440
PARTISAN REVIEW
other hand, makes only a nod towards genre with its casual murder
plot, followed by comically inept detective work by Stephen Fry. In the
end, the movie, for a ll its delicious pleasures, is not quite ab le to take
itself seriously except as a showcase for the ensemble work of its ste ll ar
cast and the light-fingered orchestration of its gifted director, who
seemed to be on ho lida y as he was making it.
If
In the Bedroom
is a film
about feeling, and how feeling, when sufficiently restrained, can explode
into violence,
Gosford Park
is a film about acting, but a lso about how
such role-playing once sustained the elaborate and cruel edifice of the
class system. The film is set in
I932,
and its key ro les include an Amer–
ican producer, played by Bob Balaban, who observes the elegant man–
ners and predatory behavior from the outside, and his friend Ivor
Novello, a British matinee idol of the period, played by Jeremy
Northam, who sings for his supper as another kind of loya l retainer. As
Balaban looks on quizzically at the fantastic country-house world
around him, Novello props it up by tossing off Coward-like songs that,
like the movies, lend it charm and romance.
Brown
(Glj~j]s
J-880684-87-X $ J5.95pa
Brown Class Windows
a novel b!f
devorah m,!/or
"This is a bold and beautiful book. The
dead and living speak with equa l power.
They are able to listen to the presence
and absence of fa mily, neighborhood,
race. It's either beyond or before magic.
Actually, it's the way it is."
-Grace Paley
ask for this book at
YOllr
local book store
CURBSTONE PRESS
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