Merchant

Ivory
 Merchant Ivory Productions
• Was founded in 1961 and was formed by James Ivory and Indian
Producer Ismail Merchant. The two formed the Production company,
Merchant Ivory Productions "to
make English-language
films in India aimed at the international market."
• This was the initial goal of the company but they ended up making
many films set in England and America.
• The expression "Merchant-Ivory film" has made its way into
common parlance, to denote a particular genre of film rather than
the actual production company.
 Merchant Ivory Productions
• From Shakespeare Wallah, the bittersweet
tale of a wandering theatrical company in India, which
established the company's reputation in 1965, to the
detailed comic masterpiece A Room with a
View in 1986, and the Oscar-winning film Howards
End in 1992, Merchant Ivory has provided audiences
around the world with features, documentaries, and
shorts.

• They persuaded Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a German-

born, English-educated writer of Polish-Jewish
extraction, then resident in India, to adapt her novel
The Householder.
• Until Merchant's death in 2005, the company
produced a number of award winning films. Of this
collaboration, Ismail Merchant once commented: “It is
a strange marriage we have at Merchant Ivory...I am
an Indian Muslim, Ruth is a German Jew, and Jim is a
Protestant American. Someone once described us as
a three-headed god.
 Merchant Ivory Productions
• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala then became one of their most frequent
collaborator, writing or co-writing twenty of Ivory's twenty-five features to
date.
• Their films were for the most part directed by the former, produced by the
Ivory or Merchant, and scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (a noted
exception of a few films). The films were often based upon novels or short
stories, particularly the work of Henry James, E. M. Forster,
and two novels by Jhabvala herself.
• The partnership and close working relationship between Merchant, Ivory
and Jhabvala has lasted for over four decades, making it more than
usually difficult to isolate the director's contribution to each project.
 Merchant Ivory Productions
• The heyday of this genre was the 1980s and 1990s with such films as A
Room with a View and Howards End. A typical "Merchant-Ivory
film" would be a period piece set in the early 20th century, usually in
Edwardian England, featuring lavish sets and top British actors portraying
genteel characters who suffer from disillusion and tragic entanglements.

• The Householder (1963) ... Production Company

• Jane Austen in Manhattan (1980) ... Production Company
• A Room with a View (1985) ... Production Company (as A Merchant Ivory Film)
• The Deceivers (1988) ... Production Company (as Merchant Ivory Productions: Indian branch)
• The Golden Bowl (2000) ... Production Company (as Merchant Ivory Productions)
• The City of Your Final Destination (2007) ... Production Company (as A Merchant Ivory
Film)
 Merchant Ivory Productions
• Shakespeare-Wallah (1965), inspired by and starring an
Anglo-Indian theatre repertory troupe, is a far more assured work. It
introduced a recurrent Ivory/Jhabvala theme: the mutual fascination
and incomprehension between people of different cultures.

• The low-key, intimate-realist style of these films suggests the

influence of Satyajit Ray, who helped edit the first and
composed the music for the second features. (Ivory also used Ray's
regular cinematographer, Subrata Mitra, for his first four
features). Their warm critical reception and modest commercial
success established Merchant Ivory's international reputation.
 Merchant Ivory Productions
• ‘Helped by the novels of E.M. Forster,
Merchant Ivory Productions consolidated
their position as chief purveyors of
‘heritage cinema’, producing films
that coalesce in the mind into a dream
picture of Edwardian bliss, of country
houses, parasols, ormolu clocks, pretty
ladies and willowy young men. Films such
as ‘Howards End’ (1992) perhaps
the most accomplished of the breed, offer
an escape into an imaginary paradise.
Like the BBC’s adaptations of novels by
Austen, Elliot or lesser mortals, they are
comfort blankets for a hostile age.’ –
British Cinema.
 Merchant Ivory Productions
• The diversity of Merchant Ivory's cultural roots is evident in the range of
locations in which their movies have been shot: Delhi, Bombay, and
Benares; London, Paris, and Florence; New York, New England, and Texas.
They capture a vital sense of place and often lyrical feeling for widely varying
periods and landscapes, from Paris in the 1920s and Edwardian England, to
nineteenth-century America and British India.

• Some Hollywood actors and producers associated with the tightly-knitted

Merchant Ivory film family include Uma Thurman, Madhur Jaffrey,
Aparna Sen, Shashi Kapoor, Jennifer Kendal, Hugh Grant, James Wilby,
Rupert Graves, Anthony Hopkins, Glenn Close, Emma
Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, and Helena Bonham Carter.
 Merchant Ivory Productions
• Merchant Ivory films did extremely good business in North America
and Europe, better in fact than in the UK. Similarly while critics in
those territories were positive, or at least respectful, notices in
Britain were often hostile. George Perry, for instance, described
Maurice (1987) as ‘a cold, shallow, dated exercise.’ The general
feeling was that the films were far too self-consciously ‘tasteful' and
eschewed meaning for sumptuous décor and period detail. This
may well be unfair but possibly sprang from the company’s outsider
view on British culture.

• What might seem exotic and interesting to a foreign audience might

seem either too familiar or too much of a misrepresentation to
audiences more familiar with that culture.
 Merchant Ivory Productions
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbKBrY7uBhE