Merchant Ivory, the period drama movie specialists, are back in fashion.
It’s been a relatively quiet decade for director James Ivory, following the death of his producing partner Ismail Merchant. But now Ivory, 88, whose credits include rich literary adaptations A Room With a View and Remains of the Day, is enjoying the successful re-release of Howards End, Merchant Ivory’s 1992 take on EM Forster’s classic novel, which won three Oscars including Best Actress for Emma Thompson.
Howards End, which examines class, culture and commerce in Edwardian London, also stars Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter and Vanessa Redgrave. The movie is the first to be re-released by The Cohen Media Group which bought 30 films produced by Merchant Ivory Productions. Following a successful run in New York Howards End will now be re-released in key American cities.
It’s the latest unlikely chapter for Merchant Ivory that was formed by producer Merchant and director Ivory in the early 1960s and which went on to win six Oscars for their movies which became renowned for sumptuous costumes and high-class emotional violence.
We asked James Ivory about Howards End, his future project with Tom Hiddleston and his thwarted desire to work with Shia LaBeouf.
Were you expecting such an enthusiastic reaction to Howards End being re-released in New York?
I was in a way totally surprised. I went to the movie theater to say some words and when I came out there was a long line like there used to be for our films. That was a pleasure to see. We’ve had a terrific response to the film and it’s done very good business. It’s years since we made Howards End but there is certainly a hankering for films which have some sort of substance and which are about something.
Watching the movie again, Helena Bonham Carter playing Helen Schegel is reminiscent of a modern-day social justice warrior in that she acts for well-intentioned reasons but her behavior backfires and has unintended consequences. Plenty of people act like that on college campuses now.
I can see that in relation to the film. It will be interesting to see how that free speech debate plays out on campuses. I’m as curious as the site is to follow that.
Looking back would Howards End have been a different film if you had made it earlier in your career? Does it benefit from you having directed quite a few period films prior to it?
Yes we had to build up to it. We probably couldn’t have tackled that book earlier. We probably had to go through, not only Forster but a novel or two of Henry James and a few other books that we took on. I think we had to work towards it. It would not have been as effective if we had done it earlier, I’m pretty sure. We all get better as we go along.
Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins have a tremendous connection both in Howards End and Remains of the Day. Did you work on that?
You have to hope that they’re going to get together and like each other and there will be this famed chemistry that is supposed to exist with actors. It doesn’t always and sometimes I’ve made films where there was no chemistry between the leading lady and the leading man. That’s a bad thing when that happens and it affects the film. You can’t do anything. But those two [Thompson and Hopkins] just hit it off and really liked each other. They both had a great sense of humor and were a real pair.
Then in the mid-to-late nineties, you changed course and tackled the dark sides of Thomas Jefferson and Pablo Picasso in Jefferson in Paris and Surviving Picasso.
They were both great figures, true revolutionaries, but they were both mired in sex. Read about Picasso’s history with women- it’s not very uplifting! People ran down Jefferson’s liaison with Sally Hemings. It was considered historically and socially not a good thing to father a number of children by your teenage slave girl. That was not considered a very nice thing. Today we would think it was rape. Their lives were extremely interesting, not largely because of what kind of women their sexual partners were and what they gave to Picasso, how they influenced his art and what he took from them. They were difficult characters which was of interest to us.
Not many people know Surviving Picasso is based on Arianna Huffington’s biography Picasso: Creator and Destroyer. What was she like to deal with?
We didn’t really collaborate that much. We met and talked but her real collaboration was not with us but with Françoise Gilot, Picasso’s mistress. Warner Brothers wanted to do a television series and they put Ariana Huffington together with Françoise Gilot to come up with a script for a long series. They worked on that for a year or more before we made the film.
Are you still hoping to make Richard II with Tom Hiddleston?
I am. That’s moving along. Tom has become a very popular actor and he has all sorts of things that he wants to do so it’s when he can do it which hopefully won’t be too long from now. But he’s keen and is going to do it. The other starring role will be Bolingbroke played by Damian Lewis.
There was also a rumour doing the rounds that you wanted to make a movie based on André Aciman’s novel Call Me by Your Name with Greta Scaachi and Shia LaBeouf? Is that true?
That film has now been made but neither Greta nor Shia has been cast. Greta thought she was cast. It was shot in Italy in May and June and I wrote the screenplay for it.
Shia LaBeouf seems a most unlikely choice for a Merchant Ivory film.
We got on terribly well. He came to New York to read for us. He was great. I liked him very much. But then as time passed, he had various troubles so the production company felt they couldn’t wisely go with him. I think they could have but they didn’t think so. Greta and Shia had good scenes together.
Meantime you must be gratified that many old Merchant Ivory films will now be re-released.
I’m not going to live forever and who’s going to look after those films when I’m gone? I’d like to think they’ll all have the special attention that Howards End has gotten. Maurice is the next film on their list- it may come out in the late fall or early spring, they’re working on the restoration now- and I’m very happy that Shakespeare Wallah is about to be released. People don’t remember that film at all but we always thought of that film as our best friend. For years it was our calling card.
The master himself, James Ivory, is answering questions about ‘Howards End’ pic.twitter.com/8FSP9A0UZO
— Kevin Daly (@kevinddaly) August 26, 2016
