas Americans sexualise everything. There were pap pictures of a European nude beach where people and families were being very normal. Balthazar Getty was there with Sienna Miller and was sucking her nipple while everyone else rolled their eyes.

[quote]We could do a whole thread on Rupert's hotness.

Well until that moment comes, here's another sample of Rupert's hotness . . .

A total shame their last project never came to fruition.

A movie musical with Tina Turner and Matthew Modine where she played some Hindu queen. Turner spent several weeks in India doing research. It was in pre production stage when Merchant passed away. But you can't help but wonder what it would have turned out like.

r136 start that thread and spam that with non-MI pics

r116

[quote]Mike Nichols was originally slated to direct The Remains of the Day. Streep badly wanted the role of Miss Kenton, but Nichols cast Thompson, who was hot after her Oscar win, while Meryl was in a bit of a career rut. When James Ivory took over as director, he too wanted Thompson. Meryl REALLY wanted that part - or maybe was just pissed at being denied, since it happened so rarely - and she famously fired her representation (agent, manager) for failing to lock down the role for her. She fell out with Nichols for a time too.

That goes some way to explain Meryl Streep's most cunty and bizarre Oscar campaign ever when her main competition for a nomination was Emma Thompson in SAVING MR BANKS (never seen it) over herself in AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (M was laughable and outacted at every turn by Julia Roberts). M n is mercenary, and M never forgets.

Have there been penises or buttocks in all James Ivory movies?

R140 I'm afraid not. Only A Room with a View & Maurice.

The British Museum scene in MAURICE is probably one of my favourites, ever. I could write an easy on it.

What is the best DVD/Blu-Ray version of Maurice? Doesn’t matter which region.

Why, R142? I’m genuinely interested.

Ahh, and I was leaving school when Maurice was finally published (after all the pre-varication by Forster). A gem of a book. And a disappointment as a film. Although the Maurice character was excellent.

What most DL misses about Thompson’s character in HE is that she is financially independent. She doesn’t worry about being single and is happily resigned to it. She is fascinated by Hopkin’s character because they are opposites in philosophy and world view and Margaret is bored with her set of “thinkers.”

[quote]What is the best DVD/Blu-Ray version of Maurice? Doesn’t matter which region.

You want the one from The Merchant-Ivory Collection at the link (which is actually Criterion, though for various reasons it wasn't released under that banner). That's the one that has every bell and whistle extra you could want for the film. It's out of print now so you'll have to shop around for the best price - Amazon has a range of prices for it. There may be better versions now in terms of remastering or whatever, but to me that's the best dvd release.

R132 When I saw "Closer" on Broadway, Rupert's junk fell out of his boxers. I was in the second row and saw it all! Also, Natasha Richardson winked at me that night.

And looked what happened to her.

Oh, no. You keep your distance, R148!

There's a newish Region A/1 Blu-Ray/DVD of Maurice that I think has a fair amount of extras. Not sure if it's got everything the old Criterion edition had, but it's in print. Cohen has been releasing a lot of the Merchant Ivory catalogue.

I understand Helena Bonham Carter is a great grand-daughter of Prime Minister Asquith. I half agree with R39 who says she's horrible . . . and with R98 disliking her for being annoying and peevish.

I suppose the character of Lucy Honeychurch is meant to be annoying up until the climax of the story when she is deflowered by George Emerson (i.e. St George wearing shining armour) who teaches her how to live.

I'm a little wary of James Ivory movies because he uses this casting agent named "Celestia Fox'.

She is in the Fox Family which is a dynasty just like the Redgrave dynasty.

She is immensely powerful behind the scenes just like David O. Selznick was. She forces producers to hire her own actors.

Merchant-Ivory films are, in general, impeccably cast, R152.

I think you can relax.

R152 I thought Daniel Day Lewis was wasted as prissy Cecil. And, as we've seen, Helena Bon-Cart has turned into an over-used cliche. And I couldn't approve of that Fawlty Tower maven disturbing the solemn equilibrium of Howard's End.

I wish Day Lewis had played the title role in "Maurice".

Speaking of Prunella Scales, what specifically was Samuel West’s accent in Howards End? Does it exist in London anymore?

I heard it in a Richard Briers sitcom but not anywhere else.

What if Daniel Day-Lewis had played George in A Room with a View? There might have been a tad more passion.

Samuel West isn't pretty.

[quote]I wish Day Lewis had played the title role in "Maurice".

The only place I could see Daniel Day Lewis and his fussy, methody shtick working is as Scudder. And who wants to see the lovely Rupert Graves replaced? Not I.

No R157. George had to be sensual to open up Miss Honeychurch's desire.

DDL tried to get physical when he played in that Red Indian movie but I thought he was straining to achieve it.

R160, did you see My Beautiful Laundrette?

Agreed, Julian Sands isn’t much of an actor but he brought the right combination of oddness, romance, wildness and a touch of sleaze to George. You really saw how very DIFFERENT he was to the rest of the Honeychurches and their acquaintances.

R162 Miss Honeychurch was swooning with sensuality with the view, the music and ... I almost imagined that George would have appeared nude in the poppy field and ravish her.

I thought Julian was fascinating in the role. This woman agrees with me—

Julian was fascinating back in those days and he had a strange tightness around his mouth which I couldn't quite understand.

Christopher Reeve was very sexy in the Bostonians. You can tell Henry James was sympathetic with him and was making fun of all the women.

Thompson's character is explicitly called an "old maid type" and is a bit frumpy. Still, her attraction to Henry isn't as clear as it should be in the film.

Mrs. Bast is clearly an ex-whore, although her husband's pity-marriage to her seems a bit forced. Forster had a romaticized vision of the working classes mostly because he was an ugly little troll who wanted to fuck hunky working class men and probably had fantasies of them seducing him (ala Scudder in Maurice).

R166 Did you decide Mrs. Bast was an ex-whore after reading the book, seeing James Ivory's movie or that grasping BBC TV version?

R165 Do mean James Ivory or Henry James?

( I don't know; I haven't read the book)

My favourite part of ARWAV, was Rupert Graves fruit bowl. It never gets old, no matter how many times I watch it. Tom Hollander was up for the part in Maurice, which he lost out to Rupert. All I can say is “thank you God!”

^ I remember no fruit bowl. Are you speaking metaphorically?

When the water fight was interrupted, Rupert was discovered in the bushes with his junk tucked behind. The fruit bowl wasn’t shown, but I like to think that it wasn’t planned due to Helena and Ruperts laugh. Either way, it was an awesome scene.

^ Ah, indeed!

I remember being first shocked and than delighted by the male nude frolickling in A Room with a View when it was first released in cinemas. The main reason for my 'shock' is that it was rated PG in my part of the world and I didn't expect to be seeing cock, cock, cock...

r168 Sorry, I mean that Henry James had sympathy with the Christopher Reeve character and viewed feminist activism of the Vanessa Redgrave character as phony akin to the main character's father, a mesmerist. The red-pillers amongst would consider her as an SJW.

Ivory and Prawer Jhabvala are obviously more sympathetic to the female liberation movement. The Linda Hunt character, a doctor and a feminist, was put in contrast to the Reeve character. Though with opposing views, they respected each other. Then there was the Redgrave character, who if this story had been invented by someone who wasn't Henry James and wasn't acted by Vanessa Redgrave, would be posited as an actual man-hating lesbian.

Ivory was not entirely happy with how literally Vanessa Redgrave viewed her character's activism, he wanted her to be the equal and opposite powerful political influence on the protagonist that her father was. I read (here on DL!) that Glenn Close was the first choice, but it clashed with The Natural, so he hired Redgrave instead. Close would have happily played up the negative elements, but as it stands it is one of Redgrave's best performances.

Mrs. Bast's coarseness in the film makes the ex-whorishness very believable. OTOH, her husband's character is not quite as fleshed-out and, again seems to reflect Forster's distorted view of working class people. he just doesn't get complexity---his attempts in life to transcend the British class system were too limited and probably in conflict with his own social climbing.

Mrs. Bast is the most difficult part of HE for me. I just can’t muster sympathy for her. It’s the one role I think is miscast. They’re supposed to be starving and you have this fat grating whore? Nah.

Hahaha, r176. Due to this thread I rewatched HE over the weekend. Funny how no one mentions Jacky Bast once Leonard dies. One imagines Helena would have given her some $$$ but she just disappears and isn't missed.

r175 I don't fully agree with your view, but with that mind his most successful novel is A PASSAGE TO INDIA which is also my favourite novel of all time. I read it every 3 years or so. Adding colonialism into the mix of class, sexuality, sexism and racism, he gets right what even David Lean couldn't do in the (excellent) movie, that equality and fraternity between the oppressed and the oppressor cannot occur under a colonial system. The sexual frisson of Aziz and Adela comes to disaster. Mrs Moore ups and leaves and dies. Dr Aziz and Richard Fielding make amends but cycle off to different paths.

Forster is probably too optimistic, and indeed too British, to drawn the same conclusion about class in Britain.

Probably the single best scene in the Merchant Ivory oeuvre.

I can't imagine DDL as Maurice or Scudder, in spite of LAUNDRETTE. Passion is not something he's good at, as AGE OF INNOCENCE demonstrated. He's much better as the rather narcissistic seducer of UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING. He certainly could have played Clive, though High Grant was perfect in the part. But after LAUNDRETTE he was well on his way to stardom and out of Merchant-Ivory's reach.

It's interesting that the BBC has remade both ROOM WITH A VIEW (very badly) and HOWARD'S END (so-so), but not MAURICE.

Both Nichols and Ivory were correct in casting Thompson in REMAINS rather than Streep. Thompson and Hopkins already had a good rapport as actors from HOWARD'S END and they could share a scene without turning it into a competition. Streep would have tried to make her scenes with Hopkins all about HER and wreck the dramatic balance.

R175. Both R178 and I don't fully agree with your view about Forster and 'social climbing'.

If anything, Forster was the university-educated upper-middle-class, secret homosexual mouse who was obsessed with with ultra-butch working class men. He subsidised (and briefly lived with) a hetero (and presumably bone-headed) policeman named Bob Buckingham and his little wife in their little house.

Some of the other Bloomsbury-ites might be misconstrued as 'social climbers' but most of them would now be considered as Islington Luvvies and Virtue-Signallers.

[quote]Passion is not something he's good at, as AGE OF INNOCENCE demonstrated.

To be fair, Scorsese himself is not good at passion - The Age of Innocence itself is passionless, an example of a director trying to work in a key beyond his range, so Day-Lewis had no help at all there. You can feel both the influences of Merchant-Ivory and Visconti on the film, but Scorsese got bogged down in the production design and how people hold their forks and never grasped the emotions of his characters. People rag on M-I for their attention to those kinds of details, but for anyone who's ever truly watched their films - they are all about characters. It wouldn't have happened that way if Ivory had directed it.

Ivory has said that Day-Lewis was offered his choice of George or Cecil, BTW.

I hate Scorsese and his adoration of gangsters (while applauding his philanthropy and championing of Michael Powell).

He did an odd interview about ten years ago saying he alternates his regular gangster movies with an "homage movie".

His "homage movies" were— 'The Wolf of Wall Street' for Oliver Stone. "Hugo" for Walt Disney "Shutter Island" for Bruckheimer "The Aviator" for the Warners 1930s Bio-pics "The Age of Innocence" for Wyler's 'Heiress' "The Last Temptation of Christ for Pier Paolo Pasolini "The Color of Money" for Martin Ritt and Paul Newman "New York, New York" for MGM and Minelli

R182 Forster and Buckingham were lovers.

Has Scorsese and his muse Leonardo ever been addressed? That’s a Merchant-Ivory film in itself.

R185 The Guardian newspaper might choose to call it 'a love triangle'; Dataloungers would call it a money-grubbing relationship of convenience.

The unlovely Forster said "When I think what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love".

R187 Aww, old people always say the best words.

A friend of mine sent me an article about Merchant Ivory movies a long time ago. It was published soon after the release of, I think, TROTD. Goldie Hawn was quoted as gushing, "Only the British can make such wonderful, literate, elegant movies".

The writer wondered how a film produced by the Indian Ismail Merchant, directed by the American James Ivory, and scripted by the German Ruth Prawer Jhabwala (based on a novel by the Japanese Kazuo Ishiguro) got regarded as a British film that only the refined, erudite English could have made.

Strange he didn't mention "The Music of Chance"

Forster's first lover Mohammed el-Adl

Forster and his crush Sir Syed Ross Masood

Forster and the not unattractive Bob Buckingham

You say Bob Buckingham is not unattractive. His wife was unattractive.

Their final, uncompleted project:

[quote][italic]A chance viewing of an internet porn video introduces 18 year old Jason Miller to the joys of rimming.

[quote]Following an explosive exploration with the handsome Dr Mark Langham, Jason turns his attention to his best friend, Lee Haines, as he delves deeper into previously undiscovered pleasures.

"A Room with a View" was released the same day in the States as "My Beautiful Laundrette."

Which Maurice DVD has the deleted scenes?

I love HEAT AND DUST.

It's as good as a redo of A PASSAGE TO INDIA as THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN series. The Shashi Kapoor and the stunning 23-year-old Greta Scacchi are great but my favourite character is probably the stupid American hippie. And then Nikolas Grace as gay gay gay Harry Hamilton-Paul. I read a DVD suggesting that the element of psychological sado-masochism between the Nawab and Harry is probably accidental. Oh honey no.

[quote]That final scene in Maurice in which Clive (Hugh Grant) looks out his and his wife's bedroom and recalls seeing Maurice wave to him from a similar scene in their university days is just heartbreaking... especially as Richard Robbins' beautiful, melancholy "Clive and Ann" music swells.

I'm not a big cryer at movies, but I burst into tears at that scene. I had just come back from the wedding (to a woman) of the love of my life.

Remains of the Day is another one that really got to me. It was odd though, as it packed an emotional wallop by surprise. I was actually getting a bit bored with the film while watching it. But as soon as I got in my car, I burst into tears. While I was watching the film, I wasn't getting how their relationship was sad in a way that a relationship I had was, too. It hit me when it was over.

I now realize that M/I films are the only films that have done that to me.

So was Ann asexual? Clive would kiss her and pay her attention, but whenever there was the potential for anything physically sexual she would clam up and he would move away unbothered.

R199, I hope you found someone else. Why did you even go to the wedding??

R201 I was trying to be a good sport. Worst day of my life.

R200 I got the impression that Clive's wife was sexually frustrated. She peeks at him getting undressed, which is probably thought was "naughty." So that shows interest on her part.

Oh I love their films- they are so beautiful to watch and full of all the vagaries of the human experience. SOOO much better than the special effects stuff we have to be assaulted by in trailers (I do my best to avoid all but a few full length). The Puccini arias in Room made me swoon, particularly the one during the picnic outing. DDL was mesmerizing as the self obsessed fop- what a great actor. At the time the only other film I had seen him in was My Favorite Launderette. I could not believe they were the same person. I think he and Streep are at least two of the best ever- Philip SH too. Maurice is sublime. Remains of the Day and Howards End sublime as well.

“Slaves of New York” received mostly savage reviews when it was released, and it seemed a misstep at the time, but I watched it recently and think it holds up quite well. Bernadette Peters still is an odd choice for Eleanor (too old — where was Rosanna Arquette?) but most of the other roles are well-cast, and it beautifully illustrates a sadly long-gone time and place.

"sadly," r205???

Sadly because the areas in the film are so gentrified now that no one could afford to live there.

[quote]that no one could afford to live there.

not quite true, people can afford to live there, and do; just not the people who used to live there

That’s it, R208!

r203 I haven't read the book since school, but one could make an argument in the film that Clive is gay, but also asexual.

As for Ann, peeping at Clive's ass and looking away like a blushing school girl is acceptable on the wedding night, but thereafter? Who knows. Maybe Clive hasn't layed a finger on her.

[quote] Sadly because the areas in the film are so gentrified now that no one could afford to live there.

Janowitz's point in the title story of the short story collection was that when these stories take place the pooor and struggling artists who used to be able to live in NYC could no longer afford to do so (as they had in the 60s and 70s). they had to partner with someone wealthier to be afford to live there--thus they were their "slaves."

Things got even worse, but it's the same dynamic as she talked about then.

[quote]I haven't read the book since school, but one could make an argument in the film that Clive is gay, but also asexual.

The book is very different from the film. I found the film much more realistic.

It's been a long time since I read the book, but, as I recall, Clive had a magical transformation, whereupon he was suddenly straight.

I found the ending of the film, implying that he has compromised out of ambition, but still would rather be with Maurice very say, but also much more believable.

I don't think he was asexual. He isn't sexually attracted to his wife, but he wanted Maurice. He was just too repressed, afraid and ashamed to act on it sexually.

R212 In the film it seemed Clive was self-loathing and deeply closeted, trying to make his marriage work for the sake of status and ambition. You could imagine both Ann and Clive finally succumbing to their frustration and taking secret lovers on the side, as those romantic Edwardians were wont to do.

What is JANE AUSTIN IN MANHATTAN like? It gave Sean Young her film debut.

She must have been high maintenance even then, as they never worked with her again.

JANE AUSTEN IN MANHATTAN (1980)

"Jane Austen in Manhattan" is just bad. Young is OK, but it's not much of a role. Anne Baxter and her daughter Katrina Hodiak are also in the cast, and Hodiak (in her only movie appearance ever) sings a couple of folkie songs she composed. To me it felt like they were trying to an Altman movie, looser than most of their others, and it fell flat. I thought their earlier movie "Shakespeare Wallah", also set against a theatrical backdrop, was much more interesting (and beautifully shot in black and white).

[quote]You could imagine both Ann and Clive finally succumbing to their frustration and taking secret lovers on the side, as those romantic Edwardians were wont to do.

Clive believed in Platonic love. He believed it because it was convenient, but he sincerely believed it too. That's what he posited his love for Maurice as. Conversely Maurice had a pretty normal, ordinary sex drive (read: high) for a man of his kind and age and combined the Platonic and the erotic.

The tragedy for Clive is that he realised he lost Maurice's love and respect, he also realised he was kidding himself. The fact that they didn't have sex is almost a side issue. Clive isn't a romantic, I don't think he'd have a lover or use a rentboy. Ann would probably weep in the arms of some sympathetic colleague or relation of Clive.

Clive wasa a product of his class and location. If he'd been straight, he'd have a period of dalliances. His wife was a of a background that probably would be happy to have a fairly sexless marriage--once she had children, they and the servants would provide her with companionship. while Clive was at the House of Lords perhaps getting the odd blowjob from a page. The Maurice-Scudder pairing was based on Forster's friend Carpenter, except Carpenter had the kind of wealth that maurice didn't have.

[quote]Clive had a magical transformation, whereupon he was suddenly straight.

The Lord works in mysterious way, his wonders to perform

R197 there are quite a few missing scenes posted online. Will post them here for you. The regular color scenes are in the distributed film and the scenes that look somewhat grey or washed out are the deleted scenes.

[quote]Clive was at the House of Lords perhaps getting the odd blowjob from a page.

Nope. Not as a politician. He would be terrified of being arrested the same way that Maurice automatically assumed Scudder was blackmailing him.

Maurice deleted scenes #3

Maurice deleted scenes #4

Maurice deleted scenes #5. They really should have left this in the released film. It helps explain a bit how Maurice and Scudder started bonding the night Scudder climbed through the guest bedroom window.

Some critics said there was nothing to draw these two men towards running away together, but the scene reveals that Scudder could be charming and you can believe that Maurice would fall for him hard.

Maurice deleted scenes #6

Yes, honey! Maurice you go ahead and give Clive the shit he deserves for playing with your emotions all those years.

[quote]That final scene in Maurice in which Clive (Hugh Grant) looks out his and his wife's bedroom and recalls seeing Maurice wave to him from a similar scene in their university days is just heartbreaking... especially as Richard Robbins' beautiful, melancholy "Clive and Ann" music swells.

[quote]what's so sad about that last scene in Maurice is when Clive is getting ready for bed and begins closing the shudders on the bedroom windows, as if he's sealing himself inside his own tomb. In contrast is Maurice out in the open field and associated with nature (and consequently life).

A beautiful and very sad description of the closet.

R225 Thanks for posting those deleted scenes, many of which should have been left in IMO, like #5 and #6.

R226 Yes, poignant and universal.

Thank you for those deleted scenes!

I am glad the scene of Scudder kissing the girls was left out. By the end of the movie we know he is actually in love with Maurice and but that that point the audience may think he's effectively straight and more likely to be blackmailing Maurice, and he may not be as sympathetic.

Also Clive is a major cunt in #3. It's a very well good scene revealing a very particular sort of character.

In one interview James Ivory talks wistfully about how Julianne Moore on the set of Picasso spoke how she was desperate to play Verena Tarrant in The Bostonians but she couldn't get in to see his NY casting agent.

Dying at my typos in r228. Dying.

As atonement, here is proof more Merchant Ivory male nudity courtesy of Christopher Cazanove's ass in Heat And Dust.

What does Clive say before he gets out of bed in R222's clip?

Clive getting into bed with Maurice in that clip is rather significant.

It also makes him into a total tease.

I wonder if he disengaged because Maurice was stroking his hair or because one/both of them popped a boner under the covers. I was getting a sense of the latter from Maurice's face.

R231

Clive says, "No, it's no better here."

R232 I think Clive realized that Platonic love wasn't going to work under the covers.

Nice series of interviews with Hugh Grant, James Wilby, Rupert Graves, and the guy who worked with M&I on the script for Maurice since Ruth wasn’t interested.

Part 2

Part 3

[quote]In one interview James Ivory talks wistfully about how Julianne Moore on the set of Picasso spoke how she was desperate to play Verena Tarrant in The Bostonians but she couldn't get in to see his NY casting agent.

In another, he mentioned that Jodie Foster was in consideration for Verena, and he went to see her at Yale to talk about it. It didn't go well - he described her as charmless. Apparently she made no effort to engage with him, was monosyllabic the whole meeting...

[quote]Apparently she made no effort to engage with him, was monosyllabic the whole meeting...

She was already rehearsing for Nell.

James Ivory has a PBS special currently airing, "Design in Mind: On Location with James Ivory", in which he gives a tour of his home and discusses the importance of architecture and location in his films:

The best thing about "The Wild Party" (1975) is the great look of the film, which is set in the 1920s and was filmed at the Riverside Mission Inn. Ivory said he chose the location because, " "it's typical of the palatial, beautifully rocco architecture of the period." The backgrounds and production design are drop-dead gorgeous.

That scene with Clive looking out the window and imagining Maurice waving at him when they first met cracks me in two.

R240, loved that, thanks for posting it.

James Ivory's New York house is tasteful perfection. It should be DL HQ.

R244, he'd banish us to the attic posthaste. You know we can't behave for long...

I'm sure Jodie Foster thought a Merchant-Ivory film was beneath her. And I can certainly believe the "charmless" description.

Jodie Foster would have been, well, too butch to play Verena. She would seem obviously closeted.

Jodie Foster is charmless with an especially tiresome, sour voice and has that creepy look of sleepless humans without eyelids.

Jodie Foster is one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood history, IMO.

James Ivory is on Instagram. It contains pictures of historical interiors, classical statues, some paintings, displays of shoes and accessories, some Americana cooking, behind the scenes pics, his Oscar and a few of his castmembers in the wild.

An image of an angry Englishman who accosted him in an art gallery is High Bitchery and the most James Ivory thing ever and convinced me this account is from the man himself.

Julianne Moore would have been so much better than Madeleine Potter as Verena Tarrant. Potter played her with no magnetism or charisma.

R246 I can't imagine Jodie Foster in the world of James Ivory & Ismail Merchant. Though back in the early 1980s she was going to appear in a film directed (and written) by Ken Russell called The Beethoven Secret. Anthony Hopkins was to Beethoven and his secrets were to be Jodie Foster, Glenda Jackson & Sissy Spacek. That would have been something to see. I suppose it would have been up to old reliables Glenda & Sissy to defrock.

I can kind of forgive Merchant Ivory Madeline Potter. Conversely he discovered Felicity Kendall, Greta Scacchi, Sean Young, Rupert Graves, Helena Bonham Carter, Simon Callow, James Wilby and Hugh Grant, while making Emma Thompson an international star.

Dear R253, some of those people had been around for decade before appearing in Merchant-Ivory movies.

And I bet lots of them were on the pay-roll of that Celestia Fox, R152.

The fuck r254? Actors aren't on a casting director's "payroll".

But casting directors watch every bit of amateur dramatics and fringe theatre and shorts and independent films in order to find fresh, cheap talent. You're looking for conspiracy theories where there aren't any.

R253 Just discovering Rupert Everett and casting him in two films that Rupert showed cock is enough to bow at the sight of James Ivory.

R255 Celestia Fox isn't like American casting agents. Celestia writes her own rules, and has been doing so for 40 years.

R256 Graves, not Everett!

Oh, FFS. Merchant-Ivory's films were for the most part impeccably cast. Nobody gives a shit how it came to be or about conspiracy theories surrounding their frequent casting director. Get over it.

No doubt r254 was turned down by Celestia Fox's office for role as Extra On The Left With British Teeth.

James Ivory's Instagram is hilariously cunty. He posted "Laughing my way down Madison Avenue" illustrated with 10 images of ugly shoes and garments. Are you sure we wouldn't fit in just fine, r245?

James Ivory's IG tells us a lot about what he finds funny and beautiful. It's worth spending some time there.

I wonder which was the 'male' and which the 'female' in the Merchant-Ivory connection?

I don't know if Forster was a Christian but—

He said "Only connect! . . .

Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.’

holy shit that's scary

[quote]Clive was at the House of Lords perhaps getting the odd blowjob from a page.

I beg your pardon, but my blowjobs are anything but "odd"!

R264, what is 'scary'?

HBC's sunglasses?

Their movies were always a feast for the eyes.

I liked the David Lean version but I would have loved to see them tackle A PASSAGE TO INDIA with much of the same cast. With Judy Davis, Peggy Ashcroft, Victor Banerjee and James Fox anyway. They would have put Shashi Kapoor, Jennifer Kendall, and Madhur Jaffrey in there somewhere. And cast one of their young men in the Nigel Havers role. Julian Sands and Rupert Graves were too sexual and Simon Callow too gay so probably Hugh Grant or James Wilby.

James Fox would most certainly have been in that, R269, because he was on the pay-roll of Celestia Fox.

Nobody gives a damn if every actor who has ever been is, was, or will be 'on Celestia Fox's payroll'. Give it UP.

I heard in an interview (with Alan Parker) that it cost $4million but brought in $70million.

But IMDB doesn't back up those figures.

IMDb wouldn't, r272.

According to Box Office Mojo:

A ROOM WITH A VIEW grossed $21M in the U.S. (and this was in 1986 dollars). I suppose the worldwide gross could be closer to $70M, but that seems high for a film like this.

MAURICE only grossed $2.5M in the U.S.

HOWARDS END did $26M in the U.S., and REMAINS OF THE DAY did $23.2M.

James Ivory says that he believes Clive Durham would die in the war, Alec Scudder would fight Germans and survive the trenches and Maurice Hall would be a conscientious objector. Sounds plausible to me.

[quote]James Ivory says that he believes Clive Durham would die in the war,

Oh, honey, aristocratic officers don't die in wars.

Actually, r276, 17% of officers died in WWI as opposed to 10% of infantry, and Eton alone lost 1000 former students.

Bye, Clive.

Some 12% of the British army's ordinary soldiers were killed during the war, compared with 17% of its officers. Eton alone lost more than 1,000 former pupils - 20% of those who served. UK wartime Prime Minister Herbert Asquith lost a son, while future Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law lost two. Anthony Eden lost two brothers, another brother of his was terribly wounded, and an uncle was captured

Clive's decaying house which he is shut into reflects his soul.

R278

Rudyard's son, John Kipling

Why are almost none of their films available on NetFlix or Hulu?

Some have been taken down from iTunes as well, super pissed. Their catalogue was sold to Cohen who really need to do a deal to make them digitally available.

A lot of them are on Criterion....which now has its own streaming platform.

No love for "Cotton Mary" ? Not one of their better efforts but interesting nonetheless.

Which ones specifically are on Criterion streaming?

It looks like most of their films are on Criterion

r286 Those DVDs are long out of print as the rights have been sold to Cohen.

Currently only A Room With A View is available from Criterion.

As for streaming, I don't have a clute.

Cohen Media Group (which now has the rights to most of the Merchant Ivory catalogue) has been slowly rolling them out on streaming and physical media, but who knows when they'll get around to, say, Jane Austen in Manhattan. Howards End, Maurice, Shakespeare Wallah and a few others have been released.

I've got Quartet on pre-order. Haven't seen it since its first release.

Howards End is available from Criterion.

Also out of print, R290

R291 I think Cohen Media now hold the rights to Howard's End.

Mindy Cohen also has rights to the movies.

The Merchant-Ivory films are available on the Cohen Media Channel on Amazon Prime. I think it’s $4.99/month.

I know when the Criterion Channel was first announced they said they would occasionally be licensing stuff from other studios/labels (Cohen being one of them) so it's possible some of the M-I films could eventually end up back there. As mentioned, the only one they currently have the rights to is A Room with a View. There's kind of an exhausting number of streaming options right now.

One film that Cohen would not hold the rights to is Howard's End because that was made by Columbia Pictures (now Sony). And perhaps not that terrible one they did with Uma Thurman - I've forgotten the name of it because that was a Harvey production and Lionsgate owns most of the Mirimax catalogue - they may also own Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, though I hope not.

These are the 21 features Cohen has the rights to. It's basically everything that was in the old Criterion Merchant Ivory Collection (including Howards End, which Cohen has already released):

The Householder 1963; Shakespeare Wallah 1965; Bombay Talkie 1970; Savages 1972; Autobiography of a Princess 1975; Roseland 1977; Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures 1978; The Europeans 1979; Jane Austen in Manhattan 1980; Quartet 1981; Heat and Dust 1983; The Courtesans of Bombay 1983; The Bostonians 1984; Maurice 1987; The Deceivers 1988; The Perfect Murder 1988; The Ballad of the Sad Café 1991; Howards End 1992; In Custody 1994; The Proprietor 1996; The Mystic Masseur 2001

Not sure about the details of why Merchant Ivory Productions was able to retain ownership of some films (like Howards End) but not others (like Room with a View).

Remains Of The Day was an Amerian studio picture that Columbia hired MI to produce instead of Mike Nicholls who has a token producing credit. Remains is available on my local iTunes so I assume the rights of that is wound up with SONY.

I don't know who released A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES but I bought a DVD of it back in the day and it had a commentary. James Ivory talked about how Virginie Ledoyen turned down a role in an Abel Ferrara film for it.

R297 Thanks for that list. Such a shame Mr. & Mrs. Bridge isn't on the list but I suppose its with Lionsgate who acquired Miramax.

Some of them are available on Kanopy.

Yes, I just checked Kanopy and it has SHAKESPEARE WALLAH, HEAT AND DUST, MAURICE, and HOWARD'S END.

For anyone whose local library offers Hoopla, they have Jefferson in Paris, Mr. & Mrs. Bridge and The City of Your Final Destination available.

Though I love the Lean film, I wish they had done A Passage To India, though I do love the Lean version. I think they would have gotten better casting w/r/t Ronnie Heslop and Professor Godbole and the politics of it. Prawer would know that it wasn't a story about sexual oppression colliding with colonial exoticism.

[quote]r293 Mindy Cohen also has rights to the movies.

I wish she had played Verena in THE BOSTONIANS.

She was the right age, the right typre...but the British Higher Ups discriminated against her horribly, and it was a No Go.

Trivia: one of Verena's costumes was also used in TESS (1979).

I wonder if it was this one:

Good catch!

When I lived in England, I had the feeling that Merchant-Ivory films were not very liked there. Is that still the case or has it changed?

R260

Hahahaha!!

Those sneakers are looking like the Alexander McQueen's ones that TC wore on the Red Carpet!!

One reason some of their films weren't as accessible to the general public is that many of them require extensive knowledge of history, geography and social mores from the times they took place.

Here's a question. For "A Room With A View" Judi Dench filmed a scene where she goes mad in the town square, but the scene was cut. Has that footage ever shown up anywhere?

R297 -

Every once in a while, one of those films pops up at the Quad Cinema in NY and and runs for about a week or two.

When Maurice was there about a year or so ago, it was shown for about a month.