SOLID IVORY

Reminiscences of a legendary film director.

Even fans of Ivory’s work would have to admit his films differ radically in quality, from the unpolished early features to some of the greatest ever made, including A Room With a View and Howards End. The same unevenness is evident in this leisurely memoir. Born to a sawmill owner in 1928, Ivory grew up privileged—his mother and their chauffeur picked him up from Army basic training “in the family limousine”—before attending USC film school. There, he made his first film, a documentary that would “tell the story of Venice through art.” Ivory eventually met writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and producer Ismail Merchant to form a creative team that endured for decades. The book’s first third is devoted to Ivory’s childhood in Klamath Falls, Oregon. A not insignificant portion of the volume describes his many sexual liaisons with men, both before and during his open 44-year relationship with Merchant. He frequently describes the genitals of the men he’s slept with or seen naked, often featuring odd word choices. Travel writer Bruce Chatwin, with whom he had an affair, had “an uncut, rosy, schoolboy-looking” penis that was “all ready for Maypole dancing.” A classmate’s was “cherubic.” Further references abound. The highlights of the book, most of which is told in a stream-of-consciousness style readers will find either sloppy or charmingly unfocused, are stories about his filmmaking process, the grand houses he has visited or shot films in, and the luminaries he’s worked with, including Vanessa Redgrave; Raquel Welch, who would “fight with everyone about everything” while filming The Wild Party; and Luca Guadagnino, with whom he was to co-direct Call Me By Your Name—a role from which he was dropped without explanation—and whose production company “would not pay my hotel bill” after the first day of shooting.

A unique amble through seven decades of film history.