#merchant ivory documentary

[undinecissy]

[expo63]

Another beautiful and rare Maurice (1987) production still from the forthcoming 2023 documentary Merchant Ivory [x].

There are other rarely seen b/w stills of Maurice and Alec at the British Museum, but I don’t believe I’d seen this particular shot before. For another, see @oscarwetnwilde’s recent post.

The documentary itself does not seem to have a release date yet. But there’s a wonderful extended taster (the source of this shot) on the director’s Vimeo [x], plus a newer/shorter 2023 trailer via his website [x].

[expo63]

Signal boost! (NB: I don’t think the festival has James Ivory in attendance, sadly.)

Palm Springs International Film Festival 2024 Ivory screenings info/links: [Merchant Ivory documentary] [Maurice] [Howards End] [The Bostonians]

#and once again not with#james wilby#as#maurice hall :\

At least they get the star billing order correct, with James first as he should be. But then cock up with ‘two English school chums find themselves falling in love at Cambridge’ – they are not ‘school chums’.

Also, ‘sapphic-tinged love triangle’ for The Bostonians – it’s a bit more than a ‘tinge’. And the film is also a crystal-clear, chilling portrait of masculinist manipulativeness and coercive control in the techniques Christopher Reeves’ Basil Ransom uses to brainwash Verena away from Olive.

[oscarwetnwilde]

Bless that Merchant Ivory documentary for blessing me with a high-quality and detailed version of this beautiful image from Maurice.

[mariacallous]

If you were asked to guess which prestigious film-making duo had spent their career scratching around desperately for cash, trying to wriggle out of paying their cast and crew, ping-ponging between lovers, and having such blood-curdling bust-ups that their neighbours called the police, it might be some time before “Merchant Ivory” sprang to mind. But a new warts-and-all documentary about the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the US director James Ivory makes it clear that the simmering passions in their films, such as the EM Forster trilogy of A Room With a View, Maurice and Howards End, were nothing compared to the scalding, volatile ones behind the camera.

From their initial meeting in New York in 1961 to Merchant’s death during surgery in 2005, the pair were as inseparable as their brand name, with its absence of any hyphen or ampersand, might suggest. Their output was always more eclectic than they got credit for. They began with a clutch of insightful Indian-set dramas including Shakespeare-Wallah, their 1965 study of a troupe of travelling actors, featuring a young, pixieish Felicity Kendal. From there, they moved on to Savages, a satire on civilisation and primitivism, and The Wild Party, a skewering of 1920s Hollywood excess that pipped Damien Chazelle’s Babylon to the post by nearly half a century.

It was in the 1980s and early 1990s, though, that Merchant Ivory became box-office titans, cornering the market in plush dramas about repressed Brits in period dress. Those literary adaptations launched the careers of Hugh Grant, Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Graves and Julian Sands, and helped make stars of Emma Thompson and Daniel Day-Lewis. Most were scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who had been with them, on and off, since their 1963 debut The Householder; she even lived in the same apartment building in midtown New York. Many were scored by Richard Robbins, who was romantically involved with Merchant while also holding a candle for Bonham Carter. These films restored the costume drama to the position it had occupied during David Lean’s heyday. The roaring trade in Jane Austen adaptations might never have happened without them. You could even blame Merchant Ivory for Bridgerton.

Though the pictures were uniformly pretty, making them was often ugly. Money was always scarce. Asked where he would find the cash for the next movie, Merchant replied: “Wherever it is now.” After Jenny Beavan and John Bright won an Academy Award for the costumes in A Room With a View, he said:“I got you your Oscar. Why do I need to pay you?” As Ivory was painstakingly composing each shot, Merchant’s familiar, booming battle cry would ring out: “Shoot, Jim, shoot!”

Heat and Dust, starring Julie Christie, was especially fraught. Only 30 or 40% of the budget was in place by the time the cameras started rolling in India in 1982; Merchant would rise at dawn to steal the telegrams from the actors’ hotels so they didn’t know their agents were urging them to down tools. Interviewees in the documentary concede that the producer was a “conman” with a “bazaar mentality”. But he was also an incorrigible charmer who dispensed flattery by the bucketload, threw lavish picnics, and wangled entrées to magnificent temples and palaces. “You never went to bed without dreaming of ways to kill him,” says one friend, the journalist Anna Kythreotis. “But you couldn’t not love him.”

Stephen Soucy, who directed the documentary, doesn’t soft-pedal how wretched those sets could be. “Every film was a struggle,” he tells me. “People were not having a good time. Thompson had a huge fight with Ismail on Howards End because she’d been working for 13 days in a row, and he tried to cancel her weekend off. Gwyneth Paltrow hated every minute of making Jefferson in Paris. Hated it! Laura Linney was miserable on The City of Your Final Destination because the whole thing was a shitshow. But you watch the films and you see no sense of that.”

Soucy’s movie features archive TV clips of the duo bickering even in the midst of promoting a film. “Oh, they were authentic all right,” he says. “They clashed a lot.”The authenticity extended to their sexuality. The subject was not discussed publicly until after Ivory won an Oscar for writing Call Me By Your Name: “You have to remember that Ismail was an Indian citizen living in Bombay, with a deeply conservative Muslim family,” Ivory told me in 2018. But the pair were open to those who knew them. “I never had a sense of guilt,” Ivory says, pointing out that the crew on The Householder referred to him and Merchant as “Jack and Jill”.

Soucy had already begun filming his documentary when Ivory published a frank, fragmentary memoir, Solid Ivory, which dwells in phallocentric detail on his lovers before and during his relationship with Merchant, including the novelist Bruce Chatwin. It was that book which emboldened Soucy to ask questions on screen – including about “the crazy, complicated triangle of Jim, Ismail and Dick [Robbins]” – that he might not otherwise have broached.

The documentary is most valuable, though, in making a case for Ivory as an underrated advocate for gay representation. The Remains of the Day, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker-winning novel about a repressed butler, may be the duo’s masterpiece, but it was their gay love story Maurice that was their riskiest undertaking. Set in the early 20th century, its release in 1987 could scarcely have been timelier: it was the height of the Aids crisis, and only a few months before the Conservative government’s homophobic Section 28 became law.

“Ismail wasn’t as driven as Jim to make Maurice,” explains Soucy. “And Ruth was too busy to write it. But Jim’s dogged determination won the day. They’d had this global blockbuster with A Room With a View, and he knew it could be now or never. People would pull aside Paul Bradley, the associate producer, and say: ‘Why are they doing Maurice when they could be making anything?’ I give Jim so much credit for having the vision and tenacity to make sure the film got made.”

Merchant Ivory don’t usually figure in surveys of queer cinema, though they are part of its ecosystem, and not only because of Maurice. Ron Peck, who made the gay classic Nighthawks, was a crew member on The Bostonians. Andrew Haigh, director of All of Us Strangers, landed his first industry job as a poorly paid assistant in Merchant’s Soho office in the late 1990s; in Haigh’s 2011 breakthrough film Weekend, one character admits to freeze-framing the naked swimming scene in A Room With a View to enjoy “Rupert Graves’s juddering cock”. Merchant even offered a role in Savages to Holly Woodlawn, the transgender star of Andy Warhol’s Trash, only for her to decline because the fee was so low.

The position of Merchant Ivory at the pinnacle of British cinema couldn’t last for ever. Following the success of The Remains of the Day, which was nominated for eight Oscars, the brand faltered and fizzled. Their films had already been dismissed by the director Alan Parker as representing “the Laura Ashley school” of cinema. Gary Sinyor spoofed their oeuvre in the splendid pastiche Stiff Upper Lips (originally titled Period!), while Eric Idle was plotting his own send-up called The Remains of the Piano. The culture had moved on.

There was still an appetite for upper-middle-class British repression, but only if it was funny: Richard Curtis drew on some of Merchant Ivory’s repertory company of actors (Grant, Thompson, Simon Callow) for a run of hits beginning with Four Weddings and a Funeral, which took the poshos out of period dress and plonked them into romcoms.

The team itself was splintering. Merchant had begun directing his own projects. When he and Ivory did collaborate, the results were often unwieldy, lacking the stabilising literary foundation of their best work. “Films like Jefferson in Paris and Surviving Picasso didn’t come from these character-driven novels like Forster, James or Ishiguro,” notes Soucy. “Jefferson and Picasso were not figures that audiences warmed to.” Four years after Merchant’s death, Ivory’s solo project The City of Your Final Destination became mired in lawsuits, including one from Anthony Hopkins for unpaid earnings.

Soucy’s film, though, is a reminder of their glory days. It may also stoke interest in the movies among young queer audiences whose only connection to Ivory, now 95, is through Call Me By Your Name. “People walk up to Jim in the street to shake his hand and thank him for Maurice,” says Soucy. “But I also wanted to include the more dysfunctional side of how they were made. Hopefully it will be inspiring to young film-makers to see that great work can come out of chaos.”

[bollywoodirect]

Happy Birthday, #Helen (21/11).

Helen's foray into Bollywood began with a little help from a family friend, actress Cuckoo. Starting with group dance roles in movies like "Shabistan" (1951) and "Awaara" (1951), Helen quickly became a regular in the industry. Her talent shone through, earning her solo dance spots in films such as "Alif Laila" (1954) and "Hoor-e-Arab" (1955). Notably, she also appeared as a street singer in "Mayurpankh" (1954).

A significant breakthrough came in 1958 when Helen was just 19. Her performance in the song "Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu" from the film "Howrah Bridge" captured hearts. Sung by Geeta Dutt, this song marked the start of a series of successful projects for Helen. The 1960s and 1970s saw her rise to fame, with Geeta Dutt lending her voice for many of Helen's performances. During this period, Helen often portrayed characters who would perform a song or dance and then exit the plot, paving the way for the film's lead actress.

By 1969, Helen had become a household name, even gracing the cover of Filmfare Magazine. Another prominent singer, Asha Bhosle, frequently provided playback for Helen's performances, especially during the 1960s and early 1970s. Helen's versatility wasn't just limited to dance; she was nominated for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1965 for her role in "Gumnaam". Her dramatic roles in "China Town" and "Sachaai" (1969), alongside Shammi Kapoor, were box office hits. She also portrayed a compelling character in "Chhote Sarkar" (1974), co-starring Shammi Kapoor and Sadhana. Helen's hit dance numbers included 'Suku Suku' in "Junglee", 'Yamma Yamma' in "China Town", and several others.

Helen's fame wasn't confined to the Indian cinema; she performed on stages in London, Paris, and Hong Kong. In 1973, "Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls", a 30-minute documentary by Merchant Ivory Films, highlighted her life and career. This was followed by Jerry Pinto's book "The Life and Times of an H-Bomb" in 2006, which won a National Film Award. Writer Salim Khan played a key role in Helen's career, casting her in several films he co-scripted. Her performance in "Lahu Ke Do Rang" (1979) earned her the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress. In recognition of her contributions, Helen received the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.

Though she officially retired in 1983, Helen made occasional appearances in films like "Khamoshi: The Musical" (1996) and "Mohabbatein" (2000). She also appeared alongside her real-life step-son #SalmanKhan in "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam" and in "Humko Deewana Kar Gaye" (2006). Her contributions were further acknowledged when she was selected for the Padma Shri in 2009, alongside Aishwarya Rai and Akshay Kumar. Helen also served as a judge in the semifinals and finals of India's 2009 "Dancing Queen" television series.

[power-chords]

The documentary on Merchant Ivory that my husband did all the sound mixing/post-production supervision for is screening at the Village East on Saturday :) should get a wider release next year!

[dannyreviews]

Women Talking (2022)

Sarah Polley is one of those auteurs whose filmography plays out like a student learning their craft. Her feature film debut “Away From Her” was simplistic in its narrative, then came her autobiographical documentary “Stories We Tell” where her storytelling improved. Now we have “Women Talking” which is Polley coming into a milieu of character development and emotional strife. With the Academy Awards only a few hours away from the writing of this post, Polley will surely be dusting off space on her shelf for her well deserved Oscar.

From Miriam Toews’ novel of the same name, “Women Talking” focuses on a small group of women and girls in a Hutterite colony in Canada. Abuse has been rampant for a long time and things have hit a breaking point with the arrest of some of the colony’s most powerful elders. With charges pending, a meeting of some of the victims takes place in which a decision must be made. Will they stay behind and forgive their abusers, which would mean a place in heaven? Or will they desert the only home they ever know and risk eternal damnation? Over the course of 24 hours, that choice is debated back and forth.

The only thing contemporary about “Women Talking” is the year that the story takes place; 2010. Beyond that, this is as much a period piece as any classic novel from the 19th century adapted by Merchant-Ivory or David Lean. The characters’ fashion, speech, demeanor and movement all harken back to a long ago era, despite the year and their insulation from the outside world is also odd. Just like the Amish in Pennsylvania or Hasidic Jews in parts of Brooklyn, the past is the present, and the present is non-existent. The choice to photograph in semi-black and white was also wise as if to illustrate the purgatory that each woman lives through on a daily basis, but also the fact that they live in another universe that happens to be on Earth. Even the film score by Oscar winner Hildur Guðnadóttir has the feel of a Sci-fi epic, but with a more Classical slant. It may have taken place in recent years and brings up now-current issues such as #MeToo, but “Women Talking” couldn’t be more of an anomaly in so many categories, and that winds up being the film’s greatest strength.

“Women Talking” starts very deceptively as a Brecht style drama in which dialogue is spoken more in verse format and there’s very little emotion from each character. Words repeat nonstop and you wonder what the nucleus of the film really is. But that is the entire point, these women are conditioned to act as common folk, knowing very little about things that the majority of humanity take for granted, like maps and grammatical punctuation. Brecht’s work can be seen as dry poetic legalese, that stagnates the environment around its characters. But then gradually, the dialogue becomes more free-flowing, the sentences much looser in pronunciation and the cries much more melodic, rather than pent up and the colors even become a little brighter. As you see the characters evolve, so do their surroundings.

One of the drawbacks about a film’s ensemble is that there are no truly standout performances, but rather little standout scenes. The cast spans from veterans like Judith Ivey, Frances McDormand and Sheila McCarthy to the newer crop of actresses like Claire Foy, Rooney Mara and Jessie Buckley. All of them are equally amazing and do their own acting exercises which illuminates the drama. Ivey is the one that has the most heart tugging scenes. Being the eldest of the group, her character Agata knows only the few acres of land as her world, but its her strength that makes her see beyond familiarity. Foy’s Salome is another character whose hurt and injury is all over her face and voice. Buckley’s Mariche is probably the most delicate of the women, precious like a porcelain doll, but fragile like cracked glass. The problem is, not enough time is given to really let us know these women individually, as opposed to as the collective that are presented as. That is not the fault of the screenplay, but the plot’s setting and circumstances. That being said, I would have liked to at least see one or two characters up close as a sample of what life in the colony was like instead of brief flashbacks that give off a superficial experience.

After tonight’s Oscar ceremony, whether or not Sarah Polley wins the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, she will be a major player in Hollywood and I hope she takes advantage of it well. “Women Talking” may not be perfect, but it’s the calling card for a fruitful career that I hope will be rich in future masterpieces.

8/10

[filmdiagnostic]

British and Irish Film Festival 2024

The Problem With People is a charming buddy comedy that brings together the talented Paul Reiser and Colm Meaney as estranged cousins who embark on a journey of reconciliation in the stunning Irish countryside. The film beautifully captures the essence of family dynamics, blending humor with heartfelt moments that resonate with audiences.

Reiser and Meaney showcase delightful chemistry, delivering witty banter and relatable performances that keep viewers engaged. The picturesque backdrop adds to the film's charm, creating a warm atmosphere that enhances the story's emotional depth.

While some elements may feel familiar, the film's exploration of familial bonds and personal growth offers a refreshing take on the genre. Overall, The Problem With People is an enjoyable watch that reminds us of the importance of connection and understanding, making it a feel-good experience for anyone seeking lighthearted entertainment.

Chuck Chuck Baby is a delightful Welsh romantic comedy directed by Janis Pugh, blending surreal humor with poignant themes of love and liberation.

The film follows Helen, played by Louise Brealey, who navigates a chaotic living situation with her ex-husband and his new family while reigniting a spark with her childhood crush, Joanne.

Set against the backdrop of a chicken factory, it explores female empowerment through a vibrant ensemble cast. The musical elements enhance the emotional depth, making it a unique and heartwarming viewing experience that resonates with audiences seeking both laughter and reflection.

Tarrac is a poignant Irish film directed by Declan Recks, exploring themes of female friendship and familial bonds against the stunning backdrop of the Kerry coastline.

The story follows Aoife Ni Bhraoin, played by Kelly Gough, as she returns home to support her recovering father while grappling with her mother's death.

The film beautifully showcases Aoife's rekindled passion for rowing alongside a diverse group of women, each with rich backstories. The ensemble cast delivers compelling performances, particularly Lorcan Cranitch as her father.

Visually captivating and emotionally resonant, Tarrac is a celebration of community and resilience.

Merchant Ivory, directed by Stephen Soucy, is a documentary that delves into the influential partnership between Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. Known for revitalizing the costume drama genre, the film offers a chronological exploration of their most celebrated works like "A Room With a View" and "The Remains of the Day" while also highlighting their groundbreaking portrayals of gay characters.

Featuring interviews with actors like Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson, it provides an engaging yet straightforward look at their creative process and personal dynamics. While informative, it may lack the depth some viewers desire.

Sessions from Oct 23-Nov 13: Link below

[undinecissy]

Finally!!! Maurice and Alec reunion!

BFI Flare 2024

[expo63]

Yes, you read that correctly: there are not one but TWO Merchant Ivory/James Ivory documentaries on their way!

This is in addition to Ivory’s own part-autobiograpical documentary A Cooler Climate (2022), co-directed with Giles Gardner, which has screened at a tiny handful of festivals but – so far – not more widely. (And, no, I have not yet been able to see it, grrrr.)

An embarrassment of riches! Here’s the list:

Trailer for A Cooler Climate (James Ivory & Giles Gardner, 2022) HERE

Stephen Soucy’s documentary Merchant Ivory (2023) which the Cohen Media Group are reportedly releasing next year. Features the lovely animations first seen in in Soucy’s short documentary tribute to Merchant Ivory’s genius composer (and fourth partner) Richard Robbins, Rich Atmosphere: The Music of Merchant Ivory Films (2019).

And now, announced in May, there will also be James Ivory: In Search of Love and Beauty, directed by first-time feature-maker Christopher Manning:

[mostly-mundane-atla]

Hiya! I really adore your blog and I don't think(?) you've been asked this, but sorry if you have addressed it! I've been watching documentaries/researching things and I'm curious if you have any thoughts/opinions about NWT/Agna Qel'a and its sustainability? Esp during the 100 year war when they're isolated, is it feasible to feed the whole city without imports? What sort of agriculture could work in an arctic climate?

So funny thing about cities:

For a civilization to build a city, the first thing they need is a surplus of food. This is what allows people to fulfil the city requirements (things like job specialization, which leads to some specializing in planning or building infrastructure, or a big population which allows for plenty of people to fill all these little niches in these specialized jobs). There's a little cultural problem here and I'm not sure how well it's been established or explained, or even if it's been acknowledged at all.

The Inuit, Inupiat, Yup'ik, and even some of the other groups, Native or otherwise, that have inspired the aesthetic of the Water Tribes 1) tended to be more nomadic than sedentary (so setting roots in a city in the first place makes little sense) and 2) don't believe in taking the amount of food from nature that would be needed for such a surplus. Speaking as an Inupiaq, it's seen as disgustingly greedy. If you have more food than you need, you don't hoard it, you give it to people who need it without expecting anything in return. You never take with the intention of getting more than you need so you can sell the extra. If you still have more to spare, you save it for a day where you might otherwise starve, not for some guy who says a canal system will improve things and wants to work on that instead of getting his own food.

So it's really strange to me when people treat the Northern Water Tribe like it's this sort of untouched safe place where they still follow the culture that's been forgotten in the Southern Tribe. They have what are essentially roads, they have grand architecture, they have a class system, and the concept of a princess. None of these are accurate to the people indigenous to the tundra. If you're anywhere near as much of a stickler for this cultural aspect of the Water Tribe and the irl cutures it's supposed to be based on (and I can't say I recommend it because it does make being mad about the franchise much easier), then the only explanation is that they're way more culturally influenced by the other nations, namely the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, than the Southern Water Tribe is.

As for agriculture, in the same way that snooty vegans are technically correct when the say "you don't need meat" you technically don't need that many vegetables. Rather than the meat we tend to think of when we go to the butcher or meat and seafood counter at the store, where it's only certain cuts of flesh from animals specifically bred for centuries to produce this kind of meat or that, the Inupiaq diet specifically incorporated as many parts of the animals that adapted to the needs of surviving the arctic as possible. It's not possible to live on a diet of 90% steak and get all the nutrients you need, but when it includes fish eyes and whale skin, the tongue, the heart, the liver, fats of all kinds, and supplement the rest of your needs with things like fireweed, sourdock, wild celery, and berries, it will sustain you and get you through the winter.

Below, I've attached a video showing what subsitance hunting and gathering looks like in northwest Alaska. It's thoroughly informative but be warned that it does include footage of irl hunting and butchering. You will see guns and knives and dead animals in this video.

I suppose you could grow things like eskimo potato/masru or berry bushes the way people would grow, say, tomatoes or beans. You could apply selective breeding to get nutient rich crops and build greenhouses out of sheets of clear ice, double walled with folks keeping the moisture in the dirt from freezing so it stays warm enough for things to grow for as long as the sun stays in the sky. They have an oasis full of magic spirit water so maybe there's something sacred that could be keeping crops alive.

The question is, how do you take the land required to do that from social herbivores? Are you going to treat them like pests to be exterminated when you need their meat and skins to survive? That land is their home as much as it's yours.

I think personal gardens or even just bushes and such kept in pots in or around the home would be much likelier than full scale intensive farms. Grouse or ptarmigans or similar fowl (Sokka does mention "arctic hen") could be kept domestically for their eggs or occasionally meat the way chickens might be kept in the other nations. Grains and flour may be traded with stealthy Earth Kingdom merchants in exchange for pelts or ivory or even ice blocks for food storage.

And on the other hand, it could just be a densely populated village made fancy with enough signs of civilization for outsiders to respect while everyone is still otherwise living a hunter gatherer lifestyle to feed their families. There isn't really a "wrong" answer in any sense until canon gets its shit together (and maybe actually hires an eskimo writer so it makes sense) and gives an actual explanation.

[oscarwetnwilde]

James Wilby on Ismail Merchant for Stephen Soucy's documentary on Merchant Ivory.

"In my head, I thought he was the big bad wolf, you know, I remember when we saw the film, the first screening of the film, I had actually seen it before, but only in an editing room. I was sitting behind Ismail, I think. And when the credits rolled, and I just saw his shoulders doing that, and Ismail just, was tears rolling down his face, he turned round to me and went, "it's so beautiful, god!" But it was entirely genuine, this is a, you know, this is a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, and at that point, I went, "oh, this is not the big bad wolf," and he was immensely generous to me, and I became very, very, very fond of him."

[bollywoodirect]

Remembering Leela Naidu on her 10th death anniversary. Leela Naid (1940 – 28 July 2009) was an actress who starred in a small number of Hindi and English films, including Yeh Raste Hain Pyar Ke (1963), based on the real-life Nanavati case, and The Householder, Merchant Ivory Productions' first film. She was Femina Miss India in 1954, and was featured in the Vogue along with Maharani Gayatri Devi in the list of 'World's Ten Most Beautiful Women', a list she was continuously listed from the 1950s to the 1960s in prominent fashion magazines worldwide. She is remembered for her stunning classical beauty and subtle acting style. Naidu made her film debut alongside Balraj Sahni in Anuradha (1960), directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Mukherjee cast Naidu in the role after he happened to see one of her pictures taken by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. Though it was not successful at the box office, the film went on to win the National Film Award for Best Feature Film, and garnered Naidu critical acclaim. The movie's music, including the songs Haye re woh din kewn na aaye, Jaane kaise sapnon mein kho gayin ankhiyan and Kaise din beete kaisi beeti raatein, were composed by sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. Naidu's next film was Nitin Bose's Ummeed (1962), alongside Ashok Kumar and Joy Mukherjee. She played an offbeat role as an adulterous wife in Yeh Rastey Hain Pyar Ke (1963), directed by RK Nayyar. The movie, which co-starred Sunil Dutt and Rehman, was based on the real life case K. M. Nanavati vs. State of Maharashtra. Despite its topical nature and controversial theme, the movie flopped; however, some of its songs, notably Ye Khaamoshiyaan, Ye Tanahaaiyaan, became quite popular. In 1963, Naidu played the lead role of a rebellious young bride in the first Merchant Ivory film, The Householder, directed by James Ivory. According to Leela in her 2009 semi-biography, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory had approached her about making their first ever feature movie with a story about an archaeologist but this fell through as the backers did not like the film script. She then suggested to Merchant-Ivory, making a movie about a book called The Householder by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala which led to their introduction to Ruth and a fruitful lifelong partnership. Satyajit Ray loaned his crew, got many of the actors he used in his movies to act in this movie, selected the music and musicians, and re-cut and reedited the final version, thus guiding and teaching Merchant-Ivory in movie making technique which they successfully used in their award-winning movies and documentaries in the future. After watching her performance in the "The Householder", Satyajit Ray who had actually assisted and guided Merchant-Ivory in their first film venture, planned an English film, The Journey, with Marlon Brando, Shashi Kapoor and Naidu, but sadly the film was never made. She was considered for the role of Rosie in Vijay Anand's Guide (1965), but the role required a trained dancer, and so Naidu lost out to Waheeda Rehman. Her last film in Hindi mainstream cinema was Baghi (1964) a costume extravaganza co-starring Pradeep Kumar, Vijaya Choudhury, and Mumtaz. Later, Naidu made a guest appearance in the Merchant-Ivory film, The Guru (1969). She returned to cinema in 1985 to play a Goan matriarch in Shyam Benegal's period film, Trikaal. Her appearance in Electric Moon (1992), directed by Pradip Krishen, turned out to be her last cinematic role. She turned down Raj Kapoor four times when he approached her for casting her in his films. David Lean wanted to cast her as Tonya in Dr Zhivago, Satyajit Ray wanted to make a film with her and Marlon Brando. Leela Naidu produced a documentary on mentally challenged children, A Certain Childhood, which was Kumar Shahni's first directorial project under the banner of Leela Naidu Films. Later, she registered under Unicorn Films to make another film, Houseless Bombay, which was never made. She briefly held a job as an editor at the Bombay-based magazine Key Notes. In September 2009, Lila, a documentary on Leela Naidu's life, by Bidisha Roy Das and Priyanjana Dutta was released.

[expo63]

Production Company: Merchant Ivory Productions. Producer: Ismail Merchant. Director: Anthony Korner.* Script: James Ivory.

‘Over four decades Merchant Ivory Productions have nurtured and sustained a large extended filmmaking “family” – a melting pot of cultural and creative diversity drawn from every facet of the game. The approach has paid off: with an arsenal of awards (including two Oscars) in hand, their films have earned the deserved acclaim of an international audience. Their features, shorts and documentaries, whilst varied, share an interest in human complexities: external layers of superficial characterisation are stripped back to reveal the fundamental motivations that pilot the people on the screen. The same candid honesty comes to the fore in Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls, securing its status as a long-time favourite of Merchant-Ivory fans.

It would have been easy to poke fun at the crass kitsch of the Bollywood hit parade that opens the film, but James Ivory’s socio-artistic commentary (narrated by director Anthony Korner) sets a detached, almost disinterested tone, lending the documentary a gloss of seriousness. As Helen shimmies through a series of film clips in a blur of noisy colour, she and the phenomenon of her popularity are verbally examined. Is she the symbol of a new Indian folk art, or, as her traditionalist critics argue, the final degeneration of a dance culture refined over 5,000 years? The answer, probably, is both.’

– Lindsay Henderson, Senses of Cinema, Issue 26, May 2003 (reprinted from Melbourne Cinémathèque Annotations on Film)

[*Longtime Merchant Ivory associate, producer, and the father of Freddy Korner, aka Freddy Honeychurch’s friend Floyd in Ivory’s A Room With A View.]

Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls (1973)

by Anthony Korner