James Ivory on his career with Ismail Merchant: “There are a lot of films we made that people don’t really know about today”

Despite its name, Stephen Soucy’s new documentary Merchant Ivory focuses not just on the hugely successful partnership (personal, as well as professional) between producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory, best known for their period dramas and literary adaptations, such as A Room with a View (1985), Howards End (1992) and The Remains of the Day (1993). Soucy also explores the creatives who were key to their success, including regular collaborators screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins, as well as dozens of actors, editors and costumer designers who talk about the unique magic of the prolific production company.

It’s a lively, often gossipy documentary that offers new insights into the remarkable partnership, as well as doing full justice to the extensive Merchant Ivory filmography, which stretches far beyond the period dramas of the late 1980s and early 1990s for which they are best known. 

It divides their filmography into fairly distinct eras, starting with the many films they made in India in the 1960s, before moving to the 70s and 80s when they were making films all around the world, followed by their literary adaptations (often based on novels by E.M. Forster or Henry James) in the 80s and early 90s, mainly set in the US and UK, and then finally to their later works. It also explores the complex personal relationship between Ivory and Merchant, told in Ivory’s own words and by the people who worked with the two men. 

I meet Ivory, now 96, near Covent Garden. Despite the number of beloved films he has made, he’s remarkably modest. When I praise his poignant depictions of outsiders, whose marginalised status mean they observe rather than partake in the main action, or his gorgeous, heartbreaking directorial flourishes in the closing shots of Maurice (1987) and The Remains of the Day (1993), he gives the credit to the source novels’ writers, E.M. Forster and Kazuo Ishiguro. 

Nor does he believe films like The Bostonians (1984) nor The Remains of the Day have modern day political resonance, despite their never-so-relevant depictions of misogyny, class conflict and the dangers of sleepwalking into fascism. He enthuses most about his work with Merchant and the actors he works with, and his under-sung earlier works, a revelation to anyone who associates Merchant Ivory with tasteful period dramas.

Merchant Ivory explores your entire filmography, going back to your very earliest films such as The Householder (1963), which, I learned, had some involvement from Satyajit Ray. What was it like working with him?

I wanted to show the original version of the film to him. I had become friendly with him, and I wanted to show it to him because it was a big shapeless mess. It went on and on, there was too much of it. I had the idea that he would probably give us some ideas of how we might reshape it. And he saw it and said he would, with one condition: that I allow him to just do it – whatever it is he felt he had to do – and not say anything and not stop him from doing it. It took him four or five days to re-cut it, and he turned the whole film into a flashback, which originally it was not. He re-cut it and it was wonderful, and then he supervised the music for it.

Are there any films from your early filmography you are particularly proud of? Many people first think of your E.M. Forster adaptations such as A Room with a View…

That’s what happens. There are a lot of films we made that people don’t really know about today which, when they came out, audiences found very interesting. A good example of that is Savages (1972). It was the first feature that we made after our Indian films. It’s kind of strange: the rise and fall of civilisation in one weekend, as shown in various house parties. That’s an interesting film, but it hasn’t been seen in years and years. But when it first came out in England, people really liked it here.

I wanted to ask a question about Maggie Smith, who died recently. Do you have any fond memories of working with her?

She was the funniest woman I ever knew. Some of the things she said you couldn’t really print. I worked with her twice. She played very, very different characters for us in Quartet (1981) and A Room with a View. In one she’s living with a husband who’s unfaithful and having to put up with it, and then A Room with a View, where she’s a chaperone, keeping her charge out of trouble.

Why does Maurice, a gay romance made in the middle of Thatcher’s homophobic tenure, mean so much to you?

Because it was the other side of the coin, after making A Room with a View. It was another example of a person who was loved by someone of the wrong class, and he or she loved that person back. But he and she were about to ruin their lives, by living a lie; both films are the same in that way. That’s why I made Maurice.

When Maurice came out, most English film critics wrote about it in a negative way. Would not praise it. Some of those critics, I know, were gay, and they criticised it. They didn’t want to be associated with it. Only one or two saw it for what it was. I always thought that was interesting.

Call Me By Your Name, for which you wrote the script, was originally released in 2017, the year after Trump took office. Now, seven years later, he’s taking office once again, and homophobic and queerphobic voices are more prominent than ever and LGBTQIA+ rights are once again under threat.

I think he’ll get bored quite soon. He has two years to do a lot of damage, and then it’s the midterm elections. But when it comes to gay rights, he can’t turn the clock back.

Merchant Ivory is in cinemas from 6 December. A longer version of this interview will appear in a future edition of Sight and Sound.