Fans of Downton Abbey – do not despair because Season 3 has run its course. Before he created Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes wrote the 2001 film Gosford Park, also set at the estate of an English aristocrat in the 1920s. The period between the world wars marked the final decline of the Upstairs Downstairs world, and Fellowes, descended from such an upper class family, grew up with relatives who had lived through it. In fact, he modeled the scathingly dismissive character of Constance, Countess of Trentham (Maggie Smith), after his own great-aunt.
Gosford Park won an Oscar for its legendary director, Robert Altman. Altman was a master of weaving together characters and multiple story lines, employing the kind of simultaneous, overlapping speech that people use in real life. In Gosford Park, instead of recording all the actors with the normal boom microphone, he placed radio microphones on each of twenty actors in the large scenes. The result, a triumph of cinematic sound design, is that we can hear key lines of dialogue amidst the realistic cacophony of a large gathering, and our attention can move from group to group within a single camera shot.
Ever unconventional, Altman also showed his genius in the solitary scenes. In one, Helen Mirren’s character has repaired to her own room to reflect on an emotionally shattering development. Instead of a closeup on Mirren’s face, Altman shoots in long shot, allowing Mirren to act with her whole body and emphasizing the loneliness of her life and the situation.
Altman was also known for attracting very deep, top rate casts. Gosford Park contains exceptional performances by Mirren, Kelly Macdonald and Emily Watson. Watson has an outburst at a formal dinner that leaves the audience gasping. American audiences had only seen Clive Owen in the modest art house film Croupier, and the brooding determination in his Gosford Park performance helped make him a star.
As in Downton Abbey, Maggie Smith gets some great lines and makes the most of them. Her performance triggered a stream of spunky roles for Smith, including in the Harry Potter movies, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Quartet and, of course, as Downton Abbey’s Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham.
Gosford Park is a great movie, and you’ll recognize its world as Downton Abbey’s. Gosford Park is available on DVD and streaming from Netflix Instant.
