JAMES IVORY OVER HIS LONG CAREER, THE ICON OF AMERICAN CINEMA DEFINED A STYLE OF FILMMAKING THAT EMBRACED THE BURNISHED HEIGHTS OF SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND SOPHISTICATION. BUT JAMES IVORY AND HIS LATE PARTNER, ISMAIL MERCHANT, WERE ALSO INVETERATE OUTSIDERS WHOSE ART WAS AS POLITICALLY PROVOCATIVE AS IT WAS VISUALLY MANNERED. AT AGE 88, THE WRITER-DIRECTOR IS STILL BRINGING STORIES TO THE SCREEN THAT FEW OTHERS WOULD DARE. By CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN Photography SEBASTIAN KIM JAMES IVORY IN CLAVERACK, NY, FEBRUARY 2017. COAT: JEFFREY RUDES. SHIRT: IVORY’S OWN. On a mantle in James Ivory’s country house in but also managed to provoke, astonish, and seduce. the depths of winter. It just got to be too much, and I IVORY: I go all the time. I suppose it’s the place I love IVORY: I saw this collection of Indian miniature upstate New York sits a framed photo of actress In the case of Maurice, perhaps because the film was remember deciding to go back to New York to work most in the world. When I went to Europe for the paintings in the gallery of a dealer in San Francisco. Maggie Smith, dressed up in 1920s finery, from the so disarmingly refined and the quality of the act- on Surviving Picasso. first time, I went to Paris and then to Venice. So after I was so captivated by them. I thought, “Gosh, I’ll set of Ivory’s 1981 filmQuartet . By the fireplace in an ing and directing so strong, its central gay love story BOLLEN: The winters up here can be bleak. Paris, Venice was my first great European city, and it make a movie about this!” It’s the arrogance of youth. adjoining room is a modernist wood chair that was was allowed in the front door rather than treated as IVORY: I know about that. There’s a cabin in Ore- just blew me away. The reason I made that documen- Again, I knew nothing. Just like when I went to Ven- used for Anthony Hopkins’s turn as Pablo Picasso in a dirty secret to be sneaked in through the back. For gon I go to, which belonged to my parents. It’s never tary as my thesis at USC film school was to have an ice, I didn’t know much about Venetian paintings. Ivory’s 1996 biopic. These and other treasures are so all of their splendor, these particular Merchant Ivory been winterized. It’s not a place you want to be after excuse to go back to Venice. [laughs] But at that moment, Indian music was beginning to “WE ASKED IF subtly incorporated into the elegant, relaxed, ever- productions are undeniably political, ushering their the first of October or before the first of June. I go for BOLLEN: Was your plan always to be a filmmaker? be heard in this country—artists like Ravi Shankar WE COULD HAVE so-slightly-aristocratic décor that the first descrip- audiences forward socially even as they showed us about three weeks every summer. In fact, that’s where IVORY: No, I thought I was going to be a set and Ali Akbar Khan. And there was beginning to be THE RIGHTS TO A tion that came to mind, not at all ironically, was that worlds of a seemingly primmer past. Merchant Ivory I watch a lot of movies. I collect them throughout the designer. That’s why I went to architecture school. an awareness of India as a great sort of fabulous, dis- ROOM WITH A VIEW, it felt “very Merchant Ivory.” That designation, found success decade after decade, and they did so by year and bring them to the Oregon cabin. I mean, I hardly knew how movies were made. The tant land. And so, again, my father put up the money. which hitches the director’s last name to his part- never drifting safely in their established niche. Ivory BOLLEN: Old films or new? cult of the director and all that stuff didn’t exist then. The film was called The Sword and the Flute [1959], AND THEIR FACES ner in life and cinema, the late Ismail Merchant, has went from directing an ode to downtown bohemia IVORY: Both. For example, I just bought Sunset Bou- That didn’t come until the 1960s French new wave. I and, like Venice, it was put on The New York Times best FELL. IT WAS LIKE, come to stand for an entire sensibility, one of beauty, (1989’s Slaves of New York) to an exquisite pre- and levard and All About Eve. I remember seeing those scarcely knew what a director even did. I knew what of the year list. It was because of the success of the ‘WHAT? THAT culture, and refinement, and also one of wild intel- post-WWII British drama (1993’s The Remains of when I was a college student and arguing with my actors did and I could imagine what a screenwriter first two documentaries that the Asia Society in New LITTLE NOVEL?’ ” lect and rough passions rumbling underneath the the Day) and, between those two unlikely partners, friends about which was the greater film—which one would do, but I didn’t understand the whole setup, York got the idea to send me to Delhi to do a docu- petticoats of propriety. Ivory isn’t the only director happened to make one of the finest films of the 20th was better in terms of pure cinema and which one really, until I made my first feature. And that first fea- mentary about the city [The Delhi Way, 1964]. whose name summons a particular cinematic style, century, Howards End (1992). Ivory’s latest project was more “Hollywood.” We were divided. ture was with Ismail Merchant. BOLLEN: Was that initial trip to India love at first although that kind of recognition is usually reserved sees him taking a break from the director’s chair to BOLLEN: Which side were you on? BOLLEN: Then how did you end up making a docu- sight? for auteurs whose body of work is held together by serve as co-producer and screenwriter on Luca Gua- IVORY: Sunset Boulevard. mentary for your thesis? IVORY: Oh, definitely. I adored it. And all the terri- back home with all kinds of plans to make his own posturing and ego. Merchant and Ivory, on the other dagnino’s gorgeous upcoming gay love story Call Me BOLLEN: Oh, my guess was All About Eve. IVORY: I had to write one for the program, and ble things that can happen to people in India if they’re films in India. So we got together in India. He had hand, consistently created new and distinct universes by Your Name. At age 88, Ivory knows a thing or two IVORY: Well, I might reverse it now. I will let you I thought, “Wouldn’t it be better if I just made a not careful didn’t really happen to me. I didn’t get sick planned to make a feature that didn’t work out. in their 25 films together as producer and director. about bringing literary passions to life. know after I watch them in Oregon. film?” I proposed it, and my teachers said, “Why or end up in some dreadful massacre. I just loved it But he had read the novel The Householder by Ruth Each one is its own island running on its own set CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN: Your house is so beauti- BOLLEN: You were born in California and grew up not?” They weren’t that enthusiastic. They didn’t and I quickly made a lot of friends. I met Satyajit Ray, [Prawer Jhabvala]. It was Ismail’s idea to make it into of codes, where every detail—from the script to the ful. It reminds me a little of the one in Howards End. a child of the West Coast. Yet I would never describe say, “Wonderful idea, Jim! Fabulous!” They weren’t who would later become extremely helpful to us. a film because it was such a wonderful book. I read it casting to the costumes to the painterly backdrops— JAMES IVORY: Maybe a little bit. The house where your aesthetic or approach as Californian—and cer- going to fund it. My father paid for it. I thought it BOLLEN: Is Delhi where you first met Ismail? and thought, “What do I know about middle-class is so carefully tended that the audience has no choice we shot the film in England is much older. This tainly not Hollywood. Was it a conscious decision to would be a kind of art film set in Venice, telling the IVORY: No, there was a screening of The Sword and Indian society?” But Ismail and Ruth knew every- but to be overwhelmed by it. house was built around 1805. When I found it in build a career outside of the industry? history of Venice through paintings. the Flute at the Indian consulate in New York. He thing about it. So I said okay. We also had Satyajit Ivory’s first film with Merchant (and their longtime 1975, it had been divided up into seven apartments, IVORY: The conscious decision, early on, was that I BOLLEN: With Venice: Theme and Variations [1957], knew the actor Saeed Jaffrey, who had done the nar- Ray’s crew because he wasn’t busy just then. So it sort screenwriter, the late Ruth Prawer Jhabvala) was the which I didn’t mind because the tenants helped pay was going to live in New York. That was it. I went you were on your way to becoming a recognized ration for it, so he went to see it.