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James Ivory:
Golden Rooms With Views
James Ivory (left) discusses his work with moderator David Sterritt of The Christian Science Monitor.
(Photo: © 2000 Elisa Haber)
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The dense prose and complex psychology of Henry James inhibits most screenwriters and directors. In an era of underwritten movies that depend on special effects, many filmmakers aren't even interested in exploring the vanished world of patrician robber baron Americans in European society.
Yet James Ivory doggedly pursues the oeuvre of not only James but also E.M. Forster. The triumvirate of Ivory, his producer Ismail Merchant and scenarist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala who comprise the almost 40-year old Merchant Ivory Productions have created some of the most enduring film classics (Howard's End, Room With a View, Remains of the Day) in an era some consider to be an artistic morass.
After three adaptations from James, The Europeans, The Bostonians and now The Golden Bowl, Ivory and James are a natural combination.
At the co-sponsored Independent Feature Project-Directors Guild of America-Entertainment Weekly evening at the DGA Theater in New York on October 24, Ivory previewed The Golden Bowl, which will be released theatrically in the spring of 2001. David Sterritt, film critic of The Christian Science Monitor, moderated the discussion. Though Ivory and James are Anglophiles, like James he is an American, and indeed the native Californian Ivory was educated near the Hollywood studios at USC.
Ivory was his patrician self with Sterritt and the audience. In answer to a question from the audience about why the film, originally supposed to be released by Miramax in December, will not be released until the spring, Ivory replied that he has had good luck with spring releases.
Culture clash is a favorite theme of Ivory's and in The Golden Bowl, he said, "It is mostly the Americans who are clashing, except for the Prince." Sterritt remarked on the extreme interior nature of the book, which is about a self-made robber baron Adam Verver (Nick Nolte) who is in late 19th-
century Europe to purchase Medieval and Renaissance treasures for display in his own museum, his daughter (Kate Beckinsale) who acquires an Italian Prince (Jeremy Northam) and a title, and her best friend Charlotte (Uma Thurman) who is the mistress of the Prince and married to Adam.
The Golden Bowl of the title is an antique flawed gilded glass bowl which links the two couples.
It is a novel of ideas rather than action, and concerns the era when American multimillionaires had usurped their American competitors and could buy and sell European
nobles and their heirlooms.
As always in a Merchant Ivory production, the period details are exquisite. The primary concern of Ivory was filming in great houses of Europe that contained the works of art necessary to show the Verver collection. Except for some Raphael drawings, the art was in those estates.
Ivory collaborates closely with Tony Pierce Roberts, his director of photography, on his last seven Merchant Ivory films on what he describes as a day-by-day, shot-by-shot basis. Shooting in a house, rather than on a set designed to accommodate various storyboarded camera angles, requires flexibility. "They are some scenes that you have to prepare very, very carefully, as to the light or whatever." The actors have to be adaptable also. "The scene is built around the movements of the actors. How they feel, how they want to move, where they want to go, sometimes that's not possible. Sometimes they have to be sent in another direction."
Costuming can add a precision to this uncertainty about lighting and camera angles in an unyielding set situation. The costumes by John Bright reflect Ivory's determination that clothes should define the characters' personalities, which Ivory uses as an emotional climax to his story. The choreography by Karole Armitage of the ballet at the party mirrors the chaotic state of the four characters.
Despite the long, successful associations with the same artisans and his meticulous planning for every situation, Ivory modestly admits that, "You don't really know what you have until you see the first rough cut."
-Kevin Lewis
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