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Filmmaker Ismail Merchant passes away
26th May 2005 15.30 IST
By Agencies

Mumbai-born filmmaker Ismail Merchant , who in partnership with James Ivory made some memorable movies, died in London on Wednesday at the age of 69.

A spokesman of the Merchant-Ivory production company's London office said Merchant died in hospital. Merchant had been reportedly suffering from stomach ailments for the last few days.

Merchant and Ivory, an American, made some 40 films together, including ‘A Room With a View’, ‘Howards End’, both based on P M Forster's novel, ‘Heat and Dust’ starring Shashi Kapoor and ‘The Remains of the Day’, starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thomson and Christopher Reeve.

‘The Mystic Masseur’, based on the novel by Nobel laureate V S Naipaul, is Merchant's latest work as Director and was released in 2002.

Merchant made an impressive debut with ‘In Custody’, based on a novel by Anita Desai, and starring Shashi Kapoor, which won Indian National Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Costume and Best Production Design.

His second directing feature, ‘The Proprietor’, starred Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Pierre Aumond and Christopher Cazenove and was shot in Paris.

The Merchant-Ivory joint venture, which commenced in 1961, fetched them six Oscars, including four for best picture -- with German-born screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Films like ‘Room With a View’ and ‘Howards End’ made their marks as well-made and technically precise recreation of period pieces.

Born in Bombay on December 25, 1936, Merchant has lived and worked for most of his life in the West, completing his education at New York University where he earned his Masters Degree in Business Administration.

Merchant's film ‘The Creation of Woman’ was nominated in 1961 for an Academy Award and was an official entry from the United States in the Cannes Film Festival that same year.

On way to Cannes, Merchant met Ivory and both agreed to form Merchant Ivory Productions to make English-language feature films in India for the international market.

‘The Householder’ was Merchant-Ivory's first Indian film to be distributed worldwide by a major American company, Columbia Pictures. It was followed by more Indian features, including ‘Shakespeare Wallah’ (1965), ‘The Guru’ (1969) and ‘Bombay Talkies’ (1970).

In addition to producing, Merchant directed a number of films and two television features. For television, he directed a short feature entitled ‘Mahatma and the Mad Boy’, and a full-length television feature, ‘The Courtesans of Bombay’ made for Britain's Channel Four.

Merchant's third feature film as director, ‘Cotton Mary’, set in Kerala and starring Madhur Jaffrey, Greta Scacchi, and James Wilby, tells the story of an Anglo-Indian nurse in search of her identity in independent India.

The film was considered as a fine example of Merchant's ability to combine the best of East and West in modern cinema.

The American release of ‘The Golden Bowl’ in April of 2001, starring Nick Nolte, Uma Thurman and Anjelica Huston, marked the Fortieth Anniversary of Merchant's career in film production, a career that has already earned the Merchant Ivory team a place in The Guinness Book of World Records for the longest partnership in independent cinema.

The latest Merchant Ivory Production, ‘Le Divorce’, based on best-selling novel by Diane Johnson and adapted for the screen by Jhabvala, stars Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, Stockard Channing, Matthew Modine, Sam Waterston and Leslie Caron and is expected to be released this summer by Fox Searchlight.