Merchant Ivory

Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls, a 30-minute documentary film that looks at an aspect of Indian culture from a rather whimsical angle, has always been a popular Merchant Ivory film. The idea for the documentary came from Anthony Korner, an associate of Merchant Ivory's in the period, and now the publisher of Art Forum. It was directed and narrated by him, but the scenario was devised by Ivory. The subject of the film, which cost a modest $17,000 to make, is the most popular dancer in Bombay musical films -- so much so that since 1957 she had appeared in five hundred of them. In part the movie is a montage of scenes from her pictures and of the opening sequence in Bombay Talkie in which Helen dances with Shashi Kapoor on the keys of a giant red typewriter. Indian musical films that provided the background ofBombay Talkie now come to life before the bemused viewer. Stepping neatly around the puritanic codes governing Indian films that forbid direct sexual contact (even kissing), the musicals project sexuality fervently through innuendo -- in teasing situations and the sensuality of Helen's dancing. Extravagantly romantic fantasies are the stuff of this popular art form, of which Helen is clearly "queen."

Based on the 1910 novel, Howards End is a tour-de-force portrayal of E.M. Forster's masterpiece about a society in transition. The film was named Best Picture of 1992 by the National Board of Review, received nine Academy Award nominations, including that of Best Picture, and was one of the most critically acclaimed pictures of the 90s.

The free-spirited, free-thinking Schlegel sisters, Margaret (played by Emma Thompson, who received an Academy Award for her performance) and Helen (played by Helena Bonham Carter), are swept into a relationship with the Wilcoxes, a wealthy conservative English trading family; and the Basts, a couple near the lowest tier of the Edwardian class system. In an ever deepening palimpsest of relationships and obligations, Margaret must reconcile her irrepressible, independent spirit with her desire for companionship, and Helen must come to terms with her sister's choices and her unexpected passion for a match that, seemingly, should never be.

In a luminous, Oscar-nominated performance, Vanessa Redgrave is Mrs. Wilcox, a matriarch holding fast to a vanishing, remembered England of her childhood at the country house, Howards End. Her husband, Henry Wilcox (played by Anthony Hopkins), is an unyielding traditionalist who must face his own past and the changing world around him. Samuel West brings an assured sensitivity to Leonard Bast, whose aspirations above his class are inspired, and ultimately, rebuked.

Shot on location in England -- from the Hertfordshire countryside to the tenements of London's East End - Howards End won an Art Direction Academy Award for Luciana Arrighi's re-creation of the world known to Forster and his contemporaries. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala received her second Academy Award for her screenplay adaptation, which captures both the quick wit of Bloomsbury parlors and the quiet interiority of Forster's novel.

Ivory's unforgettable translation of Forster's themes into striking images (Mrs. Wilcox's lyrical walk around the house of her childhood; Leonard Bast's sun-drenched fantasies at his insurance clerk's desk), and the performances of an impeccable English cast make Howards End one of the Merchant Ivory team's most moving and perfectly realized films.

In the early 1980's Merchant first set in motion a project of which he had long dreamed, and that he was to do outside of his usual collaboration with Jhabvala and Ivory, the making of The Deceivers. The Deceiversis adapted from the John Masters novel, set in India in 1825, which depicts the exploits of William Savage (based on William Sleeman of the Indian Political Service), who disguises himself as an Indian in order to expose and destroy a secret cult whose members, the infamous Thugees, ritually murdered and robbed travelers in the name of the goddess Kali. Merchant had read the novel years before, been struck by it, and later decided to film it. The movie was slow in getting into production, however, and once into that stage presented such an array of problems as to stagger even Merchant. An entire book, Hullabaloo in Old Jeypore: The Making of "The Deceivers", was needed for Merchant to set down all that occurred.

James Ivory, screenwriter of Call Me by Your Name, took home the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay at Sunday’s Academy Awards at the age of 89, making him the oldest recipient in the history of the Oscars. While this might have been Ivory’s first win, it certainly wasn’t his first nomination. The producer and director was previously in the running for Best Director for three of his Merchant Ivory films: 1985’s A Room with a View, 1992’s Howards End and 1993’s The Remains of the Day.