Gosford Park (2001)

Love that movie but I can't believe it's been 20 years

R1 I know. The 4K release looks like it was made today though! Timeless and classy film.

I hate that bitch who kicked the dog.

Mirren should have won the Oscar for this, then Dench could have won for Notes On A Scandal

I like Gosford Park better than Downton Abbey

I always looked at Kelly Macdonald as the lead. An unknown actress working alongside the greatest of all time- Smith, Mirren, Gambon, Owen, Bates, Dance, Balaban, Northam, Watson, Scott Thomas, Jacobi, Wilby, etc.

Wasn't Kelly in a movie with Ewan McGregor where he showed his hairy pinga?

R7 I don't know, but she was a nobody in 2001.

It is a fun film

Robert Altman was one of the most uneven of the great filmmakers, but he went out on an upswing with the trio of Gosford Park, The Company, and A Prairie Home Companion.

DA made it seem as if the servants were an extended part of the family, while GP showed how they used & abused them, gossiped about them and treated them as if they were something less than human. And yet these servants still have these lives & experiences that the family knows nothing about. But they were also some of the most snobbish and enforcers of the order of things. I love this movie - it's always a fun watch. You kind of forget how hot a young Clive Owen was

Every time I watch it, I spot a new VIP. Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith could have easily been Emily Watson and Kirsten Scott Thomas at the Oscars.

I agree with R11. Robert Altman's too cynical to make the Upstairs a benevolent bunch, while that Julian fellow is nostalgic for an aristocratic past.

I think Julian wrote Gosford Park. But he toned down the snobbery on DA to appeal to Americans.

I always liked Charles Dances line "Stop crying or people will think you are Italian."

Hmmm...BOUGHT marmalade.

One of those films I can watch over and over and never grow bored.

It is so much better than Downtown Abbey. I only watched DA thinking it would be GP: The series. Pity.

What is a weekend?

Watson is so good. Phillipe is not, but he was so beautiful it doesn't matter.

Julian Fellowes did write it, but where Altman was concerned, the script (or source novel, or play, whatever was there before he was behind the camera yelling "Action") was never more than a jumping-off point. He always shaped the movie with his own sensibility and encouraged actors to add things too. I shouldn't be surprised if what made it to theaters was very different from what JF turned in.

I'm pretty sure Bob Balaban is a closet gay

I need to watch it again now that I've seen Ryan's beautiful cock.

That's Hollywood Super-Hunk, Bob Balaban to you, R20.

Great acting. Ivor Novellos music is a highlight.

Love this movie but I can’t understand why the producer guy thinks Claudette Colbert would be in his Charlie Chan movie. As if!

[quote]Watson is so good. Phillipe is not, but he was so beautiful it doesn't matter.

It's a role that made good use of his limitations. The character is not a good actor either. But he's hot, and he's willing to leverage his sex appeal for a movie career, as it's implied he's letting the Balaban character have his way with him (though not on this trip, because he's prowling around trying his chances with upstairs and downstairs women alike).

Philippe had played a bisexual character in 54 as well. At least, the director's cut.

It's not that I can't buy him as a bisexual it's as a 1930s actor he's unconvincing.

But he's known for his discretion!

This is one of my favorite rainy day movies. I wish it was 10 hours long.

I could only get through two episodes of Downton Abbey.

I want to like Gosford Park and did the first two times I watched it. But after watching it a third time I realized none of the characters are likable with the exception of Kelly Macdonald's character. Every person upstairs is just vile and the servants are all bitter and nasty to each other.

Awfully long repertoire.

It's so bloody good...even the weaker bits like Ryan Phillippe and Stephen Fry's overly stupid Inspector. Which I like to think were the only things that Fellowes contributed. You'll never convince me that much of what he wrote ended up in the final film other than a general plot...Altman was notorious for using his screenwriters to provide an outline and he filled in all the good stuff with his cast.

There's also the fact that nothing Fellowes has written since Gosford is 1/10th as good. He certainly didn't write any of the clever lines in Gosford that we remember....he hasn't come up with a single new clever line since then on any of his drecky tv shows.

oh, I forgot to gush all over Jeremy Northam who was terrific as Novello. I even bought the soundtrack just for the songs.

He was also at his peak hotness then...all the basic queens were gushing over that twit Ryan Phillippe while I was fantasizing about being Jeremy Northam's love slave.

Eileen Atkins, who plays Helen Mirren’s sister, wrote a reboot of Upstairs/Downstairs around the same time as Downton Abbey’s first season.

R8 She was the one girl in the instantly iconic Trainspotting, dumbass.

R33 Eileen Atkins actually co-created the original Upstairs Downstairs with Jean Marsh....both of them were descendants of servants and grew up hearing all the juicy gossip from the Downstairs perspective. I think Atkins was supposed to be IN the original but she wasn't available when it came time to film it.

I like Mirren and Smith in this, but I thought Watson and Scott-Thomas were even better and the latter really should have been nominated. I love the scenes of the morning after everyone finds out, where she's still trying to enamour all her guests and hold the facade together. She was perfect for this role. Glamorous, unhinged, manipulative. I couldn't take my eyes off of her. It's a perfect and at times moving satire of a delusional, undersexed wealthy woman of the times.

I prefer Altman's 70s output but this one is up there too. We don't get enough good Whodunnits any more, just the stock standard Agatha Christie TV movie fare.

There was Knives Out a couple years ago, but that looks limp, obvious, and witless beside Gosford Park.

[quote]Scott-Thomas were even better and the latter really should have been nominated.

During the latter part of the movie, she wears this amazing fox stole. The PETA would set upon you in an instant if you wore something like that these days, but it just looked some amazing on her, but also made her seem kind of gauche (if that makes sense)

It was great except for Stephen Fry. Thank God, they had some closing scenes to make you forget him. Everyone besides Fry is really good here and it captures the din of the kitchen and the depressing rooms where the servants lived. This is one of Altman's better films--it has a familiar structure and setting and I'm sure that the improvisation added to whatever the basic script contained. I'm sure the cast brought out the best in each other---lots of really good character players who were able to shine. Altman should have had Atkins write the script instead of Julian, or at least doctor it.

R36 and R37 I liked Crooked House a lot.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is great, too.

[quote]I want to like Gosford Park and did the first two times I watched it. But after watching it a third time I realized none of the characters are likable with the exception of Kelly Macdonald's character.

They're almost cuddly compared to the people in Altman's Short Cuts. But I love both movies. (I do find the Mirren and Watson characters at least admirable in GP.)

One of my favorite Oscar images was when the camera caught Robert Altman and David Lynch hugging it out in the audience and being gracious also-rans as Ron Howard accepted his Best Director award for A Beautiful Mind.

I saw ABM when it was in theaters. It wasn't painful or anything, but I've actually watched Gosford Park and Mulholland Drive several times each in the 20 years since.

Saw it in theatres as a teen when it came out. Recently rewatched during the last round of Canadian lockdowns. It holds up. Fry's character never getting to finish saying his name was a good gag. I'd forgotten it has Trent Ford in a minor role as Ryan Philippe's bro. I was obsessed with TF after I saw How to Deal. Whatever happened to him?

R36 Kristin Scott Thomas is an underrated actress- A Handful of Dust, Bitter Moon, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Richard III, An Unforgettable Summer, Mission Impossible, The English Patient, The Horse Whisperer, Up at the Villa, and Life as a House.

This was BEFORE Gosford Park.

Trent Ford in fact plays the "bro" of Lord Standish. He and Ryan's character never speak.

Ford gives the worst performance in the whole thing by about a light year or so and his character makes no sense, unless he's Standish's lover.

R45 He also liked chubby women.

How did Helen Mirren know from their brief conversation that Clive Owen was planning to off Michael Gambon?

R47 Mother's intuition

On a trip to NYC once I saw Kristin Scott Thomas on stage in The Seagull (Carey Mulligan was also in the production as Nina). She was so commanding, really superb stage presence. A few years later I saw DL fave Judy Davis play the same role in Sydney, and even though the production was much lower budget, she may have been even better as Arkadina. Both phenomenal, underrated actresses. I also like KST in her French movies (such as I've Loved You So Long).

Thanks for the recommendation R40, i'll check out Crooked House.

R42 makes a change from when Robert Altman pulled faces and did fake signing from the audience when, upon winning her Oscar, Louise Fletcher signed to her dead parents from the podium. He was still pissed that she turned down the role that went to Lily Tomlin in Nashville.

R50 - it wasn't Fletcher who turned Altman down - it was the other way round. He parted ways with her husband who was a producer working with him and gave the role of a mother of two deaf children she developed with him, based on her experience growing up with deaf parents, to Tomlin. So him mocking looked even more inappropriate.

R45 Derp, when you're right you're right

[quote] How did Helen Mirren know from their brief conversation that Clive Owen was planning to off Michael Gambon?

IIRC, she didn't, she decided to kill him after she notices the picture of herself next to Clive's bed, realizing that Michael didn't keep his promise to give their baby to a family and just dropped it off in an orphanage. Neither did know that the other was about to murder him.

The first hits that come up in a search for this story about Altman mocking Louise Fletcher's signing at the Oscars (which I'd never heard before today) are a negative IMDb fan review of Nashville and prior Datalounge threads. If there were really anything to it, I'd think it would be in every annual article recounting famous incidents of Oscar bitching, sniping, and meanness.

Fletcher herself, 2020 Huff Post interview:

Q: But at the Oscars that year, Altman’s “Nashville” was also being celebrated. Lily Tomlin was nominated for the role that Altman had designed for you based on your connection to sign language. How did you feel about that?

A: Well, it was bittersweet, I’ll tell you. I was standing up on the stage and I looked down, and there’s Robert Altman sitting right there, gesturing toward me as if he were signing.

Q: Was he mocking you?

A: No, I think he was happy for me. But he had a very special sense of humor.

Altman was a great director but was also a notorious dick.

Difficult color, green.

A perfect film, except for some dodgy sound.

I liked Derek Jacobi as Michael Gambon's valet. He was the only one who was upset over his death, besides Lady Stockbridge.

Gosford Bore. Highly overrated. My rich aunt dragged me to see this when it came out. We both fell asleep.

R59 a bore???!

R60, yes ho a bore. Am I speaking Chinese?

R59/R61 I do not see how you find this film a bore, but some people just get thrills out of the simple things in life.

[quote] Timeless and classy film.

The plot refers to English class. And, the plot is set in another time.

But those two facts do not make this overlong, American pastiche into 'a timeless and classy film'.

[quote] overlong, American pastiche

We did this overlong, American pastiche 5 months ago. So all the senile Dataloungers could repeat what they said 5 months ago.

[quote] Ivor Novellos music is a highlight.

His music came from the days when songs had melodies.

And you could even HEAR the lyrics.

Somebody remembers that Maggie Smith's character's line is one of their favorite lines ever!

[quote] And he has such a vast repertoire.

Stephen Fry, Ryan Philippe, and Bob Balaban are dead weights in an otherwise beautifully acted film. The Americans blowing in and upsetting everything and turning all in a different direction is a typical Fellows' trick because he's just not a good writer, he's better suited as a fact checker for period authenticity, or a team writer. He doesn't trust himself with mundane details and it shows: everything is drama. Altman films are almost always very watchable, if only think of how clever he was in some ways and how he might have been so much better in others.

[quote] he might have been so much better in others.

Why did Altman ail?

[quote] A perfect film, except for some dodgy sound.

And some dodgy lighting. Half of the scenes on page 2 are in darkness—

** R68 Altman fail **

[quote] Influenced by Jean Renoir

What does this mean, OP?

Bob Balaban stinks up every movie he appears in. Is he Robert Altman's nephew or something? No, His uncle was head of Paramount Pictures. His father & other uncle owned a movie theater corporation & stage theaters. You could say he’s connected

OooooOOOH, get a great big whiff of r63!

I thought Fry was great as the bumbling Inspector who is being dismissed, barely tolerated, by the upstairs people and then acts dismissive and pompous towards the staff.

The most correct table setting in the history of western cinema.

^^^go to Facebook page "Gossford Park Movie" and scroll down.

I actually like Bob Balaban and think he is a great actor, but I think Richard Dreyfuss would have been a better Morris Weissman.

r72, I really can't imagine Bob Balaban's ancestry would have any influence in his casting.

Wasn't Ryan Philippe a last minute replacement for another bigger name?

^ All these questions are answered in the previous thread

R79 Jude Law

The heart of the film is in the relationship between Kelly Macdonald and Maggie Smith.

[quote] I really can't imagine Bob Balaban's ancestry would have any influence in his casting

Are you pretending to be naive?

Balaban's relations put up the $19 million to make this movie. They made it in England because Quality English actors are happy to appear in small roles for small fees.

Balaban's relations?

What relations did he have then that could have financed the film, r83?

R64 is a snitch.

The previous thread (for the senile Dataloungers) was 17 months ago.

Threads can be repeated as often as there is a change in the narrative.

The last DA movie was sufficient.

[SA:Violet Dies and Tom's son is the first Crawley family member who will never have a memory of her.]

Richard Dreyfuss as Morris Wiessman

Hugh Laurie as the Inspector

Leonardo DiCaprio as Denton

Kelly MacDonald was also wonderful in (and nominated for Best Actress Independent Spirit Award) for a film called 'Two Family House' in 2000.

[quote]I actually like Bob Balaban and think he is a great actor, but I think Richard Dreyfuss would have been a better Morris Weissman

You say you think Balaban is a good actor, but that Dreyfus would have been better? Dreyfus is one of the most unwatchable actors alive.

Every rime I see Dreyfus, I want to slap his face

[quote] I think Richard Dreyfuss would have been a better Morris Weissman

You think foolishly.

That cocaine addict schmuck is too embarrassed to show his face at the synagogue.

Balaban's character annoyed me the first time and I've actually come to appreciate both the performance and what he represents - an alternative to the British class system. He's by no means perfect - in some ways he's just as bad - but he's of a different world and he's not much impressed by what he sees at Gosford Park.

Dreyfuss would have played him as some manic mogul-ish stereotype with Sam Goldwyn malaprops. Balaban's deadpan delivery is a better fit with the milieu--more subtle and the lines like "is she British or is she affected?" are funnier that way? He probably had a great uncle of grandfatehr in the business whom he remembered well enough to imitate.

I'd add that Balaban plays Mr. Weissmann as obviously Jewish and also rather obviously gay - but it's in no way a campy performance. In fact it's rather understated.

[quote] Mr. Weissmann as obviously Jewish

R94 I guessed Weissmann was Jewish because all of them — Zukor, Lemmley, Goldfisch, Warners, Mayer, Zanuck, Selznick, and Cohen— were Jewish.

But I didn't guess Weissmann was gay. What made you think Weissmann was gay? His voice? His mannerisms? Clothing?

The fact that he besties with Ivor Novello was a bit of a giveaway.

Richard Dreyfus would have stunk and sunk the whole movie!

Would have greatly preferred RDJ to Ryan, however. But I think he was in jail that year.

Dreyfus was in jail that year.

For what? Overacting?

[quote]I didn't guess Weissmann was gay. What made you think Weissmann was gay? His voice? His mannerisms? Clothing?

I'm not the person to whom you're replying, but the reason I guessed Weissman was gay was not just the easy friendship with Novello, but the hint of a relationship with Denton, the Ryan Phillippe character. When they're alone in Weissman's bedroom, listen to the way Weissman asks, "Will you come back later?" Not just the line but the delivery. I don't think he means for more conversation. Denton says he doesn't think they should "risk it."

Of course, Denton spends the rest of the film pursuing successful and unsuccessful hook-ups with women in the house. My reading is that he's a so-so aspiring actor who's straight, but willing to be a powerful Hollywood man's lover to advance his career.

R13- I never felt Lord Grantham looked or sounded like an Aristocratic.

I liked Charles Dance as Lord Stockbridge. He took over when the body is discovered. He was so calm.

Bought marmalade?

Oh dear, I call that very feeble.

R71 The Rules of the Game

R103, that is an example of good breeding that we read about. Stoic. My favorite character is Kristen Scott Thomas ', she doesn't give a damn what her husband does as long as she get to live as she chooses.

R106 She is a bitch in the film.

I like most characters in this films. They are supposed to be unlikeable.

R105 What is that?

R108 La Règle du Jeu or The Rules of the Game (1937)

Directed by Jean Renoir

Starring Nora Gregor, Marcel Dalio, Roland Toutain, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Julien Carette, Gaston Modot, and Jean Renoir

[quote]I liked Charles Dance as Lord Stockbridge. He took over when the body is discovered. He was so calm.

I took his reaction as "about time - the fucker had it coming" - a sentiment openly expressed by the downstairs staff & hinted at by the upstairs residents. So then the story turns into "Clue" since almost everyone in the house had a fairly good reason to want him dead. Which makes it more ironic that the person who did him in was the stone faced servant who kept her feelings about him to herself.

There were two murderers. The mother and the son. The son who found out who his dad was. The same dad who left him in an orphanage where he, no doubt, had such a rough life that he decided to take revenge on his dad (plotting his way into the estate). And the mother found out (when she saw the picture of her much younger self next to the valet's bed who was her son, she gave up with the promise of him being taken care of properly). The mother poisoned William McCordle (Michael Gambon) with the tea, and the son stabbed him when he probably was already dead or at least unconscious.

R111 Why spoil it?

Without Ivor Novello's music, the score would not be the same.

The Land of Might Have Been is a beautiful and romantic love ballad.

r112, a movie from 2001 you haven't seen before and yet you read the thread? Babe, that's on you, or on anybody else doing the same.

[quote] A perfect film, except for some dodgy sound.

You're right, R57. We’ve heard about William Wyler demanding that Bette Davis and Charlton Heston repeat one line of dialogue over and over and over up to 26 times to get the nuance he wanted. We know the awful Woody Allen demands that all performers in his movies replicate his New York Jewish speaking voice; Cockney Michael Caine talked like a New York Jew.

You’ve heard about Harold Pinter insist his actors insert a two minute pause between each of their sentences. You’ve heard about George Bernard Shaw’s characters— even if they’re supposed to be French or Egyptian— have to talk referencing English institutions. All these directors/playwrights demand that the performers speak in a certain way.

And Altman does the same. He became famous in the 1970s where groups of people talk in rambling, inconsequential sentences and dismissively talk over one another. Altman considers this be “cinema vérité”.

The people on IMDB commented—

[quote] A good film HAS to have good dialogue, especially when it bills itself as a "murder mystery." If you cannot hear half of the dialogue, how are you supposed to figure out what is going on? I think people who like this movie think this is being "artistic." There is nothing artistic about a bunch of gibberish that may or may not mean anything because the director wants you to not hear it. It didn't make sense

[quote] half of the dialogue is so garbled you can't tell what people are saying for most of the movie. While this might be acceptable for a scene or two when in a room of crowded people, for it to drag on for the entire movie is bad film-making indeed. The mumbling, overlapping dialogue simply sucked.

[quote] And on top of it all, it's virtually impossible to understand the heavily accented slurred dialogue. I needed subtitles to see this thing. This movie is a non ending collage of group scenes with more than 2 people talking at once--this alone is exhausting and irritating.

[quote] the sound in this film is an atrocity of modern audio mixing, What most of them had in common was their speech delivery, a combination of mumbling and slurred speech that was impossible to follow even with the theatre microphones turned up to a painfully loud volume.

[quote] The second half is bizarre; the interior scenes have the sound of wind blowing.

Those comments are all from Americans who can't understand English

For what it's worth, on the DVD the commentary track by Julian Fellowes is the best I've ever heard.

[quote] Julian Fellowes is the best I've ever heard

I'm sure you could hear him properly because he was free to enunciate properly.

Whereas the professional actors in the actual film were told by the American director to mumble and smother the meaning of the words.

[quote]We know the awful Woody Allen demands that all performers in his movies replicate his New York Jewish speaking voice; Cockney Michael Caine talked like a New York Jew.

A clip of Caine (in his only Woody Allen film) talking like R115's idea of what a New York Jew sounds like. He just sounds like a nervous Englishman to me.

Altman did like overlapping dialogue, obviously. It was one of his trademarks. It's never caused me problems following the story. In fact, I like watching his good movies two or more times, because sometimes I catch asides and business I had missed. I've never felt affronted by that, as if someone were trying to put something over on me.

Also, although one of the Mensa candidates in the IMDb reviews above was whining about needing subtitles, watching with subtitles is not a bad idea, and we can easily do it now at home.

He had his share of misses, but it doesn't get much better than the best Altmans (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Nashville, 3 Women, Secret Honor, The Player, Short Cuts, Gosford Park, etc.), IMO.

I haven't seen an Altman movie in a long time but in Gosford I found the overlap quite muted. A lot of times I was more interested in hearing the overlap than the script.

[quote]Bob Balaban stinks up every movie he appears in. Is he Robert Altman's nephew or something?

I read somewhere he was closely involved in the origin of the film conceptually, so he just stayed connected, I guess.

To me, Kelly MacDonald was the lead. Her part connects most broadly with more characters than anyone else and her story seemed to have actual growth of character attached to it. Emily Watson was best supporting actress... she shone with warmth and a world-weariness that was pragmatic, not defeated. All the rest were pretty stock characters, though beautifully delivered. One of my all time favourite films and an absolute great.

I have a terrible confession: Although I love Gosford Park, I've never been able to follow the plot.

What's to follow?

Gosford Park is one of those movies where you discover something new when you watch it again. They may be small, subtle things, but the discovery delights you anyway.

For what seemed like decades viewing this film was one of my Christmas treats to myself. ‘Friend’ took it as a loan and failed to return it. Left me in a big fat huff, abandoning the yearly ritual, like a spoilt child.

This movie transports me to another world.

Gosford Park is a novel on the screen.

“Difficult color , green” (Maggie Smith ad lib)

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Gosford Park recast in 2001-

Mary- Natalie Press

Lady Trentham- Vanessa Redgrave

Robert Parks- Hugh Jackman

Elsie- Emily Blunt

Lady Sylvia McCordle- Emma Thompson

Lord William McCordle- Albert Finney

Mrs. Wilson- Judi Dench

Henry- Dominic West

Ivor Novello- Julian Wadham

Morris Weissman- Richard Dreyfuss

Mrs. Croft- Miriam Margolyes

Jennings- Ian Holm

Lord Raymond Stockbridge- Timothy Dalton

Lady Louisa Stockbridge- Miranda Richardson

Probert- John Hurt

Freddie Nesbitt- Rupert Graves

Mabel Nesbitt- Jane Adams

I love how the murder is occurring while Jeremy Northam is beautifully singing "What a Duke Should Be"

[quote] Mrs. Croft- Miriam Margolyes

No, that woman would be impossible.

Obese women didn't exist during The Depression.

Obese women weren't hired as servants.

Wiseman mentioned Colbert being affected.

Claudette Colbert demanded an obscene salary for It Happened One Night, dismissing the film as lightweight and convinced her price would not be met. It was met, the film was a huge hit and cemented her status as a star.

Later in life, Colbert was worried about the blacks in Grenada getting ideas that they are worth something and influencing other Caribbean nations including her retirement homeland. So she put a word in with her showbiz friends the Reagans and the US became involved. White trash who thought they were royalty.

R133 lol she'd probably make the entire production about her anyways

[quote] Elsie- Emily Blunt

Emily Blunt was 18 at that time.

[quote] Gosford Park is a novel on the screen.

What does that mean, R128?

It's loquacious, verbose and contains NO action?

r133, Marie Dressler

R133 Hattie MacDaniell

R133 Charles Laughton! !

Great film

Love fact that Henry Denton thinks he's fooling anyone with that atrocious supposed Scottish accent.

Being British both upstairs and downstairs don't say anything to Mr. Denton's face, this while they look at each other with "what the fuck is this" looks on their faces each time he speaks. Mary Maceachran of course who is Scots has Mr. Denton's number at once. It thus wasn't surprising he gave it up and got his lumps.

Some deleted scenes...

Gosford Park was far superiors to Downton Abbey because it captured more of true essence of life in a British great house. Specifically that upstairs rarely gave two fucks about those below stairs.

Anthony Meredith raids the larder contaminating most if not all stock of homemade preserves that were put up by housekeeper. Constance Trentham makes her maid stay up half the night hand washing and ironing a blouse, only to decide next morning she will wear something else instead.

Robert Parks seemed like the only male servant who was straight. Probert, George, George, and Barnes all seem to be gay.

You also see how family doesn't give two fucks about the servants by how Gosford Park has few mod cons both in kitchens and other service areas below stairs, and even servants quarters.

Main rooms used by family and their guests have electric lighting, ensuite baths with private toilets. Meanwhile staff use slop jars and must share one ghastly bath that doesn't even have hot water.

In contrast American wealthy families had every available mod con for themselves and staff. Their homes were fully wired for electricity throughout which meant staff could use labor saving devices which by 1920's and 1930's were plentiful. Where maid in Gosford Park sews black arm bands using a foot (treadle) powered sewing machine. Biltmore and other grand American homes had modern Singer electric sewing machines.

Despite the phenomenal cast, I can’t remember a single thing about Gosford Park…except Helen Mirren played a maid and Ryan Philippe was in it. It was thoroughly forgettable.

Largely because you cannot hear a fucking thing anyone is saying in Gosford Park.

Have sat in front of telly watching on DVD with sound loud as one dares and still cannot make out half of dialogue.

I only remember the fish forks and the color green.

Jeremy Swift (Arthur) is a treasure! One of those jobbing British actors who is everywhere, but sadly Americans don't see him often.

Downton Abbey fans will remember Jeremy Swift as Septimus Spratt, the scheming and conniving butler for the dowager's household.

I can hear every line of dialogue I'm meant to hear in Gosford, never had a problem. The parts you can't hear or partially hear are Altman's style.

Denton wasn't gay, but an opportunist who didn't miss a chance to further his career. Even if that meant having some oily producer have his wicked way. It was obvious from way Denton went after anything in skirts below and above stairs what he fancied most.

There wasn't a need to put on such a show since no one suspected he was having aa "thing" with Weissman.

If Denton were gay or strongly inclined in that direction is roommate Mr. Parks would have been like hitting the jackpot.

Helen Mirren was pissed when she lost the Oscar for this

R143 Jennings (Alan Bates) was an asexual alcoholic.

Jeremy Northam voice just sends me!

The Authenticity of Gosford Park

R143 is claiming to speak for people he has never met from a different century. And a socialist too, no doubt.

Altman sometimes said he wanted to make movies people should see more than once. Admittedly, he made his share of bad ones that were hard to sit through even once, but I usually think even more of his good-to-great movies when I see them another time(s). Gosford Park was one of those.

Dear R148 You're meant not to hear it. Altman is displaying his utter contempt for every character in this lousy non-movie. The rich villains and the mousy servants.

See post at R115

R155 M*A*S*H was another one

[quote] In contrast American wealthy families had every available mod con for themselves and staff. Their homes were fully wired for electricity throughout which meant staff could use labor saving devices which by 1920's and 1930's were plentiful. Where maid in Gosford Park sews black arm bands using a foot (treadle) powered sewing machine. Biltmore and other grand American homes had modern Singer electric sewing machines.

Are you still criticising this American movie about British life?

[quote] Robert Parks … Probert, George, George, and Barnes

Who are all these people?

The audience can identify who was who by the actor who played the role.

Most of the characters are just a blur; there are only four of them who are clearly identifiable.

R159 Derek Jacobi and Richard E. Grant I believe

[quote]Every time I watch it, I spot a new VIP. Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith could have easily been Emily Watson and Kirsten Scott Thomas at the Oscars.

???