Ismail Merchant, the India-born filmmaker behind some of the most enduring movie adaptations of classic literary works, today received glowing tributes from the British media for his 'brilliance' in production, not to mention his 'garrulity and charm.'
Merchant, who died following a surgery for abdominal ulcers in London on Wednesday, aged 69, was 'a film producer of brilliance, garrulity and charm who created a universally recognisable movie brand, in a remarkable partnership with the American director James Ivory that lasted for more than 40 years and 40 films,' The Guardian wrote in its obituary.
Merchant's was a startling career: he had directed films himself, and also pursued a passion for food.He opened a restaurant in 1993, and published several books on travel and cuisine, the newspaper said.
'Although they started with dramas set in Merchant's native India, such as Shakespeare Wallah (1965) and Bombay Talkie (1970), Merchant and Ivory came to be the Rajahs of stately period costume cinema, often based on 19th and 20th century literary works from Britain, or the Anglocentric America of Henry James,' The Guardian said.
The Times in its obituary said Merchant was a 'frank, freewheeling man who was endowed with energy, charm and prodigious chutzpah.'
It noted that Merchant and Ivory are listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as having had the longest creative partnership in film history, much of it spent also in the company of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the German-born writer who wrote almost all their screenplays.
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