"The White Countess" marks the finale to a collaboration that has spanned forty-four years and over thirty films. Ismail Merchant and James Ivory founded Merchant Ivory Productions in 1961, and their partnership flourished until Merchant's death on May 25, 2005.

Collaborating with Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro

You can't force a really topnotch novelist to do somethin, they will do what they feel they have to do or want to do. We gave Ishiguro a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki, a very respected Japanese author, called "The Diary of a Mad Old Man." With some not-very precise ideas about how we wanted to adapt it. Ishiguro did his first draft, but he just kind of tossed it out the window and embarked upon writing his own story. He was still in his Shanghai phase. His previous novel, "When We Were Orphans," is set in Shanghai in exactly the period of "The White Countess."

Ishiguro's Background

Ishiguro's grandfather was a Japanese businessman in the International Settlement, and his father was there as a child. He'd heard lots of stories, and seen family photographs, and he just wanted to go on with that kind of material about Shanghai and the start of the Second World War. He presented us with a draft that came as a complete surprisebut we were very intrigued.

New Angle

Kazuo Ishiguro, whose earlier novel The Remains of the Day had been adapted for our film version by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, conferred with us "The White Countess." The romantic relationship between the Countess (Natasha Richardson) and Jackson (Ralph Fiennes) emerged over the course of several drafts.

Point of Departure

The result, with its sweeping backdrop of political strife and impending war, is something of a departure from the intimate dramas we have created. We see the Japanese militarist Matsuda's "broad canvas" of global war and politics juxtaposed with the enclosed, idealized set piece world of Jackson's nightclub. The nightclub couldn't just be a hole in the wall; we had big themes, and for that we needed room.

Visual Style

To find the right visual style for this balance between broad canvas and intimate drama, we once again gave a collaborator ample of latitude. We wanted to have a lot of variety in the style of photography, and our choice of the cameraman, Christopher Doyle, tended to lead to that. Doyle is a veteran of both Chinese action cinema and Asian and Western art films. He loves to bring variation in both speed and compositional style. He's always looking for what he calls "the jazz" that's inherent in every piece he's working on. He doesn't want it to be too straightforward a thing, and I was glad that he didn't, because I felt that everything about "The White Countess" needed to be different from anything we'd ever done before.

Animation

A small but pleasing example of the unpredictable style that we sought to give the film is the short animation section that little Katya "sees" in her imagination as she looks into a shadow box. We found a Chinese artist in New York who created Katya's daydream of a happy river trip to Soochow within an appropriate Chinese painting style.

A Wealth of Actresses

We had a wealth of very good actresses, in addition to Madeleine Potter, to play the Belinskys: Natasha Richardson, her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, and her aunt, Lynn Redgrave.

Directing the Redgraves

In one way, there's nothing particularly unusual about directing a room full of Redgraves. They're all professionals, they're all playing their roles. But there is magnetism among them, and warmth between mother and daughter that comes through in the kindly relationship between Vanessa Redgrave's Aunt Sarah and Natasha Richardson's Sofia.

Casting Katya

Even the casting of Katya fits the principle of finding talent and letting it shine. Madeleine Daly, who plays Katya, is the daughter of Madeleine Potter, who plays her aunt Greshenka. I've known that little girl since she was born, and she's always been very special, a highly intelligent and unusual, imaginative child. I just happened to go to dinner at Madeleine's, and saw her daughter and watched her, and I thought maybe she would do as Katya and maybe shed like to do it also. She wanted to do it, though she'd turned down other opportunities to act before. She'd known Ismail and me for a long long time, and felt comfortable. It worked out very well because she turned out to be a very good little actress. Ismail Merchant

"The White Countess" was nearly completed when my producer and partner Ismail Merchant, died unexpectedly after a brief illness in May of this year. In the last week of shooting in Shanghai, Ismail fell and broke his ankle, which didn't stop him from coming to the wrap party in a wheelchair. Throughout a hospital stay in Shanghai and physical therapy back in New York, he was very involved in the film's completion and was present throughout most of the editing. The broken ankle, which had nothing to do with the illness that caused his death, didn't get in his way. He was very proud of the film and very pleased with how it turned out, having screened the successive versions and provided me with the highly useful suggestions I've always relied on.

James Ivory's Career

James Ivory was born in Berkeley, California. After attending the University of Oregon, where he majored in Architecture and Fine Arts, he received his Master's degree in Film from the University of Southern California. His first film, which he wrote, photographed, and produced, was "Venice: Theme and Variations," a half-hour documentary made as his thesis for his Master's degree. The New York Times named Ivory's evocation of the city in 1957 as one of the ten best non-theatrical films of the year.

An easy rapport with India was evidenced in Ivory's second film "The Sword and the Flute," based entirely on Indian miniature paintings in American collections. Its success led to a grant by the Asia Society of New York to make "The Delhi Way," a film about the Indian city. In 1961, Ivory teamed up with Ismail Merchant to form Merchant Ivory Productions. Their first theatrical feature was "The Householder," based on an early novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who also wrote the screenplay. Since then, Ivory's feature and television filmmaking career has taken him to Great Britain, France, Italy, back to India several times and to the United States.

The many theatrical films that Ivory has made for Merchant Ivory Productions include the classic "Shakespeare Wallah," three Henry James productions, "The Europeans," "The Bostonians," and "The Golden Bowl," "Heat and Dust" from the prize winning novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and "A Room With A View," "Maurice," and "Howards End," all from novels by E.M. Forster. "A Room With A View" was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won Oscars for Jhabvala's adaptation of Forster's novel, Best Costume, and Best Production Design. "A Room With A View" was also voted Best Film of 1986 by the Critics Circle Film Section of Great Britain, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and the National Board of Review in the United States. The film also received the Donatello Prize for Best Foreign Language Picture and Best Director in Italy.

Ivory's next film, "Maurice," received a Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival as well as Best Film Score for Richard Robbins and Best Actor Awards for co-stars James Wilby and Hugh Grant. After "Maurice," James Ivory returned to the United States to film "Slaves of New York," based on the stories by Tama Janowitz, and "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge," which Ruth Prawer Jhabvala adapted from the novels Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell. This film received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (Joanna Woodward), as well as Best Actress and Best Screenplay awards from the New York Film Critics Circle.

Ivory's next project was "Howards End," based on the E.M. Forster novel. "Howards End" was nominated for nine Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, and won for Best Actress (Emma Thompson), Best Screenplay Adaptation (Ruth Prawer Jhabvala), and Best Art Direction/Set Direction (Luciana Arrighi/Ian Whittaker). The film also won Best Picture at the BAFTA Awards, as well as awards for Best Actress (Emma Thompson) and Best Director (James Ivory) from the National Board of Review, and Best Actress from the New York film critics. "The Remains of the Day," based on Kazuo Ishiguro's bestseller, followed "Howard's End." It reunited Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in the starring roles of the butler Stevens and his housekeeper Miss Kenton. This film, too, received eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Director and was chosen Film of the Year by the British Film Critics Society. "Jefferson in Paris," starring Nick Nolte, Greta Scacchi, Thandie Newman, and Simon Callow, was Ivory's next project and was released in 1995.

The Directors Guild of America awarded the D.W. Griffith Lifetime Achievement Award, its highest honor, to Ivory for his body of work. "Surviving Picasso" starring Anthony Hopkins as Picasso, Natascha McElhone as Francoise Gilot, and Julianna Moore as Dora Maar, followed Jefferson in Paris in 1996. His next film, "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries," starring Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey, and Leelee Sobieski was filmed in Paris and released in 1998. "The Golden Bowl," starring Nick Nolte, Uma Thurman, was released in 2001.

In 2001, James Ivory, Ismail Merchant, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala received the Fellowship of the British Academy of Film and Television, one of the highest awards in film. "The Golden Bowl" 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.