Richard Robbins

A British family is trapped between culture, tradition, and the colonial sins of the past.

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The story of a woman that remained distracted for a long time from her life, from the passions that made her feel alive. The importance of true love is compared with the material value of diamonds. Only one truly lasts forever. She's got to find the thing that values most for her, the thing that gives psychical stability and real happiness again to her life.

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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.

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An expatriated French novelist returns to Paris when she learns that her childhood home is being placed on the auction block.

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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.

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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.

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A rule-bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a housekeeper who falls in love with him in post-WWI Britain. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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A drama, set in St. Louis in 1950, concerning an American family and the first courtship and sexual awakening of the teenage son. Ben Griffin lives with his widowed mother and beautiful 22-year-old sister, Dodie. The restoration of the family's affluence seems to hinge on Dodie's romances and hoped-for-marriage to a wealthy husband. But Dodie's ambivalence toward the rich and eligible Sonny confuses and upsets Ben. He wants to trust and believe in love, but worries that he may never find a girl to understand his romantic ideals.

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Police Inspector Ghote lives a middle-class life in Bombay along with his wife, Pratima. He has been employed with the Bombay Police for many years. He is assigned to investigate the deadly assault on a Parsi man named Perfect, who is the Secretary of Lala Heera Lal, a wealthy man with underworld links. Inspector Ghote commences his investigation and is displeased when his superiors ask him to work with a Swedish Forensic Expert by the name of Axel Svennson.

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

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Serio-comic look at the residents and staff of a Catskill Mountains resort during its final days.

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A young girl agrees to work in a center for girls who can't stay with their parents. She gets wrapped up in the plights of several of the girls, and tries to help them, but only gets herself into trouble with her parents and supervisor.

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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?

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

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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.

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

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Two teachers vie for the right to stage a play written by Jane Austen when she was twelve years old.

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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.

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This short documentary, shot in July 1976 at the Mannes College of Music on Manhattan's Upper East Side, marks the first collaboration between Merchant Ivory Films and composer Richard Robbins, who would go on to provide the musical scores for nearly all Merchant Ivory films. Later in 1976, 'Sweet Sounds' was shown at the New York and London Film Festivals. It was also broadcast on PBS.

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