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Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a Scriptwriter British born on 7 may 1927 at Cologne (German)

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
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Birth name Ruth Prawer
Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 7 may 1927 at Cologne (German)
Death 3 april 2013 (at 85 years) at New York City (USA)
Awards Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Guggenheim Fellowship, Writers Guild of America Award, MacArthur Fellows Program

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE (7 May 1927 – 3 April 2013) was a German-born British and American Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and the late producer Ismail Merchant. Jhabvala wrote a dozen novels, 23 screenplays and eight collections of short stories and was made a CBE in 1998 and granted a joint fellowship by BAFTA in 2002 with Ivory and Merchant. She is the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar.

Best films

Howards End (1992)
(Scriptwriter)
A Room with a View (1986)
(Scriptwriter)

Usually with

James Ivory
James Ivory
(23 films)
Ismail Merchant
Ismail Merchant
(22 films)
Jenny Beavan
Jenny Beavan
(8 films)
John Bright
John Bright
(6 films)
Source : Wikidata

Filmography of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (24 films)

Display filmography as list

Scriptwriter

The City of Your Final Destination, 1h58
Directed by James Ivory
Origin USA
Genres Drama
Actors Anthony Hopkins, Laura Linney, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Hiroyuki Sanada, Norma Aleandro, Omar Metwally
Rating62% 3.145823.145823.145823.145823.14582
The film follows a graduate student, Omar Razaghi (Omar Metwally), who wishes to write a biography on an obscure writer, Jules Gund, who died years before. He must travel to Uruguay to persuade the Gund family to authorize the biography.
Le Divorce
Le Divorce (2003)
, 1h57
Directed by James Ivory
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Comedy, Comedy-drama, Romance
Actors Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, Thierry Lhermitte, Catherine Samie, Melvil Poupaud
Roles Writer
Rating49% 2.4514452.4514452.4514452.4514452.451445
Isabel (Hudson) Walker travels to Paris to visit her sister, poet Roxy (Watts), who lives with her husband, Frenchman Charles-Henri, and her young daughter, Gennie. Roxy is pregnant, but her husband has just walked out on her without explanation. Isabel discovers that he has a married Russian lover, Magda Tellman, whom he intends to marry after securing a divorce from Roxy. Roxy refuses to divorce him.
The Golden Bowl, 2h6
Directed by James Ivory
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Romance
Themes Films about sexuality
Actors Kate Beckinsale, James Fox, Anjelica Huston, Nick Nolte, Jeremy Northam, Nickolas Grace
Roles Writer
Rating59% 2.9508852.9508852.9508852.9508852.950885
Dignified but impoverished aristocrat Prince Amerigo, whose illustrious Italian family occupies the decaying Palazzo Ugolini in Florence, is engaged to American socialite Maggie Verver. She shares an extremely close relationship with her millionaire father Adam, a retired widowed tycoon living in England who intends to finance the construction of a museum to house his invaluable collection of art and antiquities in an American city.
A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, 2h5
Directed by James Ivory
Origin USA
Genres Drama
Actors Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey, Leelee Sobieski, Jane Birkin, Jesse Bradford, Virginie Ledoyen
Rating67% 3.395723.395723.395723.395723.39572
Bill Willis, a successful American novelist and World War II veteran, is living in Paris in the 1960s with his family. He is much loved by his free-spirited unpredictable wife Marcella. The couple, popular at the Paris cocktail party circuit, has a six-year-old daughter Channe (short for Charlotte Anne). Marcella yearns to have another child, but a series of miscarriages has made that difficult. However, the family circle expands when a six-year old French boy, Benoit, is brought to their home for adoption. The child’s biological mother, a beautiful young single mother, has been unable to care for him and Benoit has been shipped through so many orphanages and foster homes that he initially does not unpack his suitcase. Having feared rejection, the little boy is surprised by the love he receives in his new surroundings. After Benoit becomes acclimated to his new family, he asks that his name be changed to Billy after his adopted father.
Surviving Picasso, 2h5
Directed by James Ivory
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Romance
Themes Peinture
Actors Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone, Julianne Moore, Joss Ackland, Peter Eyre, Dennis Boutsikaris
Rating62% 3.147213.147213.147213.147213.14721
The film starts with a young woman named Françoise meeting Picasso in Paris during the Nazi occupation of the city, where Picasso is complaining that people broke into his house and stole his linen, rather than his paintings. It shows Françoise being beaten by her father after telling him she wants to be a painter, rather than a lawyer. Picasso is shown as often not caring about other people's feelings, firing his driver after a long period of service, and as a womanizer, saying that he can sleep with whomever he wants.
Jefferson in Paris, 2h19
Directed by James Ivory
Origin France
Genres Drama, Biography, Comedy-drama, Historical, Romance
Themes Political films, Histoire de France, French Revolution films
Actors Nick Nolte, Greta Scacchi, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Simon Callow, Seth Gilliam, James Earl Jones
Roles Writer
Rating56% 2.848152.848152.848152.848152.84815
Set in the period 1784–1789, the film portrays Jefferson when he was US minister to France at Versailles before the French Revolution. French liberals and intellectuals hope he will lead them away from the corruption of the court of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette and toward a more democratic form of government. Although deploring the poverty of the common people, he embraces the riches of French culture and civilization. It is his first time abroad, and he takes advantage of the opportunity to extend his knowledge of liberal arts and science while absorbing the refinements France has to offer.
The Remains of the Day, 2h14
Directed by James Ivory
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Romance
Themes Films about the labor movement
Actors Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Hugh Grant, Ben Chaplin
Rating77% 3.896663.896663.896663.896663.89666
In 1950s post-war Britain, Mr. Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall, receives a letter from Miss Kenton, a recently divorced former co-worker employed as the housekeeper some twenty years earlier. Lord Darlington has died a broken man, his reputation destroyed after he had been denounced as a Nazi-sympathiser in the Daily Mail, and his stately country manor has been sold to a retired American Congressman, Mr. Lewis. Stevens is granted permission to borrow his Daimler, and he sets off to the West Country to meet Kenton.
Howards End, 2h20
Directed by James Ivory
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Comedy-drama, Romance
Actors Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, Joseph Bennett, Prunella Scales
Rating73% 3.6976353.6976353.6976353.6976353.697635
The story takes place in Edwardian England and concerns three families who represent three social classes: the Wilcoxes are wealthy capitalists, the class that is displacing the aristocracy; the Schlegel sisters standing for the enlightened bourgeoisie; and the Basts, a young couple down on their luck, who may be traced to the lower middle class. (Forster is clear that the novel is "not concerned with the very poor".) The film asks the question "Who will inherit England?" and answers it through the ownership of the house, Howards End, as it passes from person to person.
Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, 1h50
Directed by James Ivory
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Comedy-drama, Romance
Actors Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Blythe Danner, Simon Callow, Kyra Sedgwick, John Bell
Rating65% 3.294573.294573.294573.294573.29457
The story of a traditional family living in the Country Club District of Kansas City, Missouri, during the 1930s and 1940s. The Bridges grapple with changing mores and expectations. Mr. Bridge (Paul Newman), is a lawyer who resists his children's rebellion against the conservative values he holds dear. Mrs. Bridge (Joanne Woodward), labors to maintain a Pollyanna view of the world against her husband's emotional distance and her children's eagerness to adopt a world view more modern than her own.
Madame Sousatzka, 2h2
Directed by John Schlesinger
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Comedy-drama, Musical
Actors Shirley MacLaine, Navin Chowdhry, Shabana Azmi, Peggy Ashcroft, Twiggy, Geoffrey Bayldon
Rating65% 3.2970453.2970453.2970453.2970453.297045
Sushila et son fils Manek, des immigrés indiens, vivent chichement en Grande-Bretagne. Le jeune Manek a des dispositions pour le piano et sa mère confie son apprentissage à Madame Sousatzka, un professeur d’origine russe. Celle-ci pousse l’adolescent à exercer son art avec intransigeance en même temps qu’elle lui inculque ses propres valeurs morales, ce qui contrarie les attentes de Sushila…
A Room with a View, 1h57
Directed by James Ivory
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Comedy-drama, Romance
Actors Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter, Denholm Elliott, Julian Sands, Simon Callow, Daniel Day-Lewis
Rating71% 3.5983253.5983253.5983253.5983253.598325
Miss Lucy Honeychurch is from an English village in Surrey and is on holiday in Italy with her much older cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett. Charlotte is conventionally English, with an extremely restrictive personality and tends to get her way by expressing her emotions to manipulate others. Lucy has been brought up in an upper-middle class but loving and easygoing household, and had fewer inhibitions, which creates a strong tension between herself and Charlotte. They are in contrast with the more free-thinking and free-spirited backdrop of Italy. At a small pensione Lucy meets such people as Reverend Beebe, the two Miss Alans, and the author Miss Eleanor Lavish, but most importantly, the nonconformist Mr. Emerson and his handsome, philosophical son, George, who becomes friends with Charlotte. These men, although also English, represent the forward-thinking ideals of the turn-of-the-century, seeking to leave behind the repression and caution that was the norm in Victorian times. At first, the Emersons seem strange and unfamiliar to Lucy and Charlotte. They seem sincere but unaware of finer upper class Victorian manners. Mr. Emerson offers to switch rooms with the women, who desire a room with a view. Charlotte is offended, believing him to be rude and tactless for what she perceives to be indebting them with his offer. As Lucy begins her journey to maturity, she finds herself drawn to George due to his mysterious thinking and readily expressed emotions.
The Bostonians, 2h2
Directed by James Ivory
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Romance
Themes Films about sexuality, LGBT-related films, LGBT-related films, LGBT-related film
Actors Christopher Reeve, Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Tandy, Madeleine Potter, Nancy Marchand, Wesley Addy
Rating61% 3.095153.095153.095153.095153.09515
À Boston, à la fin du XIX siècle, Olive, femme mûre et fortunée, austère et timide, célibataire, militante féministe, tente de s'approprier Verena, jeune femme ravissante et vive, possédant de remarquables dons d'oratrice, dons exploités par son père lors de soirées mondaines vouées à la cause des femmes. Olive accueille Verena chez elle, l'éduque, lui permet de vivre dans un cadre luxueux tout en l'y maintenant prisonnière. Olive est clairement et secrètement amoureuse de Verena. Mais celle-ci n'est pas insensible au charme d'un cousin d'Olive, journaliste ambitieux, épris d'elle au premier regard mais peu favorable aux idées d'émancipation des femmes. Verena va longtemps hésiter entre son penchant pour son soupirant tenace et sa reconnaissance envers Olive. Mais l'amour des deux jeunes gens l'emporte et Olive reprend avec un succès inattendu le flambeau de la cause des femmes.
The Courtesans of Bombay, 1h13
Directed by Ismail Merchant
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Documentary
Actors Saeed Jaffrey, Zohra Sehgal
Roles Writer
Rating63% 3.177663.177663.177663.177663.17766
Kareem Samar, Saeed Jaffrey, and Zohra Sehgal are professional actors who interact with actual inhabitants of the area. Samar portrays a rent collector representing a landlord who was a friend of Merchant and approved the project. Jaffrey's role is that of an actor whose infatuation with one of the dancers becomes an obsession, and Segal is a retired courtesan who recalls her earlier life when her aunt arranged for her care by a wealthy benefactor.
Heat and Dust, 2h13
Directed by James Ivory
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Historical, Romance
Actors Julie Christie, Greta Scacchi, Shashi Kapoor, Christopher Cazenove, Susan Fleetwood, Zakir Hussain
Roles Novel
Rating64% 3.245593.245593.245593.245593.24559
In 1982, Anne, an English woman, intrigued by the fate of her great-aunt Olivia, whose letters and diary she has inherited, interviews the elderly Harry Hamilton-Paul, who in his youth was Olivia's close friend when they were both living in India.
Quartet
Quartet (1981)
, 1h40
Directed by James Ivory
Origin France
Genres Drama, Romance
Actors Alan Bates, Maggie Smith, Isabelle Adjani, Anthony Higgins, Suzanne Flon, Pierre Clémenti
Roles Writer
Rating61% 3.0972853.0972853.0972853.0972853.097285
The beautiful Marya "Mado" Zelli (Isabelle Adjani), is living with her husband Stephan (Anthony Higgins), a Polish art dealer, in 1927 Paris. When he is convicted of selling stolen artwork and imprisoned for one year, Marya is left penniless with no means to support herself. At Stephan's urging, she moves into the apartment of some acquaintances, H.J. Heidler (Alan Bates), a wealthy English art dealer, and his wife Lois (Maggie Smith), a painter. H.J. has a history of inviting vulnerable young women to move into the "spare room" only to seduce them. Lois permits this arrangement because she wants to keep H.J. from leaving her.