The absolute joy of attending a Merchant Ivory movie weekend at my local theater

Merchant Ivory Productions represented the epitome of prestige art filmmaking and their films in the 1980s and ’90s and were a revelation to me. Beginning with A Room with a View, combined with my two other favorites, Howard’s End and The Remains of the Day, these timeless masterpieces immersed me in an exquisite world of Edwardian drama. Helmed by the brilliant quartet of American James Ivory as screenwriter and director, Indian-born Ismail Merchant, novelist and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and composer Richard Robbins, I now realize how incredibly we were spoiled at that time by their historical masterpieces.

What made the movies from Merchant Ivory Production so intoxicating for me? I don’t think I’m the only one who couldn’t get enough of the kind of wondrous detail to history, brought to life with stunning cinematography (who could forget those walks among the bluebells in Howard’s End?), sumptuous settings (that unforgettable Quisisana e Ponte Vecchio square in A Room with a View), emotional honesty, beautifully detailed costumes (all the lace that Dame Emma Thompson dons in Howard’s End), nuanced writing, swooning music (Remains of the Day’s haunting soundtrack) and of course those fascinatingly complex characters.

You have all that brilliance along with some of the best actors that have ever lived to bring these intricate worlds to life. Thompson not only starred alongside Sir Anthony Hopkins in Howard’s End, but they brought to the screen one of the most devastating relationships I’ve ever seen play in theaters, in the heartbreaking Remains of the Day. Merchant Ivory’s prestigious productions also included the late Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, Helena Bonham Carter of course, Hugh Grant, Vanessa Redgrave, the late Julian Sands, Simon Callow, Daniel Day-Lewis, Rupert Graves, Christopher Reeves, and even a young Lena Headey (way before Game of Thrones). It would have been impossible to cast these film gems any better.

So when my local art house theater (the historic Jane Pickens) was putting on a mini-Merchant Ivory festival, I of course jumped at the chance. I’m sad to say that I missed the showing of A Room with a View, the magnificent love letter to Italy, because of a conflict. This was the film that broke ground for Merchant Ivory and for historic art films in general. When it arrived in 1985, it caused a sensation. A tale of an independent-minded Edwardian woman (Bonham Carter) who is torn between her family-approved engagement to the priggish, intellectual Cecil Vyse (Day-Lewis) and her love for the free-spirited romantic George Emerson (Sands, in what would be his most captivating role), it’s the cinematic atmosphere that draws you in. The lush scenery of Italy and the compellingly detailed characters proved intoxicating to audiences, with A Room with a View breaking ground for art house cinema. I know people who have stayed in that very square in Florence just because of that film.

Next on the agenda was Howard’s End, which took Cannes and Oscars by storm when it came out in 1992. It was absolutely thrilling to see it once more in the theater, and the added bonus was the chance to bring my teenage daughter to this marvel for the first time. It got a thumbs up from her as well, which is surprising because of the tender, slow pace of Howard’s End. But a great story is timeless, as is the brilliant telling of this Edwardian E.M. Forster novel.

It's no wonder this incredible film swept the awards that year, including Best Lead Actress for Thompson, Best Supporting Actress for Redgrave, Best Picture for Producer Merchant, Best Director for Ivory, and Best Screenplay for Jhabvala. Throughout Howard’s End, Thompson is a revelation. I’ve grown up watching her in so many movies—and it was fun pointing her out, as well as Bonham Carter to my daughter, who knows them from the Harry Potter films—but her performance in Howard’s End is the lynchpin of the movie. It’s a gift of a role, where Thompson’s Margaret Schlegel navigates the three class worlds that intersect. To see Howard’s End in the theaters again was a genuine pleasure and made me incredibly wistful for this type of exquisite filmmaking.

Hopkins had an understated role in Howard’s End, but gave the performance of a lifetime in the next film in the Merchant Ivory lexicon, teeming up with Thompson once again, in The Remains of the Day, about a butler’s misguided devotion to his employer, set during World War II. It’s a shame Hopkins was up against Tom Hanks from Philadelphia for the Oscar that year, any other year he would have won hands-down for his role in Remains. Rumor has it that one (of many) reasons Hopkins won for The Father was his overdue Oscar for Remains (I would have handed it to him over Hanks and he certainly deserved it outright for The Father). The Remains of the Day was not included in the Merchant Ivory weekend, but I can’t highly recommend this film enough.

What was included was the fun documentary on Merchant Ivory, directed by Stephen Soucy. Merchant Ivory explores the artistic and personal collaboration between the two—as well as Jhabvala and Robbins—and some of the details are astonishing. Redgrave, Thompson, and Grant talk about the difficulties of working on these shoestring-budget films, which looked like anything but. As Thompson says, at one point, “never again,” but the end result was always a masterstroke so she would be pulled right back in. These interviews were quite amusing.

The documentary goes through the stages of their relationship, during a time when Merchant and Ivory kept their homosexuality quiet and the complexity of that ever-evolving relationship. Merchant Ivory goes through the start of their collaboration, to the critical successes, the move to mainstream production, and heartache as each one of the foursome passed away, apart from Ivory, who is 96 and the only one left (and still a passionate storyteller). Ivory lives in Upstate New York and has attended events at my little New England arthouse movie theater. If he had appeared for this fest, I think I would have fainted! At 96, I don’t think any of us expect him there.

Ivory executive produced Merchant Ivory. Be on the lookout out for this captivating documentary if it plays near you or releases on a streaming platform.