Ismail Merchant will be introduced by Professor Albert Johnson The team of Ismail Merchant, who was born in Bombay and studied in America, and James Ivory, who was born in Berkeley and lives in India, is one of the most unusual and creative collaborations in international cinema. There is just nothing quite like the mood of edgy humor and cavalier tragedy in a Merchant-Ivory film. Perhaps their best known works are those of the last decade-Heat and Dust, A Room with a View, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, etc.-but we have selected two of our favorites among their earlier films, in order to give a feel for the maverick spirit that Ismail Merchant represented some thirty years ago. Mahatma and the Mad Boy. Ismail Merchant (India, 1973). A day in the life of a beggar boy on Bombay's Juhu Beach: a mood piece and a haunting portrait of Indian society in miniature. Photographed by Subrata Mitra. With Sajid Khan. (27 mins, In English, Color, 35mm) Shakespeare Wallah. James Ivory (India, 1965). Typical of the works of writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the third collaborator in the Merchant-Ivory team, Shakespeare Wallah deals with the delicate interaction between life and art in the lives of artists, and the tenuous relationship between British and Indians in modern India. A family of English Shakespearean actors (wallah means "peddler") in the new India find themselves reduced to giving performances at golf clubs, schools and the palaces of decaying Maharajahs. The family conflict is heightened when the daughter falls in love with a rich Indian playboy (Shashi Kapoor). The eccentric, irrepressible Kendal family play themselves in the film, which has a music score by Satyajit Ray and photography by Ray's great cinematographer Subrata Mitra. Mr. Merchant will sign copies of the new book, The Films of Merchant Ivory by Robert Emmet Long (Abrams, 1991), sold at the Museum bookstore and at the screening.