James Ivory

James Ivory0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

James Ivory0:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1983.

James Ivory0:11

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

Our castaway this week is a film director, a very independent film director. You'll have seen a number of his feature films on television, if not in the cinema. It's James Ivory. Mr. Ivory, there's a well-known saying in film studios: it'll be all right when we got music on it. And I presume the director has his say in choosing the music, so it's an advantage if he knows a bit about it. Is music an interest of yours? Very much so, yes. Have you any musical skill? Do you play an instrument? I don't. I can't do anything. I would have liked to have played the piano or even the harpsichord, but I never took lessons, and I guess the time has passed now.

James Ivory0:56

Would you

James Ivory0:58

Bye-bye.

Presenter1:07

But you enjoy listening. But I enjoy very much, yes. And I I enjoy the musical part of my films. I mean the the scoring of the films, laying the music in,'cause it's scored in a certain way into certain links, but then when once you get in the editing room, sometimes to the dismay of the composer you move it around a bit.

Presenter1:24

With what degree of dread would you view a spell on a desert island? Could you endure loneliness? I suppose I could endure it, but I wouldn't exactly like it.

Presenter1:32

I wouldn't look forward to being.

Presenter1:34

On a desert island for very long. Do you think this miserable allowance of just eight discs would help? It would, yes. Was it difficult to choose? It was a little difficult. I mean, there were some that I knew immediately that I wanted, and others I have to research a bit. I mean, I knew I wanted certain composers and that kind of thing, but since you caught me over here and I wa I didn't have my own record collection, it was a bit hard to be specific sometimes. Where did we start? What's the first one? Well, with a very specific uh the magic flute. Why?

Presenter2:03

I just find it uh supremely beautiful and that is my all-time favorite musical composition. So I I really can't tell you why, but it it's j just the various moods of it and the beauty of the music and the fantasy of the story. You know, there are probably a hundred reasons that hard to put into speech. Which section are we going to hear? We're going to hear the first dramatic section, when the three ladies of the Queen of the Night find Tomino.

Presenter2:27

and uh enthuse over him.

Presenter2:41

Strike does give us realization. Uh

Speaker 42:44

Uh Uh Uh

Presenter2:45

Uh

Speaker 43:03

So get on Zarkus Hill, if life went down

Speaker 33:19

Uh

Speaker 43:19

Sick.

Speaker 33:19

Uh

Speaker 43:19

Uh Uh If

Speaker 43:22

Ah

Presenter3:30

The opening vocal section of Mozart The Magic Flute

Presenter3:33

Tomino sung by Fritz Vunderlicht.

Presenter3:36

mister Ivory, you're American.

Presenter3:38

In what part of the United States were you born? I was born in California. You spent a lot of your early youth in Oregon. I grew up in Oregon. I moved there when I was five. Why did you move? My father was a lumberman, and he and his partner opened a sawmill. This was in the days of the Depression, and the partner, my father's partner, had a lot of capital, or some capital in any case, and my father had a lot of energy, and the two of them together combined their resources, and they went to Oregon and reactivated a sawmill there, where I grew up. An ideal combination.

James Ivory4:05

Yeah.

Presenter4:08

As a boy, were you a a movie goer? Yes, very much so. Well, like any child, I mean I you know, I liked going to the movies and I went as often as I would be allowed. And I I I think I went every

Presenter4:18

Every Saturday.

Presenter4:20

Can you remember any early films that made a big impression? You could say I was a like a thinking child when I was, say, 11, 12, 13, along and there. Films like mostly, I suppose, Gone with the Wind and then films like The Wizard of Oz and movies like San Francisco I liked very much. I liked Westerns. You did, in fact, visit Hollywood. Yes, my father's business took us to Hollywood from time to time. He sold lumber to MGM during the war. And once in a while, we'd go to Los Angeles, or I'd go down with him on a business trip, and then I was taken to the studio, I mean the studio being MGM, and I'd watch whatever they let me watch, which wasn't very much. Had you decided that films was what you wanted to do? Well, by about that time, yes. I would say when I was about 15 or so, I decided to work in films. I decided that I would be a set designer. The whole decor side of it, everything to do with sets, interested me then. And so an architect friend of ours told me that the best way to prepare for that was to become an architect. So when I went to the University of Oregon, I enrolled in an architecture course. Did you graduate in architecture? No, and then I, after about three years, I switched into a fine arts course. I graduated in that.

James Ivory5:00

What

James Ivory5:32

Hmm.

Presenter5:33

And then you went to the University of Southern California. Then I went to the University of Southern California, yes. To take cinema.

James Ivory5:35

When I

Presenter5:38

You had to make your own short film as a thesis. Yes. Well, I didn't have to, but I wanted to. One of the reasons I wanted to was I really didn't like the University of Southern California that much, or it was in fact that I didn't I wasn't all that happy in Los Angeles, so I decided to uh go to Europe and make a film in Venice, which was a a documentary film.

James Ivory5:44

Yeah.

Presenter5:58

You had already roamed a bit in Europe. Well, I'd made one trip there already.

Presenter6:02

And on that trip I'd gone to Venice and I liked it very much. I don't know why, it just appealed to me. It's very hard always to say why you like a place. I've been asked for years why I like India and there are a hundred reasons, I suppose. It's like Mozart, I mean, you know.

Presenter6:15

You made a longer European trip with the United States Army. Yes. You were caught in the draft. I was caught in the draft and sent to Germany and was there two years. What did you do? I worked for Special Services. Special Services is the entertainment and sports part of the Army. I don't know if it still is, but it was then. And we put on all kinds of soldier shows and that sort of thing. Well, that was all useful experience. Yes, it was. And then back to California, too. Then back to California. To finish your Venice film. To finish my Venice film. Which indeed you sold, which was pretty good. Almost, yes. As soon as it was done, I did sell it. I found a distributor in New York, and they took it. Great. It's still in distribution.

James Ivory6:36

Uh

James Ivory6:37

Yes, it was.

James Ivory6:41

Which indeed

James Ivory6:50

Great.

Presenter6:52

Let's have your second record. What's that? It will be Bach, a a piece from the well-timbered clavier.

James Ivory6:58

Do you like it?

Presenter7:00

Piano or harpsichord? Harpsichord, which I wanted. Prefer, really.

Presenter8:04

Bach's Prelude and Fugue, No. twenty one, The Well Tempered Clavier, played by Helmut Walker.

Presenter8:11

mister Ivory, while in and out of museums getting material for your Venice film, you discovered another subject.

Presenter8:18

About which you wanted to make a film? Indian painting, yes. Indian miniature painting. And somehow you got a grant to go to India? No, now that it wasn't a grant to go to India. My father gave me a grant, you might say.

Presenter8:28

I told him that I wanted to make a film on Indian miniature painting and he gave me a little money to do it. It didn't cost very much.

Presenter8:36

And I began that film, which took a long, long time because I didn't really know anything about India, and I didn't know anything certainly about Indian painting. So I had to learn about a number of subjects. I mean, Indian music, and Indian history, of course, and Indian religion to some extent. And that combined in the film that's called The Sword and the Flute. That was my beginnings in India.

James Ivory8:58

Yeah.

Presenter8:59

And at a showing of of that film, you met a young Indian who had similar ideas and enthusiasms to yours. Yes, that's right. This is Ismail Merchant we're talking about. Ismail Merchant. Ismail Merchant, yes.

James Ivory9:10

Is my

Presenter9:11

He really wanted to go back to India and make films, international films in English, in India, films that would be with Indian subjects but starring Hollywood actors as well as Indian actors. And that was his original plan.

Presenter9:27

I mean, in fact, that's what did turn out eventually in in our own partnership. But I didn't uh I I wasn't particularly interested at that time when I first met him in doing feature films. I knew I probably would some day, but uh

Presenter9:40

Not then. You had similar interests, but you were opposite in personalities. Somewhat, yes. Well, we're both quite uh optimistic types. I think we'd have to be to

Presenter9:49

Jumped in like that. What was the first concrete proposition that you cooked up between you?

Presenter9:54

Well, he wanted to make a a film in India with American participation, and I put him in touch with some Americans that I knew who wanted, in fact, to go to India and do a feature film.

Presenter10:05

And uh he met them and and uh there was another director and another writer and uh he was going then to produce their film.

Presenter10:13

I was merely going back to India to finish another film that I had started there before.

Presenter10:18

Well, the film that he was planning to make fell through.

Presenter10:22

And he then offered to me the chance to direct the householder. Yes. Which was my first feature film. And this brought in the third member of what was to become a Triumvirate. Bruth Johnvala, yes. A German born, English educated, Indian married

James Ivory10:32

Yeah.

Presenter10:35

Later, book a prize winner.

Presenter10:38

And mister Merchant found the money.

Presenter10:40

Yes, mm-hmm. Numbers of sources. Which I believe ran out halfway through production. Well, it did, but also what ran out was our patience. We were shooting in Delhi and it was getting hotter and hotter and hotter. We we were not it was the middle of May and uh we just felt we couldn't go on anyway. It was really unbearable. So we stopped a little bit before the money ran out. Do you remember what the film cost? As a matter of interest. It was something like $125,000. And mind you, that was for two versions, a version in English and then an exact

James Ivory11:00

Do you remember what the

Presenter11:09

Duplicate in Hindi. And you you got your Ani Bago right on that one. Yes.

Presenter11:13

Which I gather you used for your second film, which has become a famous picture, a little classic. That's right, Shakespeare Walla. A lovely subject. You found a little troop. Well, we've yes, we found, actually through Shashi Kapoor, these were his in-laws, we found a little troop, the Kendall family, who had been going around India for about a decade. I'm talking now mid-sixties. The Kendall family, the mother, the father, and the younger sister, Felicity Kendall, who's now so well known in England. Yes, indeed.

James Ivory11:22

Well we've

James Ivory11:33

Mm-hmm.

Presenter11:41

Shakespeare Wall isn't really the story of their lives, but it's rather like them in a way. It's about a wandering company of uh English actors uh down and out in India after the Raj.

James Ivory11:50

Yeah.

Presenter11:51

Was it an instant success? I would say so, yes.

Presenter11:55

And initially, I believe you looked after the distribution yourself.

Presenter11:59

Yes, we had to. No, it well, the film did very well critically.

Presenter12:02

It was in the Berlin Festival. It won a prize for Best Actress for Madrid Jaffrey. Then it was taken here for distribution and it opened very well. It was in the London Festival. It was in the New York Festival also in 1965. It did terribly well critically, but nobody in New York thought it would make any money. So we got the advertising money together for it. It wasn't very much in those days. And opened it ourselves. And it did so well that a distributor came forward and took it.

Presenter12:30

Let's have your third record. What's that to be? Well, that would be the St. Matthew Passion. Bark. Yes.

James Ivory12:34

Okay.

Presenter12:35

Why do you choose this?

Presenter12:37

Again, I've always liked it very much. I like the Saint John passion. It's rather hard to decide between the two which ones I wanted. But I find it, you know, uh tremendously dramatic music, which I think the selection will show, and I've always found it uh extremely moving, beautiful like magic flute.

Speaker 413:11

Iron sonder is for Andam dear he's father boss.

Speaker 413:17

Und das if samret barwe sprachilatus suimen.

Speaker 313:24

Well, let ir the siege loss chamber barnabon.

Speaker 313:32

Oder giesum von Tinges haget irt erse.

Speaker 413:39

Peace.

Speaker 413:47

And thy out of him reached to Z.

Presenter13:51

An excerpt from Bach's Saint Matthew Passion, conducted by Cadogan.

Presenter13:56

Now after Shakespeare Waller you stayed in India.

Presenter13:59

It took you quite a time to set up your next feature. Yeah, well we didn't stay in India. That's why it took us all the the the time it did. We went to New York hoping to make an American film. And it seemed that we would be able to make it, but then it all collapsed and we lost a couple of years. They weren't wasted years, but we did lose them. Then our next film was The Guru, which we went back to India to make. That was our first film that was financed by an American major company, Twentieth Century Fox.

James Ivory14:25

Yeah.

Presenter14:27

You took a couple of British stars with you. Yes, Rita Tessingham and and Michael York.

Presenter14:31

You had American money and it cost ten times as much, I gather, as your preceding film. That's right. Well, that's the way things happen. There's a nice story about having to send your daily rushes to Hollywood. Well, what actually happened was that the people at the studio wanted to see how we were getting on.

Presenter14:46

And so they made up two sets of rushes and they sent one set to us in Bombay, which we saw, and then they sent another set off to uh Hollywood for them to see at uh Twentieth Century Fox. But after a while they realized in uh Hollywood that uh we were managing all right, and so they they stopped that. And it was rather wasteful. Very complicated setup. It was.

James Ivory15:03

The setup.

Presenter15:05

Now the Indian film industry, especially I gather, twenty years ago, was even bigger and fuller of delightful nonsense than Hollywood. Were you able to keep clear of all the nonsense? Well, I think we fairly kept clear of it, but we always had sort of one foot in the door because we were using Indian technicians and very often Indian film actors who were involved in in making uh Hindi films. So, you know, we were sort of half in and half out. You went on to make a film about the Indian film business, Bombay Talkie. Right. With spectacular musical sequences and the lot. Right, yes. Well, of course it was set in the milieu of the Bombay film world, but it was principally about Westerners going to India for all sorts of strange reasons and rather selfish ones sometimes. You said that one of the difficulties of working in India is getting crowd scenes right. What is that difficulty? The problem is getting the right kind of extras. They d they're not so well organized in that sense as we are in England and in and in New York or France. It's a rather a tragic setup, I think. They have these extra calls, which must be like the old extra calls of Hollywood, and a rather ragged and dispirited and hungry and poor lot of people get together and

Presenter16:15

They have categories A, B and C and so forth.

Presenter16:19

And uh this becomes the crowd.

Presenter16:21

Sometimes you want a a crowd that uh really looks good and uh well fed and uh good looking and all the rest of it. And uh

Presenter16:29

It's very hard to find people like that. So you end up putting your friends in and

Presenter16:34

People work on the film, and that's what happens. You can't guarantee that you're going to get more A's than B's or C's. No, no.

James Ivory16:40

Uh

Presenter16:43

What's your next record? Well, I couldn't go to a desert island without taking uh Indian music with me. So I've chosen this this record by uh the singer Kumar Gandharva. He's singing rog uh Sri Kalyan.

Presenter16:57

I'd also like to take records by Begum Akhtar and Badi Gulumali Khan with me, but if I just have to choose one, then I would take this one, I think.

Speaker 317:04

I decor.

Speaker 317:09

Full nine again.

Presenter17:10

Aggie.

Speaker 317:12

Le Cour de Vautin.

Speaker 317:15

Poole nala ye décour de wo tai.

Speaker 417:19

Yeah.

Speaker 317:21

Pull a nalagi.

Speaker 317:26

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 317:31

They could

Presenter17:33

The Raga Shri Kalyan by the singer Kumar Gandhava.

Presenter17:38

Now, James, we come to a period when Merchant Ivory Films left India to work in the United States. You began with a rather surrealist comedy supposingly depicting the rise and fall of Western civilization within twenty four hours.

Presenter17:51

And you moved away for the first time from your writing member, Ruth Prower Jobvilla. Yes. But we were still in a way, and you could say in a sense almost in the same school of writing, because we were working with another New Yorker magazine writer, George Trowe, and approach was not that different. It sounds a difficult proposition to get off the ground. That film. Yes. No, it wasn't. It was easy to get off the ground. I don't know how it happened. You wouldn't think that a sort of farcical thing like Savage's would be immediately financed, but it was. We told the story to a financier in New York over dinner, and he said, Great, terrific, let's do it. And we were all set, and we did do it. You never know. And he never really sort of ran out of enthusiasm.

James Ivory18:06

Uh

James Ivory18:12

That

Presenter18:35

We come next to to the Wild Party, a story suggested, I believe, by the Fatty Arbuckle scandal in the twenties.

Presenter18:42

Now for the first time you mused a major star, Raquel Wells.

James Ivory18:45

Yeah.

Presenter18:46

It was suggested to the writer, Walter Marx, the story was suggested by the Arbuckle case. I tried to move the film as far away from that as I could, despite the fact that our leading man was a big fat comic like Arbuckle. But still, I tried to get it away from that. To me, there was something sort of unpleasant and rather gruesome about making a musical out of that kind of subject matter. But of course, you can't escape the similarities there. And so when people say, oh, you're a film about Arbuckle, I'm rather resigned now to saying yes, that's the one.

Speaker 319:09

Yeah.

Presenter19:18

Now you've been working sort of quietly on your own lines. How did you get on using a major star? Did this throw the balance?

Presenter19:27

I don't think so, really. The thing is that we didn't always treat her like a star. And she said she didn't want to be treated like a star. She wanted to be treated like an actress. So we did treat her like an actress and a member of a company of actors. And this was in some way upsetting to her because perhaps there were so many people there who weren't the kinds of people she knew in Hollywood. I mean, there were a lot of foreigners. There were a lot of people from New York City working with her. And she was suspicious. And she wasn't really very happy making that film. But on the other hand, she was very good. And I'm glad she did it. For the first time, the firm was caught up in the show biz machine. The film was recut and hooked up. Totally. Yes, totally recut. It still existed in my version. My version had been put away carefully. And they then proceeded to make their own version, which they tried to show, but without any success at all. You stopped them? Well, I couldn't stop them. There was no way that I could stop them.

Presenter20:25

I exerted pressure. Raquel Welch also brought pressure on them. She said she wouldn't do any publicity for them and so on.

Presenter20:32

And um it just sort of wheeled away or died. But now we've uh revived it somewhat because, as I say, it wasn't uh actually destroyed. It was always there and we we've opened it ourselves here. So the one we see now is the proper version.

James Ivory20:49

Yeah.

Presenter20:50

Your next feature film was set in New York, Roseland, about the

James Ivory20:53

Rose on

Presenter20:54

The ballroom. The Roseanne Ballroom. Right. You shot the whole thing inside the ballroom room. We shot the whole thing inside a ballroom. It's a ballroom that's been in business since, I think, 1919. It's a place that I'd never been in and wouldn't normally go to. I kind of vaguely knew about it. Someone who had been in the wild party, however, asked us to just come and see what it was like inside there. And we all went, Ruth, Ismail and I. And it was quite an extraordinary scene. It was full of middle-aged dancers swooping around, dancing to the music mainly of the 40s, to a swing band of the 40s type, and doing sort of 40s style ballroom dancing. I mean, they were just dancing the dances they had always danced. They grew up dancing those dances, and they still liked to dance like that, and listen to that music and dance to it. So we decided that there were interesting things to be said about a situation like that and those kinds of people. There were a lot of in addition to the American or New York obituaries of the ballroom, there were a great many European refugees in there.

James Ivory20:58

We s we shot the whole f

James Ivory21:41

Definitely.

Presenter22:01

They had stories to tell which were interesting. It was something we had to research. We had to sit there and and meet a lot of them and talk to them and uh this took uh quite a while before we

Presenter22:13

Well, it was quite a while before they opened up and wanted to talk to us and actually tell us about themselves. Some of them, on the other hand, pushed right up and said, I've got a story to tell you, and let me tell you this story, and so on. So you ran these interlocking stories, several of them? Three. Three. Well, they weren't really interlocking in the sense that we went back and forth between them. We told the first story, which is the one that's called The Waltz, which stars Theresa Wright and Lou Jacoby. Then we told the next one, which was called The Hustle, which stars Christopher Walken and Geraldine Chaplin. And then the third story was The Peabody, which stars Lilia Scala. And each one was about a different dance, and each was a different story.

James Ivory22:48

Yeah.

Presenter22:53

You shot the whole film while dancing was going on, while the dance hall was open. To some extent. We shot the dance contests.

Presenter23:01

That are shown in the film while the dance hall was going on. I mean, while the dances were there, rather.

Presenter23:06

We were told by the management that if a single customer came and asked for their money back, they'd throw us out. We were always terrified that that would happen. We were told by the management that many people went there to meet other people and they happened to be married, and it would be embarrassing for them to be caught dancing with some partner and so forth and so on. Well, that's an angle, yeah. Which, of course, you had to think about. So we used to make an announcement that all you people who don't want to be in the film dance down at the other end of the floor, and those who don't mind being seen in the film come up to our end.

James Ivory23:24

Well, that's an angle, yes.

Presenter23:36

But they all came up to our end. I don't think in all that time there was ever anybody who who didn't want to be in the film. That shows a good moral atmosphere in those ends.

James Ivory23:42

Uh

James Ivory23:44

Yeah.

Presenter23:46

Good. Record number five.

Presenter23:49

It's good that it has something to do with New York. It's like a sort of New York disappearing beneath the waves with all its sort of glittery lights and receding into the distance, this Gershwin piece.

Presenter24:59

The second of the three piano preludes which George Gershwin wrote in nineteen twenty six, and it's played by William Balcombe.

Presenter25:07

James, yours has always been a very international company, and it seems only right that your next feature, and perhaps your most popular,

Presenter25:14

Although a British film was shot in the United States with an American cast. The Europeans. Yeah.

Presenter25:21

It it's odd, I know, but it's simply because we couldn't get any backing in the United States for it. It it there's a sort of funny history of the Europeans.

Presenter25:30

I used to see B B C adaptations of James novels on television. Henry James, of course. Yeah, Henry James. I mean I'd see them here or I'd see them sometimes uh on in public television in New York.

Presenter25:41

And I used to think, well, hell, why can't I do that? Why should the English be doing this? I mean, after all, I mean, I should be doing this.

Presenter25:51

Why are they the only ones who get to do it? So Ruth wrote the script and then we sent it around to all the the movie companies in California and we tried public television itself in the United States. We hoped to give them a home sort of homegrown version of James and um nobody wanted to give us any money. They all said, Oh, who wants to see Henry James? Or that's not a good novel. Why do you want to do the Europeans?

Presenter26:12

So we then found that we were able to find the money in England through the national film the NFFC. And they backed it. So it ended up being an English an English production of Henry James. Made in genuine New England. But made in New England, yes. Made in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts. And once again, a major star, Lee Reming.

James Ivory26:28

But made a new

Presenter26:34

Yeah.

Presenter26:35

playing the part of Eugenia.

Presenter26:37

Then to the twenties again, a a period which fascinates you. Quartet by Jean Rees. Yes. You had all the fun of

Presenter26:45

Recreating Paris in the twenties. Was it easier to find

Presenter26:50

Location sufficiently unchanged? Well, the interiors are on the whole unchanged. I mean, restaurants and cafes and ballrooms and all that sort of thing. You would choose a natural location. Yes, we always do. There was no problem with that, but it was very hard w once you came into the street because there's this mania for modernization in Paris. And the ground floors of I mean, absolutely every building in Paris seemed to have been just uh tarted up almost awful way. So it was hard to find uh you know, to find good locations in the street. That was our main problem. Uh in every other way it was uh quite easy.

James Ivory26:59

It would be a natural occasion for the market.

Presenter27:25

Or once again the Merchant Ivory Internationalism, a film in English.

Presenter27:31

From an English novel. But it counted as a French film, I believe, because there was French capital involved. There was French capital, and the French government had put a a certain well, they have something called the Avansur Cet. It's an equivalent of the NFFC funds. And the crew was principally French, and it was registered as a French film. And despite the fact that it was a French film, when it turned up at the Cannes Film Festival, it was back as an English film. Yes, because the Cannes Festival didn't want any more French films. They had about ten already, so they needed an English film.

James Ivory28:00

We have the top ten already.

Presenter28:03

Oh, it's marvellous, isn't it? Record number six. What's that to be? Oh, uh record number six is going to be one of the four last songs of Ricard Strauss, sung by Elizabeth Schwarzkopp. Which one?

Presenter28:15

Well, of the first one called Frooling.

Presenter29:17

Frieling, one of the Richard Strauss' four last songs sung by Elizabeth Schwartzkopf.

Presenter29:24

I see the firm of Merchant Ivory is celebrating its 21st birthday. Yes. 21 years since we began with the householder, that's correct. And you've had a complete retrospective at the National Film Theatre, and they brought out a book about you, The Wandering Company. This is a very good retrospective. They found all your films. Yes, they managed to. Well, they hadn't really been lost. It looked like some of them had been lost. We couldn't find negatives and so on. But they managed to get them all together and make new prints, or we made new prints. Including all the shorts and the shorts, including some films which really aren't merchant ivory films. I mean, my documentaries that I made before I ever joined up with Ismail are really not merchant ivory films. And the film I made for Channel 13 in New York is not a merchant ivory film, but that's being shown also as if it were.

James Ivory29:55

All shorts.

Presenter30:12

And to celebrate your coming of age, you've gone back to India for a new film. Yes, at first with some reluctance. I didn't really want to go back to India so soon to do a feature, but Ismail really pushed me back there, and once I got there, I was happy to make it. It was, well, a really wonderful experience. It was a mixed Indian and British crew. Everybody got on terribly well. It was a sort of love, love, love between the two groups, which didn't always happen. What's it called? Heat and dust. What's it about?

Presenter30:45

Indy in the nineteen twenties when it was under the Raj.

Presenter30:48

And in the day?

Presenter30:50

It's the same old Indy, of course.

Presenter30:52

and contrasting Western sensibilities about the place and the past and the present, which are set out in two interwoven stories, one concerning a young married Englishwoman in the twenties, who scandalizes everybody, including the Indians, by running off with the bankrupt Prince

Presenter31:07

and the other about her descendant, who goes to India to learn what she can about the old scandal, and becomes herself equally involved, though not scandalously, the times being what they are.

Presenter31:20

I guess it's a pretty romantic sort of film. In setting up the exterior shots of sixty years ago, did you have the same difficulty you had in Paris? What happens if you make a period film in India today, you find that most of the things that you need and which are always on hand in the West have disappeared in India because of the climate they've worn out, they've rotted away. So it's just really a shell. I mean, the buildings are like shells, and you have to totally transform them, furnish them, and bring every kind of thing you need from England. Even to do the palace was not a lot of palaces in India, but of course they've

Presenter31:56

collapse like so many other things.

Presenter31:58

Do you know what your next subject's going to be? It's back to Henry James. Is it? Which one this time? The Bostonians. The Bostonians was a a vast sort of television project that was planned a few years ago in which we were to do one section, which was the Bostonians, and other people were going to do other parts, which were about the James family, where the whole thing fell apart. But we're still going to do The Bostonians. We've gotten money for it independently. We've got a big star for that. Who? Christopher Reeve. Oh, yes. I think it's a.

James Ivory32:20

Yeah.

James Ivory32:22

Yeah, so

Presenter32:27

Well, it's it's an interesting story for him. I mean, h he's he's playing a sort of supermanlike part in the eighteen seventies.

Presenter32:34

So it's back to New England. It's back to New England.

Presenter32:39

Your seventh record, please. I think I'd like to take a a record uh

Presenter32:43

By Philip Glass With Me on the Desert Island

Presenter32:47

Last summer I used to drive around in my car and play this on a cassette all the time. And th this was in upstate New York where I have a house. And I remember the sky would be absolutely black with thunder clouds and and the trees just dripping with this kind of uh jungle wet and and that's the way it is up there in the summertime.

Presenter33:08

And this piece of Philip Glass music was in keeping in a way with my mood after finishing Heat and Dust. It was um restful in a sort of low key way. And I I think I felt content. Anyway, I never seemed to get tired of it, so I think it'd be good for Desert Island.

Presenter34:24

Facades by the American composer Philip Glass.

Presenter34:28

Now let's get back to your desert island, James. In a practical sense, could you look after yourself? Have you any skills that would be useful? Could you rig up a shelter? I could rig up a shelter if there's something to rig it up with.

Presenter34:40

I mean, I I'm assuming that the desert island isn't just a sand spit somewhere. Oh, no, no, no, no, it's got lots of vegetation. You've got leaves, you've got I could manage, I'm sure I would.

James Ivory34:44

Yeah.

James Ivory34:49

Prime Degrea.

Presenter34:50

Try something.

Presenter34:53

Uh no. The reason for that is that I I I always thought that fishing was a very boring occupation and I also don't like fish. Two very good reasons.

James Ivory35:01

Two very good reasons.

Presenter35:02

Would you try to escape?

Presenter35:04

If I thought I had a chance, yeah. Do you know anything about small bits? No. Can you say that? I'm certainly not somebody who could. Manage a boat across a

Presenter35:13

in expansive water. You better stay where you are. I would probably stay wi I mean, I might want to escape. I'm sure I would want to escape. But I don't think I would just get in a boat and

James Ivory35:15

Bye.

Presenter35:22

Sail off.

Presenter35:24

Mozart's Cosifanti, again sang Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. And others. And others.

Presenter36:30

The trio Suave Sia Ilvento from Mozart's Cosifantutti, sung by Elizabeth Schwarzkopp, Christa Ludwig and Walter Berry.

Presenter36:39

If you could take only one disc of the H you played, which would it be? It would be the magic flute. The magic flute.

Presenter36:44

And one luxury to take to the island, William.

Presenter36:47

Well, all right. The luxury would be uh an American shower bath.

Presenter36:52

I know that sounds crazy, but I really would have to have that. Lots of hot water and a very good.

James Ivory36:52

I know that's

James Ivory36:53

But um

Presenter36:57

Spray and that can be organized. I mean, I it might be terrible to be on a desert island without being able to bathe.

Presenter37:04

We'll even give you some soap.

Presenter37:06

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which you'll find already there when you arrive? I would take Remembrances of Things Past. I mean, I started reading that in 1960, and I'm still not quite done, so I would have the time to read it and finish it. I'd also have the time to reread it, which would be important. And I think it's the kind of book on Desert Island that you'd need to have to remind you of civilization. Right. Prost's Remembrance of Things Past, and thank you, James Ivory, for letting us hear your Desert Island discourse. Well, thank you, Roy, very much. This is very hard work, I want to say. I'm sure it's not. Goodbye, everyone.

James Ivory38:07

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Dists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.