The Merchant Ivory archives will live in Rochester, NY. The collection, which includes 1,775 reels of film, 673 master elements — original negative, magnetic and optical audio tracks, A/B rolls, etc — plus a plethora of photographs, correspondence, business records and other documents, has been donated to the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. It takes its place alongside archives of work by Cecil B. DeMille, Spike Lee, Ken Burns, Kathryn Bigelow, Martin Scorsese and others.
The announcement was made at the New York offices of Technicolor, which last month offered its corporate archives to the Eastman House. The Merchant Ivory Productions archives document the work of a filmmaking team that generally consists of director James Ivory, the late producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
“I’m discovering stuff all the time that I didn’t even know was around,” Ivory said, noting that Merchant Ivory made films in New York, California, Bombay, Paris, and London over the course of more than 40 years. “When Ismail’s apartment was sold and all the things were taken out of it, there was a lot of film material there — prints and things, tapes, so much stuff — just sort of pushed into the back of the closet.”
Thinking about the complete body of work and materials, Ivory said it functions as a sort of autobiography of the three partners, as well as a chronicle of how filmmaking techniques have evolved over the years. “When I go into a modern editing room, I remember what it was like cutting a film back in the 1960s in India, when at best you’d get a rickety Moviola,” he recalled. “There were no flatbeds. All your sound was optical sound. You couldn’t see your rushes. If you were shooting out in the country somewhere, the best you could hope for is that you would see silent, black-and-white rushes projected in some cinema that wasn’t being used at the moment. You never heard sound, because they had no way of doing an interlock.
“We made film after film without ever seeing our rushes. Even on this last film I made in Argentina [The City of Your Final Destination, which opens in New York tomorrow], I couldn’t see our rushes. We didn’t even print them. It was impossible to import them into Argentina. There was terrible red tape. So I’m used to that. Video assist helps you a lot in knowing what you have.”
Asked whether any of the films exist in different cuts that might entice historians and other completists, Ivory indicated that any alternate versions were typically generated by censors trimming sex and nudity or offensive language from films for exhibition in local markets, meaning that those were completely out of Merchant Ivory’s control. In India, he noted, alternate cuts would be created by zealous projectionists who would unceremoniously trim scenes from films they exhibited before sending the newly denuded prints on their way, keeping reels collecting just the sexy bits on hand for private screenings. And he said a new criterion has emerged in the censor’s game: cigarette smoking. “In the Director’s Guild, you’re given the opportunity to supervise the recutting for television of your films,” he said. “We just had to do Le Divorce, and now they cut for smoking. Unless the dialogue is so much a part of the plot — if what someone is saying [while they’re smoking] is so important, they don’t cut it. But if it’s not important, they cut the smoking! Because it’s ‘offensive.'”
Fortunately, Ivory and the Eastman House agreed that none of the original film materials seem to have deteriorated to the point where restoration work is necessary. Asked if he would consider shooting a new film in high definition, Ivory insisted that he was open to the possibility. “I would [shoot a film digitally],” he told StudioDaily. “I have no problem with any new technical gift that comes my way. Half the time when I see a film, and you say it was shot digitally, I don’t even know. Someone has to tell me. I’m just surprised, because it looks absolutely fabulous to me.”
Ivory will receive the title of George Eastman Honorary Scholar on May 5, the opening night of the 360 | 365 George Eastman House Film Festival, where The City of Your Final Destination will be screened. For more information on the Eastman House, visit www.eastmanhouse.org. For more on the film festival, visit film360365.com
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