James Ivory in Conversation: How Merchant Ivory Makes Its Movies

India

INDIA RobertEmmetLong:YouhadbeentoIndia,metSatyajitRay,andshotyourdocumentary The Delhi Way, as well as your footage in Kabul. At that point, you returned to New York. JamesIvory:IshotTheDelhiWayandbroughtitbacktoNewYorktoedit,and then I decided that I really needed to do more work on it, that I hadn’t got all I wanted—andatthatpointImetIsmail.Iintroducedhimtosomepeoplehere in New York who wanted to make a feature film in India. One of them was the anthropologist Gitel Steed. She had written a script called Devgar set in a villageinGujaratwhereshehadonceworkedasananthropologist ,andshewanted verymuchtofilmit.ShegottogetherwithSidneyMyers,awonderfulfilmmaker, who was going to direct it; and I, in a rather foolhardy way, said that I would actuallyshootthefilm,whichIwouldn’thaveknownhowtodo,thoughIdidn’t realizeitthen.Ismailwasgoingtoproduceit.HewenttoIndiafirst,andIcame along later because I wanted to go on working on TheDelhiWay. Long: But you didn’t make the film, I know, about the village in India. Ivory: The Steed film collapsed because Ismail couldn’t raise all the money forit.Heraisedsomeofit,buthecouldn’tgetallofit.HehadsuggestedcastingShashiKapoor ,DurgaKhote,andLeelaNaidu—allofwhomwerelaterto be the stars of The Householder. It also turned out that Ismail had read Ruth Jhabvala’s The Householder when he was working in Los Angeles. Supposedly he wrote in his diary that he would make her novel—the fourth—into a film, though none of us can find that historical document. He got The Householder out and reread it, I guess, and gave it to me, saying, “Let’s make this.” I had 67 no sense of what was involved in making a feature film, or what you had to do.Ihadneverworkedwithactorsreally,oranythinglikethat,butIsaid,“Oh, yeah, let’s do it.” Long: And you did it. Ivory:Thetimecomeswhenyoufinishonestageofyourlife,andyougoon to the next stage. When you are in high school, you take it for granted, if you are lucky enough to be born under that star, that you will be going on to college —oratleastIdid.Thatwillbeyournextstage.Thefirststageofmyfilmmakinglifewasmakingdocumentariesallbymyself ;thesecondstageseemed tobegoingintofeaturefilms,andIneverquestionedthat.Ididn’tknowwhat theywouldbeorwhoIwouldmakethemwith,orwhatkindofstoriesIwould tell. Of these things I had no idea. Stage two came rather quickly, rather too soon, maybe. We made The Householder in two versions—in English and in Hindi—and by some miracle we sold the finished picture to Columbia Pictures for worldwide rights. Long:TheHouseholdercost$125,000tomake,andpart ofitcamefromyourfather.Howmuchdidhelose,and how did he feel about losing it? Ivory: He didn’t lose, or rather he didn’t lose very much, because, as I said, we sold the film to Columbia Pictures,andthemoneyheputincamebacktohimout of the money from Columbia. Long:Ithinkyou’vetoldmethatyourfatherthought of the money he invested in the film as being your money. Ivory: That’s right. Some of it, anyway. He thought of it as a portion of my eventual inheritance. Later on, there was a tallying up of how much I had taken and how much my sister had taken as advances on our inheritance. It was understood that if I took somethingthen ,therewouldbelesslater.Hewas,ofcourse,happythatwehadsold the film to Columbia Pictures. That, he thought, was a great thing. We were paid for it in “frozen” rupees, which were then invested in Shakespeare Wallah ,amoresuccessfulfilm,andhewashappytobebackingthatsuccessfulfilm. 68 f e a t u r e f i l m s : i n d i a t h e h o u s e h o l d e r MerchantIvory’sfirstfeature, basedonRuthJhabvala’s fourthnovel,setinDelhi. PremSagarandhisstrongwilledyoungbride ,Indu, learntolivetogether.With ShashiKapoor,LeelaNaidu, andDurgaKhote.1963. Feature.35millimeter;blackand -white;101minutes. Long: You spoke of the frozen rupees previously. Ivory:Yes,theywereearningsinIndiaoftheAmericanfilmcompanies,which by Indian law could not be repatriated but could be used in India for production . This practice became the financial base of our operation there in the 1960s, and Ismail exploited that situation very ingeniously. Long: Did your father back any of the other films? Ivory: He died around that time. Long: But he lived to see you succeed. Ivory: He lived to see the success of ShakespeareWallah. Long: That was great. Ivory: He lived for a year or so after that. There were terrific reviews in magazines like Life, Time, and Newsweek, and all that kind of thing, and so he saw all of that . . . Long:WouldyouhavedoneanythingdiªerentlyifyoucouldmakeTheHouseholder again? Ivory: That isn’t a question that can realistically be asked because . . . you know, it was a first feature film. I had never broken down the scenes with the actors and cameraman, and I didn’t appreciate the relationship of the directortotheactors .AllthatIhadtolearnasIwentalong.Havingnowdoneother movies, of course I would do things in a...