Ismail Merchant

When Lucy Honeychurch and chaperon Charlotte Bartlett find themselves in Florence with rooms without views, fellow guests Mr Emerson and son George step in to remedy the situation. Meeting the Emersons could change Lucy's life forever but, once back in England, how will her experiences in Tuscany affect her marriage plans?

After his lover rejects him, Maurice attempts to come to terms with his sexuality within the restrictiveness of Edwardian society.

A saga of class relations and changing times in an Edwardian England on the brink of modernity, the film centers on liberal Margaret Schlegel, who, along with her sister Helen, becomes involved with two couples: wealthy, conservative industrialist Henry Wilcox and his wife Ruth, and the downwardly mobile working-class Leonard Bast and his mistress Jackie.

In interwar Britain, a rule-bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a new housekeeper. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.

While visiting her sister in Paris, a young woman finds romance and learns her brother-in-law is a philanderer.

In 1930s Shanghai, 'The White Countess' is both Sofia, a fallen member of the exiled Russian aristocracy, and a nightclub created by a blind American diplomat who asks Sofia to be the centerpiece of the world he wants to create.

Wealthy American widower Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie live a refined life in Europe, surrounded by art. Maggie marries impoverished Italian Prince Amerigo, while Adam marries Maggie's friend Charlotte Stant. The Prince and Charlotte are having an affair, which Maggie discovers and navigates through a silent, psychological battle of wills, ultimately using her cunning to preserve her marriage and protect her father.

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

The passionate Merchant-Ivory drama tells the story of Francoise Gilot, the only lover of Pablo Picasso who was strong enough to withstand his ferocious cruelty and move on with her life.

Set during World War II, an upper-class family begins to fall apart due to the conservative nature of the patriarch and the progressive values of his children.

Anne is investigating the life of her grand-aunt Olivia, whose destiny has always been shrouded with scandal. As Anne delves into the history of her grand-aunt, she is led to reconsider her own life.

A gay young man is recruited into an illicit love triangle to watch a much older man’s sexual liaison, but ends up witnessing what turns out to be his murder. The next day the young man's opera diva mother informs him that his estranged father has been in Paris... until the previous night when he was murdered. Seeking help with a psychiatrist, the young man comes across an eccentric actress who has come totally unhinged by the death of that psychiatrist, the infamous Docteur Rey. At first mistaking her for the doctor, the young man embarks on a madcap mystery, reminiscent of an Agatha Christie novel, with Paris as the backdrop.

Meet the denizens of New York City: artists, prostitutes, saints, and seers. All are aspiring toward either fame or oblivion while hoping for love and acceptance. Instead they find high rent, faithless partners, and dead-end careers.

A bored lawyer and a suffragette vie for the attention of a faith healer's charismatic daughter.

Clarissa Dalloway looks back on her youth as she readies for a gathering at her house. The wife of a legislator and a doyenne of London's upper-crust party scene, Clarissa finds that the plight of ailing war veteran Septimus Warren Smith reminds her of a past romance with Peter Walsh. In flashbacks, young Clarissa explores her possibilities with Peter.

A small-town eccentric opens a café in her decaying home.

India, 1825: the country lives in mortal fear of cult members known as the “Deceivers." They commit robbery and ritualistic murder. Appalled by their activities, an English military man, Captain William Savage, conceives a hazardous plot to stop them. In disguise, he plans to himself become a “Deceiver” and infiltrate their numbers. Ever present in Savage’s adventures is a sense of dread; he is in constant fear of betrayal and vengeance and also undergoes a disturbing psychological transformation as he experiences the cult’s blood lust firsthand.

His wife having recently died, Thomas Jefferson accepts the post of United States ambassador to pre-revolutionary France, though he finds it difficult to adjust to life in a country where the aristocracy subjugates an increasingly restless peasantry. In Paris, he becomes smitten with cultured artist Maria Cosway, but, when his daughter visits from Virginia accompanied by her attractive slave, Sally Hemings, Jefferson's attentions are diverted.

An aging silent movie comic star throws a lavish party to try and save his failing career.

After an abandoned young woman in late 19th Century England is taken in by a rural couple with three handsome sons, tragic consequences result.

This fictionalized story, based on the family life of writer James Jones, is an emotional slice-of-life story. Jones is portrayed here as Bill Willis, a former war hero turned author who combats alcoholism and is starting to experience health problems. Living in France with his wife, daughter, and an adopted son, the family travels an unconventional road which casts them as outsiders to others. Preaching a sexual freedom, his daughter's sexual discovery begins at an early age and betrays her when the family moves to Hanover in America. Her overt sexuality clashes with the values of her teenage American peers and gives her a problematic reputation. Meanwhile, her brooding brother copes with his own interior pain regarding his past, only comfortable communicating within the domestic space.

An adaptation of Henry James' novel about the Countess Eugenia Münster and her brother Robert, expatriate Americans who have grown up in Europe. Returning to prosperous relatives in New England, Eugenia hopes to make an advantageous marriage with a wealthy cousin. While Eugenia encounters obstacles, Robert finds his suit bearing fruit.

When her husband's arrest leaves her penniless, a woman accepts an invitation to move in with a strange couple.

A tribe of primitive "mudpeople" encounter a croquet ball, rolling through their forest. Following it, they find themselves on a vast, deserted Long Island estate. Entering, they begin to become civilized and assume the stereotypical roles and dress of people at a weekend party. There follows an allegory of upper-class behavior. At last, they begin to devolve toward their original status, and after a battle at croquet, they disappear into the woods.

In-depth interviews with hard-hitting questions and sensitive topics being covered as famous personalities from all walks of life talk about the highs and lows in their lives.