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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
At the beginning of Robert Altman's brilliant comedy "Gosford Park," two Rolls-Royces, both heading for a weekend shooting party in the country, stop on a narrow road. The weather is vile in the usual English way -- cold, gray, and wet -- and the first car stops because its owner, Constance, Countess of Trentham (Maggie Smith), would like to warm herself but cannot open her thermos. Her new maid, Mary (Kelly Macdonald), is forced to come around from the front seat to open it for her. The second car, pulling up alongside, is driven by one Morris Weissman (Bob Balaban), of Hollywood, a producer of Charlie Chan movies. Next to him sits the handsome Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam), a real-life British matinee idol, and in the back seat is Weissman's young valet (Ryan Phillippe), who stares insolently at Lady Trentham.
"Are you O.K.?" Weissman asks.
"Am I what?" she replies.
By affecting not to understand a common American locution, Constance fully intends to slight a Jew from the movie business. Later, seated in the drawing room at Gosford Park -- an enormous estate owned by her niece's husband, Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) -- Constance interrogates Novello about his latest movie, "The Lodger," which, she can't help pointing out, has not done very well at the...
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