James Ivory (Pride pt. XIX)
A Room with a View
Maurice
Good day and good slay, my dear readers! As we continue to march through this glorious Pride Month, the marches and parades and protests can start to add up and exhaust you. This is why I always suggest the best form of cooling down to my fellow overworked, sometimes hungover, friends, and that’s to watch movies, of course! So let’s keep our celebration of queer directors going with a double feature from one of the most prolific, and yet seldom discussed, gay directors of the mid to late 20th century: James Ivory. I love writers, I love directors, but I have a profound love and appreciation for writer-directors like James Ivory (who just turned 97 on June 7th), artists who have to be completely solid in their visions in order to pull off the script and the finished product of a film. James Ivory was born Richard Jerome Hazen on June 7, 1928, in Berkeley, California, but he was adopted shortly after his birth by Hallie Millicent and Edward Patrick Ivory, who renamed him James Francis Ivory. He grew up in Klamath Falls, Oregon and eventually earned a fine arts degree from the University of Oregon in 1951—being awarded the Lawrence Medal: UO’s College of Design’s highest honor for its graduates. He then attended USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he directed the short film Four in the Morning (1953). He wrote, photographed, and produced Venice: Theme and Variations—a half-hour documentary that he submitted as his thesis film for his master’s degree in cinema—and in 1957, The New York Times named it as one of the ten best non-theatrical films of the year. At an NYC screening of Ivory’s documentary The Sword and the Flute in 1959, Ivory met Ismail Merchant, an aspiring director, and the two became fast friends—forming their iconic, long-lasting company Merchant Ivory Productions just two years later in 1961. It was also around this time that Ivory and Merchant fell in love, and a truly magical romance blossomed alongside their exciting new business venture. Merchant Ivory Productions premiered its first film, The Householder, based upon a novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (who also wrote the screenplay), which was the first Indian-made film to be distributed internationally by a major American studio—Columbia Pictures. However, it wasn’t until the 1970s that this partnership “hit on a successful formula for studied, slow-moving pieces ... Merchant Ivory became known for their attention to tiny period detail and opulence of their sets.” Their first success in this style was Jhabvala’s adaptation of Henry James’ The Europeans, and Merchant Ivory would continue to collaborate with Jhabvala over the years. Of this trio, Merchant once said, “It is a strange marriage we have at Merchant Ivory ... I am an Indian Muslim, Ruth is a German Jew, and Jim is a Protestant American. Someone once described us as a three-headed god. Maybe they should have called us a three-headed monster!” This trio became so revered, particularly in Europe, that The National Portrait Gallery in London has paintings of James, Ismail, and Ruth—even though they all lived in New York City and none of them are English. Richard Robbins was also a crucial part of this film family, as he composed the music for the vast majority of Merchant Ivory films. On location for most film sets, Ismail was renowned for his cooking and charming of the cast and crew, a practice often necessary in Merchant Ivory’s earlier, desperate, low-budget days, and though some former colleagues have noted how exhausting and stressful these sets were, many of their collaborators only have kind things to say about their experiences. As I learned in Steven Soucy’s recent documentary Merchant Ivory, Ismail and James were the captains of their intriguing, vagabond-ish, almost circus-esque production company, and they often sparred on set—with producer Ismail concerned that James would bankrupt each film, and writer-director James concerned that Ismail would bankrupt each film artistically. James, or “Jim” as his collaborators refer to him, was cool and calm and gentle in his approach to filmmaking, “He didn't direct, what he did was trust”, claims actress Natasha McElhone. And Ismail was a boisterous firecracker, who was constantly persuading the cast and crew to work for less money, on account of the lovely settings and meals and communities they all worked within. Some people have even called Ismail Merchant a con man, to which James Ivory retorts, “He was a con man, you have to be in order to be a successful film producer.” Though sometimes contentious and complicated and teeming with other lovers on the side, Ivory and Merchant’s working and romantic partnership was strong and steady. James and Ismail’s professional and romantic relationship spanned 40 films and 44 years—until Ismail’s death in 2005—and according to the Guinness Book of World Records, theirs was the longest partnership in independent cinema history. All throughout the 80s and 90s, James Ivory wrote and directed some of the most romantic, refined films of this time, such as The Bostonians, Howard’s End, The Remains of the Day, Jefferson in Paris, The White Countess, as well as tonight’s two films. As David Quinlan said, “Elegance, taste, care and an eye for the recreation of times past drape almost all of the work of this American-born director who has ranged from India to England and back to America depicting the moods, manners, milieu and morals of enclosed societies whose members are pinned like butterflies and ruthlessly dissected for our inspection.” This distinctly dreamy trademark followed Ivory, even when he wasn’t directing, all the way to the age of 89, when he became the oldest recipient of any Academy Award, and won for Best Adapted Screenplay for Call Me By Your Name— somehow the only Oscar that film earned. While his films often deal with some sort of scandal or subversive study of love, Ivory wasn’t always an out-gay man and neither was Merchant. Ivory told The Guardian in 2018 that keeping quiet about their private lives was a way to protect his partner, “That is not something that an Indian Muslim would ever say publicly or in print. Ever! You have to remember that Ismail was an Indian citizen living in Bombay, with a deeply conservative Muslim family there. It’s not the sort of thing he was going to broadcast. Since we were so close and lived most of our lives together, I wasn’t about to undermine him.” Especially at the height of Merchant Ivory’s success, James Ivory also noted that they didn’t want to anything to take away from the art they were putting out. It’s a shame that these gorgeous and enchanting films had to come out of one of the darkest, least-accepting eras in the culture (the 80s and 90s), but I think it’s clear—judging by tonight’s two films alone—that there is still a lot of queer magic to these projects that couldn’t be stifled.
Let’s begin with the hetero-but-semi-queer-coded love affair that put Merchant Ivory on the map, and won the hearts of audiences internationally and within Hollywood (the coldest hearts to win over), this is James Ivory’s 1985 film A Room with a View. Based off of E.M. Forster’s 1908 novel of the same name, A Room with a View follows a young Englishwoman named Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter, in her first major role), who is currently on holiday with her overbearingly anxious cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith), in Florence. They’ve booked a stay at a modest pensione, which has unfortunately catfished them into believing that their rooms would be a lot nicer. At a communal dinner shortly after, Charlotte wrings her hands and laments their lack of a view of the River Arno that was promised, when two men at the table offer up their rooms with views. These two men are the sweet, red-faced Mr. Emerson (Denholm Elliott), and his handsome, quiet, golden-haired son, George (Julian Sands), and they are happy to trade rooms, even though Charlotte is hesitant, and can’t help noticing Lucy and George exchanging a rather long glance as they pass by each other. The entire group staying at this pensione is different than the normal company these rich Brits are accustomed to—like a lady author named Eleanor Lavish (Dame Judi Dench), the irreverent reverend Mr. Beebe, two spinster sisters, and Mr. Emerson and his hot, brooding son. Every shot of this film is utterly stunning and brought me right back to Call Me By Your Name, between the art, architecture, sculptures, history, and secrets by candlelight. Lucy and George have had wildly different upbringings, though they are almost as equally awkward and unsure of themselves, but something does seem to click when the two get to finally have an unchaperoned conversation. The perceptive Eleanor Lavish doesn’t even need to see this interaction to be inspired by their youthful potential, and though cousin Charlotte tries her best to keep the two separated, one afternoon, George steals a kiss from Lucy in a golden, waist-high poppy field. It is one of the most unexpectedly and thrillingly romantic moments I’ve seen in awhile, until cockblock cousin Charlotte runs over to break it up. Lucy and Charlotte agree to never speak of this moment to anyone, and every eclectic party at this pensione goes their respective ways. Back home in Surrey, Lucy is being courted by a prominent, pretentious, repressed man named Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis), who cares very much about his own taste in literature, music, and art, and cares very little about who Lucy even is, it seems. Cecil is everything the bohemian George is not: he’s a snob, he’s staunch in his opinions, and he asks for permission before he kisses Lucy—even after they’re officially engaged. In their corner of the countryside, a new cottage has come up for lease, and though Lucy tries to get the spinster sisters she met in Italy to stay there, it is instead a Mr. Emerson who moves in—after he learns of the availability from a chance encounter with Cecil. Lucy is appalled and enraged that, just as her life is beginning to take shape, this handsome, blond bohemian man with whom she once shared a kiss has shown up in her neighborhood, and sure enough, this event causes a lot of dizzying dilemmas. A Room with a View is a far goofier and more modern story than I’d imagined, given the fact that its cover reads more Brontë than Austen. The film was nominated for eight Oscars and won three (for Costume Design, Art Direction, and Adapted Screenplay), and though it did drag in some moments, the entire experience was more refreshing and entertaining—and with more male nudity—than I’d anticipated. Helena Bonham Carter and her frizzy fluffy hair, dare I say, reminded me of myself on a humid, Summer’s day (especially when I haven’t done my brows), and Julian Sands was at the peak of his handsomeness—which, really, never wavered. The settings and scenery of this film, as well as the gowns and garments and classical music, were all effortlessly elegant and beautiful. The entire thing is an aesthetic marvel, and its lush, dazzling greenery is what I think I’ll remember most. If you were to isolate any frame from this film it would look like a painting, and the same goes for tonight’s second film: James Ivory’s 1987 classic Maurice.
While Ivory has remarked that he doesn’t think of any of his movies as specifically “gay films,” he says Maurice “totally” was. Maurice, also based on a novel by E.M. Forster, opens on a windy day at a gloomy but bright beach, where schoolboys and girls are flying kites. A young boy named Maurice Hall is speaking with his teacher, who realizes that Maurice has no male figures in his life, so he decides to give him a brief, sand-drawn lesson of the birds and the bees. He also mentions how his body is a temple, and the most sacred thing he can do is to procreate with a woman, and young Maurice is like, “Okay…” The teacher says to “never mention this to your mother,”—an ideal thing for a strange adult to tell a child—and invites him, ten years to the day, for “you and your future wife to dine with me and my wife.” We are then transported to 1909, where an older Maurice (James Wilby) is attending the University of Cambridge, and has made a couple of friends, the aristocratic Viscount Risely, and the also-impressively-rich-and-even-more-impressively-handsome Clive Durham (Hugh Grant.) This trio of friends has a gay old time long before anyone is outwardly-gay to one another, but there is some delectable tension built between Maurice and Clive, that is carefully introduced through subtle sexiness like Maurice taking a bite from the apple Clive’s been eating, and Maurice putting a cigarette in Clive’s mouth as he plays piano. It’s the kind of sexual tension you just can’t fake or force (looking at you, last week, Katharine and Jimmy) and Wilby and Grant have proper chemistry—even though we never see anything too scandalous happen. While the two men grow closer and freer, their relationship is juxtaposed against the stuffy, Christian ideals of their academic institution, and England, as a whole. One professor even directs a student who is reading Plato aloud to omit a part that mentions “that unspeakable vice of the Greeks”, aka gay sex. Once Maurice and Clive make their love known to one another, their anxieties start to grow, especially when their fellow queer friend Risley is arrested on indecency charges. While Room with a View was an idyllic story in an idyllic setting, Maurice is a bit more of a tragedy within an idyllic setting, though the ending is, oh-so-thankfully, still happy. A Room with a View was riddled with Call Me By Your Name vibes, but Maurice was almost-shot-for-shot the same film in some instances. Between the bike-riding, the naturally-lit dinner tables, the tall library walls, the secretly-adjoining rooms, and especially the lush, overwhelmingly green forest where Maurice and Clive clandestinely run their fingers through each other’s hair, Maurice clearly inspired Luca Guadagnino, and it was wonderous to see. And even though Maurice faces far more trials and tribulations, rather than just hijinks and shenanigans like Lucy in A Room with a View, Maurice still finds his way back to himself, and what he truly desires. To quote Sarah Larson’s interview with Ivory in 2017, “E. M. Forster wrote Maurice in 1913; it was published in 1971, after his death. ‘A happy ending was imperative,’ Forster wrote, in 1960. ‘I was determined that in fiction anyway, two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows. . .’ Ivory saw it as a natural successor to A Room with a View, ‘It was the same author, same period, same country,” he told me. ‘Same situation, really. You had muddled young people living a lie.’ …The book dares to imagine a better world—but only just. Maurice suffers throughout, and his happy ending is a bold and unlikely gift. Forster didn’t publish the novel in his time because of obscenity laws.” And as Larson goes onto explain, our culture was experiencing another hateful moment at the time of the film’s release, “In 1987, attitudes were the problem. Gay romance onscreen, especially at the multiplex, was rare. Happier endings were rarer still. A Times piece called ‘A Gay Love Story’, about the novelty of the film’s subject matter, imagined skeptics’ responses to the film—‘Is so defiant a salute to homosexual passion really to be welcomed during a spiraling AIDS crisis?’—and reassured readers that it was about love, not ‘bathhouse promiscuity.’” This is devastating, not just for Forster at the turn of the 20th century, but for humanity as well, who were driven to a paranoid cruelty at the turn of the twenty-first century. Knowing all of this really makes me appreciate Maurice even more. If this film had ended differently, I doubt I would’ve liked it as much, but it is still an impeccable, lovely, well-written movie that made me swoon and blush and yearn—in the way that only James Ivory could muster. Well, that’s about all the time I’ve got this week, but I thank you, as always, for putting up with my rambling, impassioned writing. Until next time, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite James Ivory quotes:
“With the right partner, you can create the world that you want to live in—and as an artist you can show us what it looks like.”
And, for good measure, one of my favorite Latrice Royale quotes:
