Director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant were one of the most successful filmmaker partnerships ever. Together they made 44 movies since 1985 and their incredible resume includes such masterpieces as Shakespeare Wallah, A Room With A View, Howards End, The Remains Of A Day.
They were also life partners and privately lived openly as a gay couple but kept that fact away from the public, and somehow the media. Even so, they were responsible for the groundbreaking queer love story Maurice back in 1987. Based on the novel by E M Forster written in 1914 who also closeted, insisted wasn’t published until after he died in 1971. It was a happy love story…. a rarity for a gay film ….. and they even managed to include male nudity unknown in the cinema at the time.
Merchant Ivory also converted a second E M Forster novel A ROOM WITH A VIEW in 1985 and this was their first film that broke out of the Art House into the mainstream.
Three of their movies were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture and Screenplay but it wasn’t until after Merchant’s death that Ivory won his first Oscar in 2018 for his screenplay for Call Me By Your Name ….. another groundbreaking queer film
Now filmmaker Stephen Sourcy has made the first definitive feature documentary on the pair and their primary associates, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins.
With a veritable who’s who of actors …..including six Oscar winners …. we get to learn what made them such a dynamic duo who produced these outstanding cinematic gems and how their partnership affected their work and other relationships. Their impact on the cinema ….. particularly period dramas, can never be under-appreciated, They were geniuses and they so deserve this very affectionate profile
Merchant Ivory is about to be screened at Queer Screen Mardi Gras Film Fest in Sydney: watch this space
for news of when it gets a full release 