Sixty years ago, Merchant Ivory Productions produced its first feature film. The production company came about as a collaboration between James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, Ivory often directing and Merchant producing. The two were supported by screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala who penned 23 of the production company’s films. A number of “Merchant Ivory” stories were period pieces set in the early 20th century featuring British actors playing dispirited characters. Read our retrospective below on a number of unique films signature to the Merchant Ivory vision:

Shakespeare Wallah (1965)

In early postcolonial India, a traveling acting troupe slowly comes to terms with their obsolescence as they play to smaller and smaller crowds in increasingly humble venues. The Kendals, the real-life inspirations for the film, play the Buckinghams, fictionalized versions of themselves, which lends an already melancholy film an even more elegiac feel. All the concerns about stretching a budget and trying to book gigs while dealing with a broken-down car and employees who want to leave are met with a weary resignation. If it weren’t for their economic struggles, it would have been easy to see the Buckinghams as irrelevant remnants of a destructive colonial influence. Not that some criticism of that nature doesn’t exist in this film.  Attentive viewers would probably notice how the Buckinghams don’t seem to know any non-English language, including their daughter, who was apparently born in India. In the love triangle involving their daughter Lizzie, Sanju (Shashi Kapoor), a rich playboy, and film actress Manjula (Madhur Jaffrey), Manjula is portrayed as vain, arrogant and shallow. Yet Manjula has a point when she says that what she does requires artistry and work, even if she can’t respect the work that the Buckinghams have been doing for decades. And she is an early participant in the still booming Indian cinema, which may be known best for its musical films but would quickly branch out into all genres.

Despite budgetary constraints that forced Merchant and Ivory to shoot in black and white and cast the Kendals to essentially play themselves, they and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala were able to beautifully capture complex, lived-in performances, especially from the elder Kendals. It is also a visually rich film filled with dynamic, interesting compositions, due largely to cinematographer Subrata Mitra, who became known for shooting The Apu Trilogy. There is also a wide array of Indian talent in a film that focuses mostly on a White family. Shashi Kapoor and Madhur Jaffrey may be the standouts but even the supporting actors get their moment to shine, such as Utpal Dutt, who plays a rich patron with a huge passion for Shakespeare and British culture in a performance that is a fine balance of caricature and total sincerity. Before Merchant-Ivory films would become synonymous with adaptations of mostly British literature, they provided a rich insight into the early days of postcolonial India, well before Indian cinema would take off and become a huge cultural and economic force within India’s borders and beyond. – Eugene Kang

Bombay Talkie (1970)

Before James Ivory and Ismail Merchant rose to mainstream prominence on the cinema stage with ornate adaptations of British literature, such as A Room With a View and Howard’s End, they began their career with a series of films examining the contemporaneous relationship between India and the British Empire. Merchant was of Indian descent, and the Merchant-Ivory movies of this period are intimate, minutely observed and intensely human, filled with poignant, complicated feelings about the clashing cultures of the Eastern country. A comparison may be made to David Lean’s career, with Merchant-Ivory’s Shakespeare Wallah and Heat and Dust analogous to The Passionate Friends and Brief Encounter, small human dramas, and with A Room with a View to The Bridge on the River Kwai, the filmmakers moving into the more grand style of filmmaking for which they became internationally known.

1970’s Bombay Talkie casts a doomed love triangle against the backdrop of Bollywood. With a plot structure meant to mirror Bollywood melodramas, Bombay Talkie finds tragedy in the clash of cultures that occurs when British novelist Lucia Jane (Jennifer Kendal) arrives in Bombay to do research for a possible novel. She falls into bed with the married Bollywood superstar Vikram (Shashi Kapoor, of the legendary Kapoor acting family), while at the same time becoming the object of obsession of Hari, a screenwriter (Zia Mohyeddin). The strongest part of the movie comes from its satire of Bollywood, and observations about life on a movie set. It peaks very early with the opening “Typewriter Tip Tip” a funny and inflated musical number set on a giant typewriter, a striking image. The script from Ruth Prater Jhabvala is, at times, self-conscious, more that of a novelist than a screenwriter, but it provides provides psychologically rich characters and a holistically realized world. The audience is fully immersed in Bombay and Bollywood. Bombay Talkie is full of characters that dissatisfied and yearning for things they cannot articulate, giving the movie a 3AM melancholy type of feeling. It’s heady, poetic, sensual, and sets the stage for a theme that will appear time and time again in Merchant and Ivory’s movies- the tragedies that come when people are unable to communicate. – Megan Fisher

Maurice (1987)

Merchant and Ivory found big success with A Room With a View in 1985, based on E.M. Forster’s novel of the same name. So picking Maurice, Forster’s posthumously published novel about two gay men struggling to hide their sexuality in early 20th century England, for their next collaboration seemed to be a strange move. One would think they would have immediately done another popular Forster novel such as Howards End (which they did later to great acclaim). But considering how this novel came out in 1971 right when Merchant-Ivory was just starting to take off and that Merchant and Ivory were romantic partners until Merchant’s death, this novel about a love that could never be must have really appealed to them and the guarantor of A Room With a View must have emboldened them to try something quite daring for the time.

Maurice beautifully plays with the dichotomy of the “proper” heternormativity of English society and the bubbling tension of the relationship between Maurice (James Wilby) and Clive (Hugh Grant). Ivory’s great strength is providing the proper space for his actors to deliver their performances. The intimacy between Maurice and Clive is disarmingly tender and in stark contrast with the propriety that they feel the need to put on, especially Clive. We get a hint of Clive’s true character when we see that he feels no need to hide his intimacy around a maid who has come to clean his room. We also see the two men go on very different arcs as they grow apart. Maurice slowly throws off both his emotional and social baggage as he chooses to no longer suppress his sexuality, while Clive becomes more buttoned up and proper as he denies his own sexuality to secure his social status.

Maurice is over two hours long, but the journey that both take consists of seemingly small but ultimately consequential decisions that Ivory lets play out at the right pace. This makes Maurice sound languid but there are shocking and dramatic moments such as the hilariously awkward sex talk that a young Maurice receives from a teacher played by Simon Callow and a bizarre performance from Ben Kingsley who tries to hypnotize Maurice into heterosexuality (unsuccessfully). Forster’s novels could be a bit too cerebral and prone to philosophical ramblings, but Ivory and his collaborators cut a path straight to the pain and heartache present in this story. – Eugene Kang

Howards End (1992)

The mid-80’s to the mid-90’s were a golden time for Merchant-Ivory. Not only did many of their films meet with financial success and critical acclaim, but their resources finally enabled larger and more ambitious productions. Indeed, Howards End was just as noted for the lush set design as it was for its other qualities, whereas some of their earlier period films would often be confined to one or two luxurious-looking locations. Yet the film never loses sight of the very personal and intimate story that it is telling. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala takes the dense prose of Forster’s novel and condenses it into an efficient but never rote screenplay. Merchant is able to get a murderer’s row of talent, primarily because of the success of earlier films, including Helena Bonham Carter, who broke out thanks to Merchant-Ivory in A Room With a View. And Ivory brings his sure touch in bringing out some of the best performances that any of these actors have given in their careers. 

Many Merchant-Ivory films were quite daring in they way they told story, whether it was telling it in a non-linear fashion or in anthology format. Yet Howards End may be Ivory’s best in terms of visual storytelling. He’s willing to take risks such as dramatic slow-motion and unpredictable outdoor locations (the scene on the lake). The effect is seeing a beautiful painting slowly getting more dimension and depth. And when we look beyond the visuals, we can see that the emotions that run among the Wilcox, the supposed upper class, are venal and selfish, and far from praising luxury or the upper class, they come off as the oligarchical cretins that Forster intended them to be, especially Anthony Hopkins, whose Henry Wilcox is a more terrifying villain than Hannibal Lecter, mainly because we know that people like him exist. While the Schlegel sisters (Emma Thompson and Carter) are hardly portrayed as saints, their uncertain financial status gives us a sharp insight into this world where civility is only possible because of wealth and class. – Eugene Kang

Le Divorce (2003)

The penultimate movie of Merchant-Ivory’s collaboration, Le Divorce was advertised at the time of its 2003 release as a “comedy of manners” and hearkens back to the work of novelists such as Henry James and Jane Austen in which a young woman must learn to navigate romance and high class society. Based on the novel by Diane Johnson, Le Divorce proves just how well suited Merchant and Ivory were to period pieces, as the concerns of the characters in Le Divorce, and the way that they interact with one another would make sense around the middle of the 19th century, but has no basis in 2003 society.

Twenty-something college dropout Isabel Walker (Kate Hudson) arrives in Paris to visit her pregnant sister Roxeanne de Persand (Naomi Watts), just as Roxeanne’s husband (Melvil Poupaud) has walked out on her to be with another woman. Isabel moves in with the bereft Roxeanne, and becomes transformed from a gauche American into a sophisticated Francophone, learning about fashion and cuisine, and beginning an affair with Roxeanne’s ex husband’s, much older and married uncle (Thierry Lhermitte).

The premise is ripe for sophisticated comedy, and calls for a sparkling champagne touch. That is something that the Merchant and Ivory do not have. Le Divorce is a comedy that is made by filmmaker’s without a sense of humor. Yet, one is able to the see other strengths that Merchant and Ivory developed throughout their decades-long careers. From Shakespeare Wallah to A Room with a View to Jefferson in Paris, a through-line appears in the movie’s strong sense of place. Merchant and Ivory were able to fully immerse the audience in that particular world, through first rate production design and costumes, and screenplays with an almost anthropological eye for the societal conventions. Le Divorce transports the audience to Paris alongside Isabel Walker, basking in the fashion, culture and language of France. Like Bombay Talkie and many other works in the Merchant-Ivory filmography, Le Divorce is about the tragedies that can arise from the clashing of cultures. The movie has an indispensable place in Merchant and Ivory’s canon, as it allows the interested moviegoer to view how their approach to that subject changed based on the time and culture. – Megan Fisher