To its considerable credit, Stephen Soucy’s recent documentary, Merchant Ivory (2024), resists the tendency toward hagiography. It’s an understandably tempting opportunity, composed as the film is largely of conversations with James Ivory, now in his 96th year and still working, talking, and thinking carefully about the world we live in and the ones that got us here. In less than two hours, the spritely film depicts the long, fruitful partnership between James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, who made more than 40 films together from 1963 to 2009.
Soucy’s film features extensive video footage of the veritable troupe that made up Merchant Ivory as a production unit, from the dearly departed — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Richard Robbins, Maurice (1986) scribe Kit Hesketh-Harvey (who died in 2023 after filming his segments) — to those still working today. It’s faces like Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, and Hugh Grant who chart Soucy’s focus on a quartet of Merchant Ivory’s best-known films, a remarkable run that includes A Room With a View (1985), Maurice, Howards End (1992), and The Remains of the Day (1993).
I spoke with Stephen over video chat during the film’s August run at Quad Cinema in New York City, which coincided with the exhibition of several restored Merchant Ivory films, including the rarely-screened, Merchant-directed In Custody (1993). During our conversation, the word “portraits” appeared many times, as did “voice.” More than a still-life perception of films from the past, Soucy’s film makes the case that the stories are as vibrant as Ivory himself, depictions of life that live, rather than indications of past glory. More than anything, there is a deep love for the images themselves, shown in montage throughout the documentary, a testament to their own eternal something.
Frank Falisi: The documentary takes pains to show that, at the beginning, Merchant Ivory was sort of an enterprise for figuring out filmmaking on the fly. Before The Householder (1963), Ivory hadn’t directed a feature yet, Merchant wasn’t really a producer yet. Ruth Jhabvala was a novelist, but hadn’t written a screenplay. How much of the story is, to you, about learning the shapes that’ll dictate your life?
Stephen Soucy: For me, I started at the beginning. And the big moment was Jim and Ismail meeting each other on the steps of the Indian Consulate here in New York City. I mean, that was a moment. [Ismail] was finishing The Creation of Woman and [James] was showing The Sword and the Flute, and that’s how they met, at the consulate. And they quickly met up in India to go talk to Ruth Jhabvala about her novel, The Householder.
FF: And then they’re sort of just off, right?
SS: It started with The Householder, quickly moved to Shakespeare Wallah (1966), and the train was on the tracks, right? Shakespeare Wallah had to be covered in the documentary, because it was kind of garnering all these awards. That was another big moment. So there really were these stops along the Merchant Ivory road where I’m like,” Oh that’s important, oh that’s important.” And then I wanted to dive into a little bit behind the scenes: they made these beautiful films, fiercely independent, low-budget, always a struggle for Ismail to bring in the money.
FF: There’s a lovely moment in the doc where someone calls Ismail a con man in how he went about producing, raising the money. And of course, they’ve got this big smile.
SS: It’s Madhur Jaffrey who says it. She says that you didn’t want to forget that he was conning you, but then he’s laid out this beautiful picnic in this palace for the whole crew. So people knew the way Ismail operated but, you know, everybody still flocked to Merchant Ivory. I mean, when you look at the roster of stars and actors that they worked with! Even late, like in The City of Your Final Destination, they still had Anthony Hopkins, Laura Linney.
FF: I was struck that there’s this suggestion in the documentary that the films — taken as a whole — tell the story of the group’s interests, if not their personal lives. Sometimes it feels like they just find the right book at the right time, and that’s how an adaptation comes about. Jean Rhys’ Quartet was that way, right?
SS: Yeah yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, too. I think Ruth knew [Tama Janowitz’s] Slaves of New York. They had a writer — a novelist, this amazing short story writer — there to vet the projects. I like in the film when Jim compares them to the U.S. government: Jim is the president, Ismail’s the congress, and Ruth is the Supreme Court. Often, you know, the buck kind of stopped with Ruth. [Jim] would bring Ruth into the editing room, and she would give notes. That was unheard of! That a writer might be invited into the editing room. But it’s something that made Merchant Ivory so unique, part of what made the films so tight in terms of writing and editing.
FF: Ruth died in 2013, Ismail in 2005, and [composer] Richard Robbins in 2012. How did you approach getting those documentary portraits right for folks who weren’t around to speak?
SS: I mean, that’s the challenge. We were able to gather what we could from previous documentary portraits. The Wandering Company is something I pulled from a little bit. There was a French production that I pulled from. After The Remains of the Day, Derrick Santini made In Ismail’s Custody, and that’s where that clip of Anthony Hopkins comes from, when he says Ismail could charm the birds out of the trees. Some of the Ismail clips came from 60 Minutes, an interview they did together where they’re arguing with each other about how they met.
We used that clip from The Wandering Company when Ruth says, you know, wherever they were, she’d look to see where the nearest jail was to visit Ismail there. There’s this great clip of Ruth at the Writers Guild of America, East explaining how Ismail and Jim came to visit her and pitched making The Householder. She tells a great story, but I made the choice to let her daughter, Ava, tell that story. I mean, it was just very important to me to try and represent them and their voices the best I could. And then really adding Richard Robbins into the mix, kind of giving him his biographical sketch. I mean, it’s “Merchant Ivory,” but Ruth and Dick were huge.
FF: How much of the structure of the film — the stops along the road — were then a result of who you were able to talk to? Beyond talking to Jim, of course.
SS: The interviews I had available to me, that I was able to secure — Helena [Bonham Carter], Emma [Thompson], Hugh [Grant] — really inform the structure. In some ways, the big films, kind of the big four that I anchor the film with, they’re the most well-known films from Merchant and Ivory. Sometimes it made a difference of where I might delve deeper, like Felicity Kendal and Shakespeare Wallah. That was a super important film for Merchant Ivory in their early development, and having her available, I was able to go a little bit deeper there. Obviously, like, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, I couldn’t get Joanne Woodward — she’s still with us, but she wasn’t available to me. So I made choices kind of around that.
There’s a lot of additional material that didn’t make it into the film. I’ve been putting a lot of the footage online. Emma Thompson talking for 27 minutes, Helena Bonham Carter for 15 minutes. And I’ve done a couple interviews with Jim when we couldn’t go to a film festival, like the New York Indian Film Festival in New York. So I did a 10-minute interview with Jim talking about the Indian film, going a bit more in depth than I was able to in the doc. This additional material needs to be accessible for the people that might be interested in it.
FF: I mean, it’s sort of just remarkable to have all the interview footage with Jim.
SS: It’s been wonderful showing the film, having people appreciate this career. Jim’s 96, and he’s still writing. I think the other thing the doc is generating is the desire for people to go back and see the Merchant Ivory film, both the ones that they know and enjoyed and maybe the other films that they haven’t seen. We just had an interview with somebody and she was like, “Oh I haven’t seen The Bostonians (1984), I haven’t seen The Golden Bowl (2000).” It’s a nice end result for the doc.
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