The Film Comment Podcast: Merchant-Ivory and Howards End
Though associated with heritage films set in Britain’s imperial past, producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala have collaborated on a variety of masterfully constructed literary adaptations since the early 1960s. Perhaps the pinnacle of their collaboration is Howards End, their 1992 film based on the E. M. Forster novel about class and inheritance set in Edwardian England. In anticipation of next week’s special preview of a new 4K restoration of Howards End at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Digital Editor Violet Lucca discussed this artful, complex adaptation and other Merchant-Ivory classics with FSLC Editorial Director Michael Koresky and Farran Smith Nehme, FILM COMMENT columnist and regular contributor to the New York Post.