Merchant Ivory Productions

They ARE Merchant Ivory Productions!

Similar films that immediately come to my mind include

The Age of Innocence

A Passage to India

Gosford Park

Washington Square

House of Mirth

The Enchanted April

84 Charring Cross Road

The Secret Garden

The Wings of the Dove

Maggie Smith as Cousin Charlotte in A Room with a View will always be a favorite of mine

The first 30 minutes in or so of Howard's End maybe some of the best period film ever.

[quote] (and similar) films

Alec Scudder stepping in to meet Maurice's needs was incredibly inspiring to teenage me. Plus I can absolutely become absorbed in the luxury. The lush scores and quality of the filmmaking are so nostalgic to my childhood as well.

[quote] (and similar) films

Remains of the Day - greatest movie of the last 50 years

“ rare commodities in today's increasing TAWDRY marketplace”

MARY!

Love watching an ethereal Vanessa Redgrave float over the flowers at the start of Howards End to Grainger's gorgeous Bridal Lullaby.

The passionate kiss in the poppy field while Kiri te Kawana belts out Puccini in A Room with a View is filmmaking at its finest.

All to be ruined by Maggie Smith's LUCY!

[quote] Maggie Smith's LUCY!

?

R10 Here you go!

Yes! And yes! And yes!

That's the stuff, R13. Thanks!

Ismail Merchant and James Ivory were very well regarded and respected by the industry.

Their films were made on a small budget, but they attracted major talent who could have made way more money elsewhere:

Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Julie Christie, Lee Remick, Ralph Fiennes, Vanessa Redgrave, Emma Thompson, Christopher Reeve, Greta Scacchi, Anthony Hopkins, Alan Bates, Denholm Elliott, Nick Nolte, Ben Kinglsey, Jeremy Northam, and Prunella Scales, to name a few.

So...languid.

I've always had a soft spot for The Bostonians.

Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Reeve, Madeline Potter, Wesley Addy, Linda Hunt, Nancy Marchand, Wallace Shawn, and Jessica Tandy

Thanks to Tubi (which I first started streaming a couple of months ago) I found about 10 Merchant-Ivory films that I put on "My List" to watch, including some things I've either never seen before or haven't seen in years.

They include Quartet, Autobiography of a Princess, Heat and Dust, Bombay Talkie and Shakespeare Wallah.

Last month I saw The White Countess and the underwhelming Slaves of New York - although the latter did have that fabulous Supremes scene.

I've never seen it, but I've always felt In the Mood for Love was Merchant Ivory-esque

I wish Tom Crewe's 2023 novel The New Life had been published 25 years ago so Merchant Ivory could adapt it for film. It would have been fantastic.

Their movies always looked gorgeous.

MAURICE, first, last and foremost.

R23 why?

I enjoyed 1990's Mr. and Mrs. Bridge tremendously. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the title roles.

It's not your standard Merchant-Ivory film since it's set in America rather than Britain. But it's lush and detailed with a superb script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

R24, it's a romantic film to me.

R21, I loved Crewe’s The New Life better than anything I’ve read in the last couple of years. I immediately reread it, and have gifted it to three friends.

I’d love to see it adapted, but it would likely be a miniseries today. Could happen, and could still be done beautifully, even with Merchant/Ivory out of the running.

I often recall a line delivered in Howard’s End by a batty old aunt who has come out to the country to straighten out a domestic complication involving an offer of marriage that should never have been made to one of her young nieces, and is given a ride out to the house by a member of the other family.

The young man providing her the ride from the train station via his topless motorcar is no less confused than auntie and a horrible disagreement develops. Voices are raised.

Finally, she declares, “I decline to argue with such a person” and does her very best to contrive to leave the car while it’s in motion.

I often wish that sentiment would be generally adopted in the Datalounge when I’m watching a thread devolve into personal insults and name calling.

^cunt

R29 likes mackerel.

R38 That aunt was Prunella Scales, one of the great British character actresses and comediennes

She's also the mother of the guy who played Leonard Bast, Samuel West.

R32 an the wife of Timothy West

I have always thought Ismail Merchant was a beautiful man

What I really admire about them is the amount of care they give to works of literature that people find very meaningful to them. You can tell they saw it as a sacred trust.

R35 I agree. Would have loved a Proust adaptation

I enjoy the films, but they usually aim at whole-production values to the extent that story and character are contextualized to the extent they lose prominence.

This gives them a cozy feeling that may not align with thematic concerns. It also makes the considerable pleasure of watching them a comfortable quality many viewers prefer, or can be satisfied with.

They made ponderous movies one felt obligated to like

Remains of the Day is just fabulous, but it benefited, I think, from Mike Nichols being a producer on it (and he was supposed to direct it too--he was attached for a while). It's more visceral (more American?) than A Room With a View, I think, though I love that movie.

R39 Do you think Remains of the Day or Howards End is the better film?

I briefly dated a pretty cool guy who became Ivory's historical consultant for his films. he was a PRETTY fancy guy, but was obsessed with historical details (as a matter of fact I swear he's posted a time or two on the DL)

My eye isn't that discerning, but where it is you can see the sheer joy that the period consultants have in being able to show what they know onscreen.

James Ivory’s Instagram was funny. He used to post pictures of hideous designer clothes in storefronts and pictures from his travels.

The Remains Of The Day is one of the greatest films of the last 40 films.

The productions were often chaotic and the actors didn’t get paid but the prestige darling, the prestige.

R44 films or years?

I just watched The Bostonians. Christopher Reeve just might have been the most beautiful man ever in that film.

There's a new Merchant/Ivory documentary making the rounds of the film festival circuit. If you've read Ivory's books and other interviews and articles, much of it may be information you already know, but there's a lot that's new and it's fascinating for anybody that appreciates their work.

Find it and see it if you can.

Some love for Raquel Welch

I’ve just seen “The Go-Between” for the first time. Directed by Joseph Losey and released in 1971 It contains the DNA of every Merchant/Ivory period film that came later.

Plunging through long grasses in summer whites to consummate a kiss, a central image from “A Room Woth a View” (their best, most perfectly judged film) comes right from this film, as does the attention to the details of what living in an upper class Edwardian household would be like during one long, lazy summer, when nothing seems to be happening on the surface but where passions are seething.

They owe everthing to this film. “Chariots of Fire” and the TV adaptation of “Brideshead Revisited” too.

Do you think TRUMP likes these types of films?

And they did it all without Dame Meryl Streep stinking up the film.

R2 A Passage to India was directed by David Lean (who also wrote the screenplay).

Howards End. The end.

Reading comprehension.

Robert Powell gave a riveting performance as the cult leader in "Jane Austen in Manhattan".

He exuded a creepy charm that made his character's magnetism credible - a flipside to his (definitive) Jesus performance.

Mandy Patinkin could be the definitive Jesus. He is eternally cross,

Remains of the Day is my absolute favorite but I do love the final shot of Lucy and whatshisname making out at the end of Room w a View.

The Christmas shopping scenes in Howards End are my idea of heaven. Emma Thompson really did a stellar job as Margaret Schlegel.

"Oh, Mr. Beebe!"

"Poor Charlotte!"

I could not choose between Remains or Howards End. Howards End is close to perfect for me; everything works. For a "similar" film, nothing beats "Wings of the Dove." In my top ten, the score by Shearmur, the story and that ending. I know "Mary!" but it gets me every damn time.

Ivory wrote the screenplay for Call Me By Your Name (won the Oscar).

R53 Yes, I am aware. That is why I said SIMILIAR films....

R64 Oh. Yeah. Never mind.

I guess I didn't notice because yours was only the 2nd post and I assumed you'd be listing Merchant Ivory Productions, not already listing similar films before the thread even started.

God, Ivory was such an annoying little bitch about "Call Me By Your Name".

European financiers were not interested in making a James Ivory movie, so Ivory enlisted the help of Luca Guadagnino to co-direct.

French producer Emilie Georges was only interested in working with Guadagnino (who could make it faster and cheaper), so Ivory had to bow out.

There is no universe in which an Ivory-directed film was going to be financed, but he's still crying about Guadagnino's success, bitching about everything from the casting (his version had Shia LaBeouf in the Hammer role - since when can LaBeouf do repressed?) to nudity.

[quote]There is no universe in which an Ivory-directed film was going to be financed, but he's still crying about Guadagnino's success, bitching about everything from the casting (his version had Shia LaBeouf in the Hammer role - since when can LaBeouf do repressed?) to nudity.

He would have been correct on both counts.

It's a good time to binge their films. A very good time indeed.

I enjoyed Wings of a Dove.

A Room with a View. Platoon won Best Picture, good but not better.

I don't care for them.

[quote] The Innocents is a 1961 gothic psychological horror film directed and produced by Jack Clayton, and starring Deborah Kerr, Michael Redgrave, and Megs Jenkins. Based on the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw by the American novelist Henry James, the screenplay was adapted by William Archibald and Truman Capote, who used Archibald's own 1950 stage play—also titled The Innocents—as a primary source text. Its plot follows a governess who watches over two children and comes to fear that their large estate is haunted by ghosts and that the children are being possessed.

[quote] The Golden Bowl is a 2000 period romantic drama film directed by James Ivory. The screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is based on the 1904 novel of the same name by Henry James, who considered the work his masterpiece.[3] It stars Kate Beckinsale, James Fox, Anjelica Huston, Nick Nolte, Jeremy Northam, Madeleine Potter, and Uma Thurman.

[quote] Dressed for early spring in tweed jacket, scarf and jeans, Mr. Ivory spoke like someone who has had five years to grieve, and to pull things together. Which he has: “The City of Your Final Destination,” his latest, opens Friday, after years of financial uncertainty kept the movie from being completed. Set among the baroque survivors of a suicidal novelist and the naïve academic who wants to write his biography, it stars Anthony Hopkins, Laura Linney, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Omar Metwally.

[quote] The screenplay (based on Peter Cameron’s novel) is by Ms. Jhabvala, who has written 21 scripts directed by either Mr. Merchant or Mr. Ivory, and hasn’t written for anyone else since 1988. The film’s costume designer (Carol Ramsey), editor (John David Allen) and production designer (Andrew Sanders) are all longtime Merchant Ivory collaborators. And Mr. Hopkins has starred in Mr. Ivory’s “Howards End,” “Surviving Picasso” and “The Remains of the Day.” But even if “City of Your Final Destination” is officially a Merchant Ivory Production, Mr. Merchant’s absence was keenly felt.

I always liked Jefferson in Paris

A great cast- Nick Nolte, Greta Scacchi, Michael Lonsdale, Gwyneth Paltrow, Simon Callow, Thandie Newton, Lambert Wilson, Nancy Merchand, Vincent Cassel, and James Earl Jones

Here's the trailer for the documentary that R47 references.

clip

NYTimes review

[quote]MAURICE, first, last and foremost.

I'm with R23 on this, beautiful film and such a lovely, hopeful ending, one of my favourite films

Would CMBYN have been a better or more interesting film had Ivory retained control?

They made a certain kind of movie in a style that has held up quite well. Casting young beautiful people and seasoned actors in gorgeous locations with stories of repressed sexuality percolating underneath. They've been edging the public for years.

It just worked

Interviewed for the documentary are actors such as Helena Bonham Carter, Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, a prickly Vanessa Redgrave, Rupert Graves, Sam Waterston, and Simon Callow to offer insights.

I grew up in Kansas City, and when they were filming Mr. and Mrs. Bridge there, a call went out to my middle school and Boy Scout troop that they were looking for extras for the scout ceremony scene.

My parents pushed me to do it, but I declined because I didn't want to get my hair cut "in the '40s style," a requirement. Idiot. Two of my classmates are prominent in that scene.

I didn't know dick about Merchant Ivory. That changed two years later, when Maurice came out on cable TV and Maurice and Scudder naked made me spontaneously jizz in my shorts.

During the austere 1980s in Britain, when there was a thirst for movies with social/political messages, it was fashionable to diss M/Y films. One of Alan Parker's cartoons referred to them as "the Laura Ashley school of film-making," while Stephen Frears dismissed the genre as "the rattling of teacups."

[quote]the most famous cartoon in the book features a withering put-down of a Merchant-Ivory movie: "God, how I hate the Laura Ashley school of film-making." While Parker explains that the gag was originally coined by his sound editor, it has proved a thorn in Merchant-Ivory's side ever since. "Well, Ismael Merchant is no longer with us," Parker says. "But I know that it has always pissed off James Ivory particularly, so that's why I'm including it again. Ivory is humourless and self-important, and that's why he gets his knickers in a twist."

I loved the documentary because I love their films, but on reflection, this part of the NYT review is most true:

[quote]Like many documentaries of this sort, “Merchant Ivory” opts to be a survey without a thesis — informative, even engaging, but lacking an argument that might drive the documentary itself forward. It’s a choice, to be sure; the aim here is to cram in as much information as possible. But I did find myself wishing that “Merchant Ivory” was made with some of the same outside-the-box craft that its subjects had employed.

I always thought Bel Ami was the porn Merchant Ivory.

CMBYN was ruined by having the too-old Hammer in the role.

R88 Who would you have cast?

Ferdia Lennon: ‘I was tired of Merchant Ivory accents’

I always found it interesting they never cast Meryl Streep. In fact, they rejected her for The Remains of the Day

Let's not forget Le Divorce!

Of course they rejected Meryl Streep! They did work with me! TWICE!

Sigh. Poor Julian Sands.

Poor, beautiful Julian Sands

I cannot think of a bad performance in any of their films. Even Gwyneth Paltrow in Jefferson in Paris was good.

I liked the documentary. Ivory holds back the most private aspects, but is very candid about how Quartet was partly made because it mirrored what was going on with them. I didn’t know about Ismail bringing other men into the home.

The interviews are good. Vanessa Redgrave got rattled by the phrasing of the questions which was funny to watch. Emma Thompson was very candid about how hard it was to work with them during their low budget period.

It’s a shame that their best work was behind them just as they had their biggest hits and the studios gave them healthy budgets. The movies after The Remains of the Day are not all bad, not at all, they just lack something.

I had no idea Anthony Hopkins sued them for 300,000 Euros.

R97 I wonder why their budget films were better than their non-budget films?

Ismail was very handsome in his day. One can see why Ivory put up with so much philandering, and even bringing other men into the home, which Ivory would sometimes become involved with.

I’m looking forward to that biography in five or 10 years time.

The remains of the day is such an amazing film

I use them for asmr

A Room with a View and, of course, Maurice.

I know Howards End has much to recommend it—the score, the cinematography, the Leonard Bast plot, Vanessa Redgrave’s performance, but—

I could never believe that Margaret Schlegel as written and played would agree to marry stuffy Henry Wilcox. If this was mainly for financial security, I wish that had been made clearer. After all, the two sisters seem to be pretty solid at the beginning of the movie, and Margaret doesn’t seem to desire wealth.

I did not realize watching the film that the bookcase triggered a heart attack in Leonard Bast. I thought he was actually killed by the bookcase which, as shot, seemed unconvincing—a lot of bruises, yes, but death? I only learned the real cause by reading a synopsis after.

And finally, where is “only connect”? For all the discussion about how carefully the three of them treat their source material, how could they omit the novel’s most famous line and, many say, its meaning.

R102 It was also the Edwardian Era and Margaret was 30. She had to get married.

I'm reading SOLID IVORY, James Ivory's memoir and it's terrific, and he gets into the other men in their relationship.