Books in French are on www.livres-cinema.info
Merchant-Ivory
Interviews
Edited by Laurence Raw
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
Merchant-Ivory: Interviews gathers together, for the first time, interviews made over a span of fifty years with director James Ivory (b. 1928), producer Ismail Merchant (1936–2005), and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1927–2013). Beginning with their earliest work in India, and ending with James Ivory's last film, The City of Your Final Destination (2009), the book traces their career, while offering valuable insights into their creative filmmaking process. The volume serves as a corrective to the prevailing critical orthodoxy attached to Merchant-Ivory's work, which tends to regard them as being solely concerned with historically accurate costumes and settings. As independent filmmakers, they have developed an idiosyncratic approach that resists facile classification. Merchant-Ivory have insisted on maintaining their independence.
More importantly, this book shows how Merchant-Ivory have always taken considerable care in casting their films, as well as treating actors with respect. This is a deliberate policy, designed to bring out one of the triumvirate's principal thematic concerns, running throughout their work—the impact of the “clash of cultures” on individuals. Partly this has been inspired by their collective experiences of living and working in different cultures. They do not offer any answers to this issue; rather they believe that their task is simply to raise awareness; to make filmgoers conscious of the importance of cultural sensitivities that assume paramount significance in any exchange, whether verbal or nonverbal.
About the Author:
Laurence Raw (1959–2018) was professor of English at Baskent University in Ankara, Turkey. He authored several books, including Adapting Henry James to the Screen: Gender, Fiction, and Film; The Ridley Scott Encyclopedia; and Character Actors in Horror and Science Fiction Films, 1930–1960.
See the publisher website: University Press of Mississippi
See the complete filmography of James Ivory on the website: IMDB ...
> From the same author:
Adapted from the Original (2018)
Essays on the Value and Values of Works Remade for a New Medium
Dir. Laurence Raw
Subject: Technique > Adaptation
The Adaptation of History (2012)
Essays on Ways of Telling the Past
Dir. Laurence Raw and Defne Ersin Tutan
Subject: Genre > Historical films
> On a related topic:
James Ivory in Conversation (2006)
How Merchant Ivory Makes Its Movies
Subject: Director > James Ivory
They Made the Movies (2024)
Conversations With Great Filmmakers
by James Bawden and Ron Miller
Subject: Director
D. A. Pennebaker (2024)
Interviews
Dir. Keith Beattie and Trent Griffiths
Subject: Director > D.A. Pennebaker
Krzysztof Kieślowski (2024)
Interviews
Dir. Renata Bernard and Steven Woodward
Subject: Director > Krzysztof Kieslowski
The De Palma Decade (2024)
Redefining Cinema with Doubles, Voyeurs, and Psychic Teens
Subject: Director > Brian de Palma
Back
