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TALES OF THE SILVER SCREEN James Ivory in Conversation: How Merchant Ivory Makes Its Movies by Robert Emmet Long (University of California Press, 2005. xii + 338 pages. Illustrated. $24.95)
"You've made so many films that celebrate other countries, other cultures, other worlds," Robert Emmet Long reminds James Ivory, the acclaimed American director. "Do you have affirmative, even patriotic, sentiments regarding your own country?"
"Never so much as when I'm looking down at it from an airplane," the director replies. Apparently Ivory enjoys a less enigmatic relationship with the foreign countries in which he has shot the majority of his films. Indeed he appears nearly unbruised by European condescension despite shooting ten films over the past twenty-five years in Europe.
The publication of Long's collection of interviews sadly coincided with the death of Ismail Merchant, Ivory's long-time partner in filmmaking and in life. (Ivory: "I feel sometimes that we are the same person.") Merchant was famed as a persuasive producer whose charm accounts for the team's prolific production record. Moreover his financial savvy explains why Ivory's earliest feature films were set in India. As their international audience grew, the filmmakers moved their productions to the United States and, eventually, to England and France.
The author of a previous study of Ivory's...