Gosford Park

After spending most of his career in America - with the infelicitous exception of a trip to Paris Fashion Week for Pret-A-Porter - the director Robert Altman here ... more >

After spending most of his career in America - with the infelicitous exception of a trip to Paris Fashion Week for Pret-A-Porter - the director Robert Altman here makes a more successful journey overseas. From the sound of the torrential rain falling on stately home gravel, we know we’re in England, and a long way from the contemporary So-Cal of The Player and Short Cuts. It is, in fact, November 1932: Lord of the manor Michael Gambon has invited friends and family to join him and bored wife Kristin Scott-Thomas for a country retreat, to include a shooting party, lavish meals and murder in the study. The camera moves effortlessly between the hob-nobs in the dining room and their servants downstairs, and almost every one of the invitees has a hidden secret which comes to the surface in the course of the weekend. Compared to the starched neatness of The Remains Of The Day, this is a fun, slouchy period movie, with a healthy sense of mischief in its plotting and production design; as in The Long Goodbye, the whodunnit aspect is only an excuse for the director to throw in as many enjoyable red herrings and non-sequiturs as possible. < less

View all 12 of Anonymous’s reviews

After spending most of his career in America - with the infelicitous exception of a trip to Paris Fashion Week for Pret-A-Porter - the director Robert Altman here ... more >

After spending most of his career in America - with the infelicitous exception of a trip to Paris Fashion Week for Pret-A-Porter - the director Robert Altman here makes a more successful journey overseas. From the sound of the torrential rain falling on stately home gravel, we know we’re in England, and a long way from the contemporary So-Cal of The Player and Short Cuts. It is, in fact, November 1932: Lord of the manor Michael Gambon has invited friends and family to join him and bored wife Kristin Scott-Thomas for a country retreat, to include a shooting party, lavish meals and murder in the study. The camera moves effortlessly between the hob-nobs in the dining room and their servants downstairs, and almost every one of the invitees has a hidden secret which comes to the surface in the course of the weekend. Compared to the starched neatness of The Remains Of The Day, this is a fun, slouchy period movie, with a healthy sense of mischief in its plotting and production design; as in The Long Goodbye, the whodunnit aspect is only an excuse for the director to throw in as many enjoyable red herrings and non-sequiturs as possible. < less

View all 124 of Mike McCahill’s reviews

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Film Details

Cast

Maggie Smith, Charles Dance, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Michael Gambon, Camilla Rutherford

Technical Details