As Good As It Gets

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

THE SHOOTING PARTY, based on the novel by Isabel Colegate, is one of those low-budget films that tends to be characterized as a "heritage film," offering incidental pleases to viewers who are prepared to make the effort, but perhaps not pitched at general audiences.Nothing could be further from the truth. Alan Bridges's work is both a technical and thematic masterpiece, brilliantly making use of cinema's resources to comment on British insularity both before and after World War One.The first few sequences pass by exceptionally quickly: few of the guests at Sir Randolph's (James Mason's) home have time to talk with one another, as they are perpetually occupied in dressing for dinner, eating food, and discussing the next day's hunting. We wonder why they seem so desperate, especially in view of their privileged lifestyle. The answer emerges gradually; they are pathologically incapable of expressing their true feelings. Lord Gilbert and Lady Aline (Edward Fox, Cheryl Campbell) are unhappily married yet stay together for the sake of form. Lord Bob (Robert Hardy) makes himself agreeable to everyone without saying anything of any value. They seem hell-bent on preserving what they perceive as the "old values" that made England great in the Victorian era without in the least understanding how worthless they have become.The "Hunting Party" of the title refers to a three-day shooting festival, where the aristocrats indulge in hunting just for the sake of it, loyally supported by Sir Randolph's band of servants. No questions its morality, save for lifelong pacifist Cornelius Cardew (John Gielgud). Director Bridges slows the action down quite significantly here, allowing viewers to acknowledge the regular - and uncomfortable - series of gunshots accompanied by tight pans of the birds falling dead. The parallels between such sequences and the forthcoming conflict in World War I are obvious; only in the future it will be human beings rather than birds who will perish.The action attains a human dimension when we discover that the little boy Osbert (Nicholas Pietrek) is desperate to save his pet duck from the carnage. As he wanders desperately about the dawn- misted landscape before the hunt is about to start, we realize just how destructive humanity can be as they disrupt the balance of nature for their selfish pleasures.Although Bridges does not exempt his characters from criticism, he manages to introduce a Chekhovian element into the film's latter stages. While no one can ever contemplate a future different from the past, the aristocrats are in a sense victims of circumstance, lacking both the power and self-awareness to change their lives. This element is emphasized in a highly poignant moment as Sir Randolph vainly tries to offer succor to one of his servants (Gordon Jackson), who has been accidentally shot, but finds himself emotionally incapable of doing so, and bursts into tears quietly.Released only three years after the Falklands Island invasion of 1982, widely celebrated at the time as a great victory for British pride, THE SHOOTING PARTY offers a chillingly downbeat interpretation of jingoist attitudes that prove more destructive than beneficial.

In the autumn of 1913, a group of guests assemble at Nettleby Hall, the country seat of Sir Randolph Nettleby, for a shooting party. (References to Dorking and Hindhead suggest the film is set in Surrey). Shooting was an upper-class obsession in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the "Summer Season" of social gatherings always ended in early August to allow the aristocracy to travel to the Scottish moors for the start of the grouse season on the "Glorious Twelfth". Once that was over, they returned to their English estates in October for pheasant shooting. Winter was the season for wildfowling on the marshes.A more recent British film, "Gosford Park", also featured a shooting party at a stately home. In that film, the owner of the house, the parvenu businessman Sir William McCordle, is both deeply unpleasant and deeply unpopular; when he is murdered halfway through there is no shortage of suspects as he was hated by many of his family, his guests and his domestic staff. Sir Randolph, by contrast, is a gentleman of the old school, intelligent, thoughtful and decent, popular with both his fellow-aristocrats and with his servants and tenants. Although his position obliges him to host gatherings such as this one, he has mixed feelings about them. He feels that the upper classes take their pleasures too seriously, something he regards as a sign of a civilisation in decline. When the shoot is interrupted by Cardew, an elderly and eccentric animal lover, Randolph does not have him charged with trespass or manhandled off the estate by his servants (as many landowners would have done) but instead calmly debates with him.Among Sir Randolph's guests are another aristocrat, Lord Gilbert Hartlip, and Lionel Stephens, a young lawyer. Both are excellent shots and there is intense rivalry between them as they compete to see who can kill most birds. We also learn something of their private lives. Lord Gilbert is trapped in an unhappy marriage, and both he and his wife have taken lovers. She is a compulsive gambler; among the other guests is one of her lovers, the wealthy businessman Sir Reuben Hergesheimer, who has agreed to pay off her debts in exchange for sexual favours. Stephens is in love with Olivia, the beautiful young wife of the much older Lord Lilburn. Although she returns his love, the affair seems doomed, as the social conventions of the day frowned upon divorce. There is a tragic conclusion to the rivalry between Hartlip and Stephens; desperate to prove himself the better shot, Hartlip continues to fire recklessly after the order to stop has been given, and one of the beaters is hit.The film features a selection of some of Britain's best-known actors, including James Mason, John Gielgud, Edward Fox and Gordon Jackson. This was Mason's last role before his death, and one of his best. Towards the end of his career he played a number of world-weary aristocrats, reluctantly facing the decline of their once-secure world, such as Franz Josef in "Mayerling" and Klugemann in "The Blue Max", and Sir Randolph is another. There are too many good performances to mention them all, but I must single out Cheryl Campbell as Lady Hartlip, Fox as her husband and Judi Bowker as Olivia.The date of the film is, of course, significant. 1913 was to be the last shooting season before the ruling classes of Europe decided that killing humans took precedence over killing birds. Autumn is traditionally the season for pheasant shooting, but in this film there is an obvious symbolic significance to the time of year. The prevailing colours are dull ones- browns, greys, muted greens and yellows with few bright tones. This is an autumn of mists and overcast skies, not an autumn of brilliant colours like the one in "Far from Heaven". Autumn becomes a symbol of a society in decline. The slaughter of the birds is a symbol of the much greater slaughter which was to start the following year. This sense of decline and decadence pervades the film; even a sensitive and kindly man like Sir Randolph, who foresees the coming war with Germany, believes that war might be a good thing, a chance to rebuild a new society on the ruins of the old. Today, of course, we know that the war was to prove far bloodier than anyone had foreseen and that the new world which arose after it was in most respects worse than the old one, so talk like that sounds to our ears like dangerous nonsense. In 1913, however, it must have seemed dangerously seductive.The year is significant for another reason. 1913 was not only the year before the outbreak of World War One, it was also two years after the passing of the Parliament Act 1911 which had restricted the power of Britain's House of Lords to block Government legislation. The aristocracy retained their wealth and privilege, but their political power was starting to wane following the introduction of universal male suffrage and the growth of more populist politics. The film makes mention of David Lloyd George, the radical Chancellor of the Exchequer and a popular figure among the working classes for his opposition to aristocratic privilege. There was to be no Russian-style revolution in Britain, so the war did not see the end of the country house lifestyle; it continued throughout the twenties and thirties ("Gosford Park" is set in 1932) and, to some extent, still persists today. Nevertheless, the aristocracy have never again held the central role in society which was theirs before the twentieth century.The eighties were perhaps the decade most associated with the "heritage cinema" movement in Britain. Although it is visually much more restrained than, say, the work of Merchant Ivory, Alan Bridges' film is an excellent example of this tradition, a haunting and elegiac commentary on the inevitable processes of social change. 8/10

If you remember Upstairs/Downstairs on PBS about the two different worlds in one house in London before the Titantic sailed and barbed wire and mass slaughter decorated the landscape of Europe,then this is a perfect accomplishment. Gordon Jackson who played the butler in the series is cast here as a poacher who gets hired to become a beater, someone who rouses the targeted wildlife in this case grouse I believe into the gunsights of the "swells". The English have a love- hate relationship with that time of determined inequality; James Mason in his last role, plays the lord of the manor,an intelligent patriarch of his ancestral holdings,several steps above the stereotype of a haughty inbred weasel satirized memorably by the Monty Python crew in their "Upperclass Twit of the Year" sketch. Mason is an aristocrat with a capital A who feels it is his DUTY to be the best not an entitlement. The others in this film range from starcrossed lovers he doomed to be a casualty of 20th Century warfare,the others representing snobs,fools, frivolous yet empty souled individuals who actually believed a little bloodletting would revitalize their spirits during the hunt and the subsequent war. While they may resent the foreigners for calling the ir English lackeys peasants it is how they treat them. Except for James Mason they are his yeomen the family's men at arms who probably followed his ancestors into battle when they raised a regiment of horse or foot for whatever struggle be it against the rival Europeans,killing rebel Scots or Irish ,or tangling with those American Cousins. Watch this film and see the difference between being a star and being an actor

A truly memorable and dramatic performance by James Mason as he hosts a shooting party on his estate before the eve of WW1. A slow paced story with excellent dialogue and stunning cinematography. A must have for my permanent collection.