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James Ivory. Merchant Ivory Productions is a film company founded in 1961 by producer Ismail Merchant (1936–2005) and director James Ivory (b. 1928). Merchant and Ivory were life and business partners from 1961 until Merchant's death in 2005. During their time together, they made 44 films. The films were for the most part produced by Merchant ...
A year after The Sword and the Flute, Merchant produced his first film, the 14-minute short The Creation of Woman. Made while he was working at the McCann-Erickson advertising agency, it was shot on the most meager of budgets, a mere $9,000 advanced by Charles Schwep, an acquaintance of the time, partner in the endeavor, and the film's director.
1963/India, 101 minutes. In 1961, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory paid a visit to the German-born novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, then living in Delhi, with a proposal to make a film of her novel The Householder. Jhabvala agreed. She wrote the screenplay for the film herself, in ten days, and the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala partnership was inaugurated.
After completing Quartet, Merchant and Ivory returned to India, where they prepared two movies during 1981-82.The more modestly scaled, and the first to be released (in January 1983), was the 73-minute documentary (or "docudrama," as Merchant refers to it) The Courtesans of Bombay, which was both produced and directed by Merchant.
- Shakespeare Wallah (1965) The second Merchant Ivory movie follows a troupe of stage actors traveling across India putting on Shakespeare plays. It's loosely based on the story of Geoffrey Kendal – father of Felicity – who earned the nickname "Shakespearewallah" because of his dedication to Shakespeare during an era when theater was being eclipsed by Bollywood.
- The Europeans (1979) Though it was shot on a tight budget, Merchant Ivory managed to make their first period drama look pretty lavish. Adapted by Prawer Jhabvala from Henry James' novel, it centers on a fascinating encounter between a wealthy New England family and their more bohemian and eccentric European cousins.
- The Bostonians (1984) This fiercely intelligent Henry James adaptation has a brilliant, Oscar-nominated performance from Vanessa Redgrave. She plays Olive Chancellor, a leading light of the women's suffrage movement who enters into an unlikely rivalry with her chauvinist relative Basil Ransom (Christopher Reeve).
- A Room with a View (1985) Merchant Ivory's reputation really grew thanks to this stellar E.M. Forster adaptation with an Oscar-winning Prawer Jhabvala screenplay.
Jul 28, 2017 · James Ivory filming A Room with a View (1985) with Helena Bonham Carter and Judi Dench. The collaborative team of producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory – plus, often, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a key contributor to most of their finest films – are best remembered for a handful of period pieces from the 1980s and early ...
Aug 23, 2016 · The two formed Merchant Ivory Productions—with Ivory directing and Merchant producing—the longest independent partnership in film history. (Despite my “I’m only kidding” smile, Ivory ...
