At a time when film-making was still dominated by the major studios, the twenty-five-year old Ismail Merchant, with one short documentary film to his credit, established himself as an independent producer of feature films. In partnership with the American director James Ivory and the German-born writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, his company, Merchant Ivory Productions, has been responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed films of the last twenty-six years. Ismail Merchant is now one of the most distinguished film producers in contemporary cinema. Revolutionary in his approach to film-making, his films were the first to use the abundant material of the Indian subcontinent as a subject for feature films aimed at an international audience. Unable to interest the hidebound film industry in his own country or in Hollywood in his ideas, he was forced to reject conventional methods of film financing and film-making and he became a pioneer of independent cinema. This book is an account of the making of one film in the life of an extraordinary film-maker. At the end of 1987 he realized two long-cherished wishes: the film the John Masters novel The Deceivers and to work with new collaborators under the Merchant Ivory umbrella. While making The Deceivers, Merchant's set too on the nature of a battlefield. He had to face conflicts with new collaborators, internal feuding, the complexities of the Indian legal system, local politics and local corruption and, finally, arrest. Merchant has never been interested in committing his life to a self-congratulatory autobiography, but the making of The Deceivers has finally drawn him to record, within the context of his recent experiences, something of his unorthodox methods, his work, his philosophy and his life.

Films Movies Merchant-Ivory