The White Countess

The Merchant-Ivory filmmaking team of James Ivory as director and Ismail Merchant, producer with screenplay writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, has created some of the most beautiful films ever. They include "Passage to India, " "Heat and Dust," "Howard’s End" and "Remains of the Day." Ismail Merchant died last year; "The White Countess" was their final work and noted Japanese novelist/screenwriter, Kazuo Ishiguro ("Remains of the Day"), wrote the screenplay. Whether or not they knew the film would be their last effort, they nevertheless cast it with historic screen and stage luminaries of the family kind.

The story is set in Shanghai in 1936. James Ivory and cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, brilliantly captured the flavor of the teeming city, enhanced by Richard Robbins’s original score. Shanghai’s population included not only native Chinese but also people of multiple cultures, including expatriates from Russia, Germany and France, some of whom openly expressed their prejudices. Russian beauty, Sofia, played by Natasha Richardson (daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and Tony Richardson, and granddaughter of Sir Michael Redgrave), works as a dance hall girl, in a popular local dive, to support her dead husband’s devoutly religious Aunt Sara, played by her real-life mother; Olga (real-life aunt, Lynn Redgrave), and her sister-in-law, Greshenka (Madeline Potter). It’s obvious that they disapprove of her job, yet have their hands out on payday. Also, they’re afraid that Sofia will corrupt her adoring adolescent daughter, Katya (Madelyn Daly). The family lives in a crude wooden building above Samuel Feinstein’s tailor shop. Katya ignores her aunt’s admonition not to play with the "dirty Jewish" children.

There are wonderful scenes in the club’s dressing room of the dancers’ jealous hurling of crude epithets at each other. The multi-racial band is loud and jazzy. The film is enriched by scenes of the club’s entertainers: A surreal, powdered sylphlike Chinese singer; a commedia del’arte troupe, and a whiteface Italian opera tragedian. Men of all stripes, ages, and physiques, hang on and nuzzle the necks of bored dancers who feign interest. Sofia, though the most beautiful, is told by her sleazy boss she looks "shabby" and won’t attract customers. She needs to buy a new dress, but he doesn’t pay her enough. She weighs its cost against family needs.

The filmmakers captured the relentless cacophony of life in Shanghai: Streets mobbed with tradesmen, shoppers, businessmen, families, children, and tourists. Among them is spiffy but impoverished American diplomat, Todd Jackson (Ralph Fiennes, sounding like Jimmy Stewart). Jackson had been a member of the League of Nations until he was blinded in an explosion (shown in flashback) - - a blind Fiennes is refined compared to Pacino in "Scent of a Woman." We are never clear on exactly what he is doing in Shanghai. Jackson befriends Mr. Matsudo (Hiroyuki Sanada); a mysterious, wealthy, ostensible businessman and turns him on to Sofia’s "dive." Jackson wants to open a club himself, but doesn’t have the cash. He overhears a conversation between Sofia and a young Russian expat aristocrat relegated to deliveryman, and learns of her royalty. Jackson and Sofia meet when she follows him out of the club to warn him of thugs who would take advantage of a blind man. The conflict between Sofia and her in-laws grows when Katya starts emulating her mother. Greshenka wants to protect her from her mother’s evil ways.

At the racetrack, Jackson scores and a year later opens his club, The White Countess, installing Sofia as hostess. He tells Matsudo that he wants his club to be free of politics while there is talk of a possible Japanese invasion. The club becomes a haven for foreigners and natives of various cultural and political persuasions. The pace heightens as Japanese soldiers rumble down narrow streets in military vehicles, bristling with guns. People are frightened. They’ve been alerted to leave the city and the exodus begins in a frenzy of shouting, screaming people heading for the docks on choked streets, past burning buildings in the midst of gunfire and explosions. Katya is separated from Sofia by her aunt and grandmother as they ready to sail away in one of a fleet of over-crowded, flat-bottom boats.

Merchant-Ivory has created a culturally rich, sweeping drama of political intrigue, and, I’d like to say, romance; but the attraction between Fiennes and Richardson never catches fire. Did Fiennes pull back because of his character’s handicap? His only passion is an outburst of jealous rage. That said, there is a tender scene toward the end, where Sofia allows him to touch her face and he tells her, tapping his forehead, that she is as beautiful as he saw her "in here." Unfortunately, the film didn’t get the distribution it deserved. If you can’t catch it on the big screen, you'll have to watch it on DVD. If you have a wide-screen, plasma TV, all the better. It’s a beauty.