Merchant Ivory’s ‘Countess’ brings an era to a close

It seems fitting that new movie The White Countess tells of the end of an era and a friendship because it also marks the final collaboration...

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It seems fitting that new movie The White Countess tells of the end of an era and a friendship because it also marks the final collaboration of filmmakers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant.

For 44 years, Merchant Ivory brought widely acclaimed movies to theatres, including Oscar-nominated A Room with a View, Howards End and The Remains of the Day. But Merchant, producer to Ivory’s director, died in May, ending their years together.

Ivory said in a recent interview that he and Merchant made good partners from the time they formed Merchant Ivory in 1961. At that time, they had similar interests in film and Indian culture and the same goal: making movies they wanted to make and telling tales their way.

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Ivory’s fondest memories, he said, are of their early years. With few financiers to back movies about Indian culture, they had to fight for every dollar. Yet the low budgets sparked both a creativity and fearlessness that caused critics to notice their work. “People don’t even remember the films anymore, but those were our heroic days,” Ivory said.

White Countess fits squarely in the vein of period dramas for which the filmmaking team is best known, but instead of writer Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, the screenplay was written by Kazuo Ishiguro who also wrote the novel, The Remains of the Day. —Reuters