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GOSFORD PARK |
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Year: 2002
Director: Robert Altman
Writers: Robert Altman, Bob Balaban, Julian Fellowes
Producers: Robert Altman, Joshua Astrachan, Jane Frazer, David Levy
Cast:
Michael Gambon......... Sir William McCordle
Kristin Scott Thomas... Lady Sylvia McCordle
Maggie Smith........... Countess Of Trentham
Jeremy Northam................. Ivor Novello
Alan Bates......................... Jennings
Helen Mirren..................... Mrs Wilson
Derek Jacobi........................ Probert
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The story:
When Oscar-winning director Robert Altman briefed writer Julian Fellowes on producing a script for Gosford Park, his specifications were vague. The movie should include servants, their employers, and “it would be fun to have a murder in it somewhere,” explained the director.
Perhaps Altman’s airy attitude has its roots in the director’s scant regard for scripts. “Storylines mean doodly squat to me,” he declared in a recent interview. Which makes the fact that the finished film is 98 per cent true to the original screenplay even more remarkable.
But then the subject matter of Gosford Park is one particularly close to the heart of Fellowes, whose wife is Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Michael. A murder mystery set in a large country house in the Thirties, the film explores the English class system through the relationships of the house’s occupants and their guests and the downstairs staff. Its 40-odd characters are portrayed by a cast which reads like a Who’s Who of British thespian talent and includes Dame Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Jeremy Northam and Derek Jacobi.
The film, which has earned Altman a Golden Globe, is one of his few forays into the mystery genre. But to take the multiple-storylined venture at face value would, as with so much of the director’s work, be a mistake. “I think it didn’t turn out to be so much a whodunit as a who-cares-who-done-it or why-didn’t they-do-it-earlier,” he says.
Gosford Park is already playing in the US and goes on general release in the UK on February 1.
Click on photos below to enlarge
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