Gosford Park

• Michael Gambon as Sir William McCordle, a wealthy industrialist and baronet
• Kristin Scott Thomas as Lady Sylvia McCordle, Sir William's wife, daughter of the Earl of Carton, an old but impoverished family
• Camilla Rutherford as Isobel McCordle, daughter of Sir William and Lady Sylvia
• Maggie Smith as Constance, Dowager Countess of Trentham, Lady Sylvia's aunt
• Charles Dance as Raymond, Lord Stockbridge, Lady Sylvia's brother-in-law, married to Louisa
• Geraldine Somerville as Louisa, Lady Stockbridge, Lady Sylvia's younger sister
• Tom Hollander as Lt. Commander Anthony Meredith, broke and desperate, married to Lavinia
• Natasha Wightman as Lady Lavinia Meredith, Lady Sylvia's youngest sister
• James Wilby as the Hon. Freddie Nesbitt, a late invitee who is also son of a baron and recently unemployed
• Claudie Blakley as the Hon. Mabel Nesbitt, daughter of a glove factory owner, grew up in Leicester, and married to Freddie, who only married her believing her to be wealthy
• Jeremy Northam as Ivor Novello, Sir William's cousin who is also a British matinee idol and film star
• Bob Balaban as Morris Weissman, American film director, friend of Ivor Novello
• Laurence Fox as Lord Rupert Standish, Isobel's boyfriend, and penniless younger son of a marquess.
• Trent Ford as Jeremy Blond, friend of Lord Rupert

• Kelly Macdonald as Mary Maceachran, lady's maid to Countess of Trentham.
• Clive Owen as Robert Parks, Lord Stockbridge's valet, grew up in an orphanage in Isleworth, London
• Helen Mirren as Mrs Wilson, housekeeper
• Eileen Atkins as Mrs Croft, the cook
• Alan Bates as Mr Jennings, butler
• Emily Watson as Elsie, head-housemaid, Sir William's mistress
• Derek Jacobi as Probert, Sir William's valet
• Richard E. Grant as George, first footman
• Jeremy Swift as Arthur, footman
• Sophie Thompson as Dorothy, still-room maid
• Meg Wynn Owen as Lewis, lady's maid to Lady Sylvia
• Adrian Scarborough as Barnes, valet to Lt. Commander Anthony Meredith
• Ryan Phillippe as Henry Denton, an American actor posing as valet to Morris Weissman
• Frances Low as Sarah, lady's maid to Lady Lavinia
• Joanna Maude as Renee, lady's maid to Louisa, Lady Stockbridge
• Teresa Churcher as Bertha, kitchen maid
• Frank Thornton cameos as Mr Burkett, the Countess of Trentham's butler

• Stephen Fry as Inspector Thompson
• Ron Webster as Constable Dexter

In 1999, Bob Balaban asked Robert Altman if there were something they could develop together, and Altman suggested a whodunit.[9] Altman wanted to create an Agatha Christie–like country house murder mystery that explored that way of life; he called the film a "classic situation: all suspects under one roof".[9][10] Altman was also inspired by the 1930s films, The Rules of the Game and Charlie Chan in London.[9] Altman chose British actor and writer Julian Fellowes to write the screenplay, because Fellowes knew how country houses operated.[10] Fellowes, who had never written a feature film before, received a telephone call from Altman, who asked him to come up with some characters and stories.[10][11] Fellowes was given a brief outline of the film: it was to be "set in a country house in the '30s and to have a murder in there somewhere, but for it to really be an examination of class."[11] Altman also wanted the film to explore the three groups of people: the family, the guests, and the servants.[11] Of the call, Fellowes said, "All the way through I thought this can't be happening—a 50-year-old fat balding actor is phoned up by an American movie director—but I did work as if it was going to happen."[10]

The original title of the film was The Other Side of the Tapestry, but Altman thought it was awkward. Fellowes began looking through some books and came up with Gosford Park.[9] Altman said: "Nobody liked it, everyone fought me on it. But when you make a picture using a name, that's its name. It's not a gripping title. But then M*A*S*H wasn't either."[9]

Fellowes says the screenplay was "not an homage to Agatha Christie, but a reworking of that genre." Fellowes was credited not only as the film's writer but as a technical advisor as well, meaning he wrote portions of the film as it was being produced. He notes that in certain large scenes with many characters, the actors were left room to improvise.[12]

Arthur Inch, the retired butler of Sir Richard and Lady Kleinwort, was the consultant on correct procedures and arrangements for dining on the set. Inch is credited as "Butler" immediately before Altman as Director in the final credits. Ruth Mott was the consultant for the kitchen,[13] and Violet Liddle for the parlour maids.[14]

In Gosford Park, as in many of his other films, Altman had a list of actors he intended to appear in the film before it was cast formally. The film's casting director was Mary Selway, whom producer David Levy described as knowing many British actors.[12] Very few actors who were offered parts did not end up in the film. Jude Law dropped out of the production just before the shoot began, and he was replaced by Ryan Phillippe. Kenneth Branagh and Robert Bathurst were both tied down by scheduling conflicts. Alan Rickman, Joely Richardson and Judi Dench were also considered for roles in the film. The cast is notable for featuring two knights (Michael Gambon and Derek Jacobi) and two dames (Maggie Smith and Eileen Atkins). Three other members of the cast (Alan Bates, Helen Mirren and Kristin Scott Thomas) were later elevated to that status.

Wrotham Park, where the outdoor and ground floor scenes for Gosford Park were shot

Filming was conducted at Wrotham Park for the exteriors, staircase, dining room and drawing room,[15] and Syon House for the upstairs bedrooms.[16] The opening sequence outside Lady Trentham's home was shot at Hall Barn, near Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, whose grounds were also used as the scene for lunch after the shoot. Sound stages were built to film the scenes of the manor's downstairs area.[17] Shepperton Studios was used for off-location filming.[18]

The film was shot with two cameras, both moving perpetually in opposite directions. The cameras pointed toward no specific area, intended to cause the audience to move their eyes throughout the scene. Altman notes that most of the film's cast had experience in theatre and in film, meaning they had acted in situations where the view of the audience is not on one specific actor, and each audience member sees a slightly different image of the players on stage.[12] Richard E. Grant commented that having two cameras moving at any one time meant that none of the actors knew when the cameras were focused on them. As a result, the actors had to stay "completely in character, completely in the moment, and interact with everybody in a way that felt as close to real life as you could possibly conjure up."[19] Andrew Dunn, the film's cinematographer, appreciated the co-operative nature of Gosford Park's filming process. He shot the film on Kodak Vision Expression 500T film stock generally with two Panavision cameras, using lighting ranging from relatively dim candles to bright hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide lamps.[20] Editor Tim Squyres described the editing process on Gosford Park as an unusual one, as the dual cameras used were generally located in the same areas when filming, instead of the more standard method of setting up a scene directly.[21]

Patrick Doyle composed the film's score.[22] Doyle said that it can take him up to six months to create a film score, but Altman asked him to write and compose the music for Gosford Park in less than five weeks.[22] Doyle recorded the soundtrack at the London Air-Edel Recording Studios in October 2001.[23][24] The soundtrack also features six original songs by composer and playwright, Ivor Novello.[25] Jeremy Northam, who plays Novello, sings five of the songs and his brother, Christopher, accompanies him on the piano. Christopher also performs one Novello song as a piano solo.[25] The soundtrack was released on 15 January 2002.[26]

Gosford Park premiered on 7 November 2001 at the London Film Festival.[27] The film then received a limited release across cinemas in the United States on 26 December 2001, before being widely released in January 2002 by USA Films.[28] It was released on 1 February 2002 in the United Kingdom.[29]

The VHS and region 1 DVD of Gosford Park were released on June 25, 2002 by Universal Studios Home Video, with the region 2 release on December 3, 2002. The critic Ed Gonzalez reviewed the DVD negatively, calling the picture quality "atrocious on the small screen", going on to say that "the image quality of this video transfer is downright lousy from start to finish."[30] However, reviewer Robert Mack generally wrote favourably of the picture quality, noting excellence in the shots' detail and sharpness and the lack of compression artefacts, but describing an unfavourable darkness to scenes filmed within the manor house.[31] Both reviewers commented positively on the film's score and soundtrack. Gonzalez wrote that "Gosford Park sounds amazing for a film so dialogue-dependent"[30] and Mack that "the audio transfer is about as good as it can get on a movie of this style."[31]

On November 26, 2018, Arrow Films released a newly restored 2K remaster, taken from a 4K print of Gosford Park, on Limited Edition Blu-ray in the UK.[32]

In its limited release opening weekend, the film grossed $241,219, hitting No. 23 in the box office that weekend.[33] In its wide release, it grossed $3,395,759;[34] by the end of its run on 6 June 2002, Gosford Park grossed $41,308,615 in the domestic box office and a worldwide total of $87,754,044.[1] With that final total, Gosford Park became Altman's second-most successful film at the box office after his 1970 film M*A*S*H.[2]

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 87% of 161 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "A mixture of Upstairs, Downstairs; Clue; and perceptive social commentary, Gosford Park ranks among director Altman's best."[35] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 90 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[36]

Roger Ebert awarded it his four out of four stars, describing the story as "such a joyous and audacious achievement it deserves comparison with his [Robert Altman's] very best movies."[17] Ebert specifically noted a quality of the film that many Altman films share: a focus on character rather than plot.[17] Emanuel Levy gave Gosford Park an A minus rating, describing one of its themes as "illuminating a society and a way of life on the verge of extinction",[37] placing the interwar setting as an integral part of the film's class study. However, he notes that because Altman is an independent observer of the society he portrays in the film, it does not have the biting qualities of his previous social commentaries such as Short Cuts, set in the director's home country of the United States.[37] Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader called it a masterpiece.[38]

Gosford Park's cinematography was a focus of several critics. CNN's Paul Clinton praised Andrew Dunn's camera work, describing it as "lush and rich; the camera glides up and down the stairs of the grand estate, the period look is beautifully crafted."[39] Ed Gonzalez of the online publication Slant Magazine writes that "Altman's camera is the star of Gosford Park" and that the film's cinematography is used as an aid to its storytelling.[30] Michael Phillips placed Gosford Park at number nine on his list of Best Films of the Decade.[40] The film was placed at 82 on Slant Magazine's list of best films of the 2000s.[41]

Gosford Park was nominated for 61 different awards following its release, winning 25 of them. There were seven nominations for Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director, both of which it lost to A Beautiful Mind); Fellowes won the Best Original Screenplay.[42] At the 55th British Academy Film Awards, the film was nominated for nine British Academy awards, winning Best British Film and Best Costume Design (Jenny Beavan).[43] Mirren, Smith and Watson were all nominated for Best European Actress at the European Film Awards.[44] The film received five nominations at the 59th Golden Globe Awards; Altman won the Award for 'Best Director'.[45]

At the 8th Screen Actors Guild Awards Mirren won 'Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role' and the ensemble cast collectively won 'Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture'.[46] The film won four more 'Best Cast' awards from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, Florida Film Critics Circle, and Online Film Critics Society.[47][48][49] Fellowes received recognition for the film's screenplay from the Writers Guild of America, where he won the Best Original Screenplay award.[50] The film's score composer, Patrick Doyle, received two nominations for his work. Doyle was nominated for Composer of the Year from the American Film Institute and he won the award for Soundtrack Composer of the Year from the World Soundtrack Awards.[51][52]