Names Upstairs and Down

It’s the most extraordinary spectacle: a relatively confined space consisting of a staircase and two corridors intersecting at right angles. And everyone occupying this space is a distinguished British actor, each dressed as a servant in a large English country house in the 1930s. There goes Helen Mirren hurrying by, looking stern. The veteran Alan Bates strolls up and down, speaking his lines to himself. Eileen Atkins, recently dubbed a dame by Queen Elizabeth II, lurks in one corner, while Oscar nominee Emily Watson lingers on the stairs. Below her, Richard E. Grant is looking sleek and dashing, while up-and-coming Clive Owen (“Croupier”) sits on a wooden chair looking cool and self-contained.

It’s quite a cast that has been assembled here on this spring day--but this group is just the half of it. The film they are working on, “Gosford Park,” is a murder-mystery, set in the country house of the same name. It’s an “upstairs downstairs” story, meaning it encompasses “upstairs,” the large rooms inhabited by the aristocrats who own Gosford Park, and their friends; and the “downstairs,” or servants’ quarters. Today’s scene is all downstairs, which means the upstairs actors have the day off. They include another acting dame, Maggie Smith, as well as Kristin Scott Thomas, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, Jeremy Northam, Charles Dance and Stephen Fry.

It makes you wonder who could bring together such a glittering assemblage of acting talent. Turns out to be an American--Robert Altman, the veteran maverick director who decided he wanted to shoot a film in England and devised a novel means of attracting most of the British cast he wanted. He invited his preferred names to a London screening room to show them his film “Dr. T and the Women” last fall. Before it began, he stood up, introduced himself and announced casually, “My next film will be shot in England, so who knows? We may have the chance to work together.”

After the screening, he was virtually mobbed by his audience of actors, all eager to participate in a work by one of the film world’s dwindling breed of genuine auteurs. Agreeing to act in “Gosford Park” requires checking in the ego at the studio gates. “There are 40 parts in the movie, 16 to 20 major roles and 24 story strands,” Altman says gleefully. “That means there are no extras. Everyone has assignments and a character. Some of them may not have dramatic input in every scene when the film’s cut. So they’ll be background.”

Thus several venerable British stage figures have spent long days doing little more than pacing up and down for the cameras. “We’re all doing a lot of extras work,” Watson said. “Yesterday there was a scene in one room with Helen Mirren and me very deep background all day. It’s been remarkable, all these knights of the realm sitting around reading newspapers for days on end.”

Notes Owen, who gained fame in the States with his role as a casino dealer in the 1998 art-house hit “Croupier,” “Bob told us not to think we’d be popping in and out to do cameos. He told us we were all on call--all day, every day. And that’s unusual. The caliber of actors you have here are usually paid to come in for two weeks, nail their scenes and then leave.”

One might therefore assume that “Gosford Park” has a massive budget. Not so; it is costing a modest $13 million. (The USA Films release opens in the U.S. on Dec. 26 and in England on Feb. 1.)

“None of us is getting much money,” Grant says. “There’s a two-tier salary system, and everyone receives the same as everyone else on their tier. So no one is getting $20 million or worrying if their Winnebago is bigger than someone else’s. It’s an easygoing, non-hierarchical attitude, and it’s irresistible.”

Altman, 76, told his partner on the film, actor-producer Bob Balaban, that one genre he had never tackled in his career was the English country-house murder-mystery. Balaban (who has an amusing turn in the film as the Hollywood producer of the “Charlie Chan” films) contacted Julian Fellowes, an English actor-screenwriter familiar with upper-class customs, and asked him to write a first draft.

“After that, we added characters and situations,” Altman recalled. “Now, if I were pitching it to Hollywood, I’d say it’s ‘Ten Little Indians’ meets ‘The Rules of the Game.”’ He grimaced. “Assuming you could find an executive in Hollywood familiar with ‘Rules of the Game.”’

The central conceit of “Gosford Park” is that it is played from the viewpoint of the servants in the house. “The camera can’t be on the posh people unless there’s a servant present,” Altman explains. “So you may hear an argument inside a room, but if a servant enters, then they’ll stop. When a servant leaves a room, the camera leaves as well. This may not be that evident. The audience may not perceive it. But the story is transmitted through downstairs gossip, through what the servants know.”

“Gosford Park” bears many classic Altman touches: complex camera work, overlapping dialogue, multi-character scenes. It’s a style that endears him to actors, movie buffs and other filmmakers, in works as diverse as “MASH” (1972), “Nashville” (1975), “The Player” (1992) and “Short Cuts” (1993), although his more recent films generally haven’t been embraced by critics or audiences.

“Probably the closest film I’ve made to this one is ‘A Wedding,”’ says Altman, referring to his 1978 ensemble-cast movie. “On that one I had 48 characters in one location. The difference here is, I’m able to use the social distinctions set up in 1932 England to an added advantage. You see the upstairs structure and the downstairs structure, which is more complicated--there’s ‘them’ and ‘us,’ and among ‘us,’ there’s this, this and this.”

The distinctions among the servants are key to the film’s plot. Bates is Gosford Park’s butler, who rules downstairs firmly but benignly. Atkins plays a cook who has her own retinue, as does Mirren, Gosford Park’s housekeeper; the two women do not get along. Grant is the house’s head footman, a lofty downstairs rank that he abuses, sexually harassing chambermaids and female servants with impunity. Watson, by her own definition, is “a saucy maid.”

Upstairs, Scott Thomas plays the mistress of the house; Gambon is her irascible, self-made husband. Northam portrays the one real-life character: Ivor Novello, a British socialite and popular composer of the time. Fry is a detective, investigating the murder that constitutes one plot strand. Only two non-British actors are in the cast, and both are American: Balaban and Ryan Phillippe as a star actor masquerading as a Scottish butler.

The hierarchy, then, is hugely complex, like the story itself--a factor Altman makes no attempt to deny. “I’m trying to let the audience discover the picture rather than throw it at them,” he says. “Many plot lines and dramatic lines are thrown away as soon as a person leaves a room. The audience has to pay attention. Maybe they’ll miss them.”

Altman’s actors wear hidden microphones, and he urges them to ad-lib, even when the cameras are not primarily on them. (In post-production, he brings some of these throwaway lines higher in the sound mix.) “I don’t know if an ensemble piece like this can still be successful,” he says, sighing. “Especially today, when everything is right there in their face and [films] tell you everything twice. I watch movies today on TV, a scene will start, and immediately you know where it’s going. I go off to the bathroom, come back and say, ‘Did he kill her yet?”’ He shrugs, looking resigned.

Altman has a reputation as a man who does not suffer fools easily. But here on the set he seems in his element, looking happy to be working among this enormous group of actors. For this scene, he has set up two cameras, one facing down a long corridor, the other at the foot of a staircase. He has to corral more than a dozen actors through the scene as they meet one another and cross with split-second timing.

Altman clearly has the scene worked out in his head, but together with cinematographer Andrew Dunn, he talks to all the actors (standing in groups of two or three) in turn, gently offering instructions and suggestions. Because of the scene’s complexity, this process takes almost half an hour, but everyone stays engaged and attentive. Finally he is ready. “Well, let’s give it a go,” he says gently, in his distinctive Kansas City, Mo., drawl. “Of course, we’ll probably screw it up.” Knowing smiles all around.

But the old pros bustle around at their servants’ duties, hit their marks and deliver their lines on cue. Remarkably, Altman has his scene in four takes. The set is a labyrinth of gloomy, claustrophobic rooms, modeled on real servants’ quarters from the period. There is a housekeeper’s room, a cook’s area, the butler’s room (a little grander than the rest), and a preserve room where jams, marmalades and asparagus are kept in glass jars. There is a washing and ironing room, and a brushing and boot room. Largest of all is the servants’ hall, a communal space for leisure time.

Noticeably, there is no window that opens out to fresh air, an authentic detail confirmed by consultants hired for the film: an ex-butler, a former cook and an ex-housemaid who also have advised the production on finer points of etiquette, down to which knife or fork to use for different courses of a meal.

“This time, 1932, is toward the end of this kind of servitude,” Altman explains. “These people went into service, stayed all their lives, and it was hard work. Their families were often thrilled to be rid of them. It meant there were only three in a bed, not four. If their daughter became a maid, they knew she would be taken care of and fed. People in service often worked in only one or two households most of their lives. But World War II was a turning point. After it, young girls were able to have jobs other than maids.”

Screenwriter Fellowes defends the old country-house hierarchies: “I believe the system couldn’t have lasted for 1,000 years if for most people it wasn’t just a job. And I hope we show it was just a job. The upstairs-downstairs divide tends to be represented either in a dewy-eyed, rose-tinted way, or in terms of class war with maids planning to kill employers. This film takes the servants’ view of events, because we never see the upstairs people unless there’s a servant in the room.

“I hope we’re saying all the characters have equal dramatic weight. They all have stories and all have equal importance. So in that sense it’s egalitarian. It’s a presentation of a way of life that’s more recent and stranger than people realize.”

This is the first feature script for Fellowes, who is on the set each day, largely to monitor anachronisms in the actors’ ad-libs. “We first discussed this in January 2000, so it’s only been 15 months to the start of production. It’s my first feature, and Robert Altman’s directing. It’s a writer’s fairy story. It’s like Lana Turner being discovered in Schwab’s.”

Stranger still is the way “Gosford Park” has been financed. A significant chunk of the budget has come from Britain’s Film Council, a body set up to distribute lottery cash to deserving British films. There has been some discreet grumbling in certain British circles about an established American director like Altman benefiting from such an investment. “Well, we’re employing a lot of British people around here,” Altman says casually. “Apart from me, my son Stephen the production designer, and Ryan and Bob Balaban in the cast, everyone around here is British.”

Altman started pre-production even before financing was in place. “I jumped the gun, came over here and assumed I’d get it going,” he says. “Balaban and I were in danger of losing a lot of money. When we finally got it together, we took my fee out of the budget. There’s no way I can make a penny out of this thing. But I truly think it’s the best experience of my life.”

That sounds like a big claim, considering Altman has made more than 30 films in his career. “No, it’s true,” he insists. “The film has quality. The screen is so rich when you look at some of these scenes--the fact that you have Maggie Smith in this corner, Alan Bates here, Kristin Scott Thomas there. All these people are there all the time, and it’s just powerful. I think it’s going to work.”

The affection toward Altman on the part of the cast is palpable. Grant, who has worked with Altman twice before (in “The Player” and 1994’s “Ready to Wear”), says, “His tradition of inviting actors and crew to watch the dailies has a self-regulating, self-policing effect. People see what everyone else is doing. Bad behavior won’t be tolerated by the group.

“In a job that’s byzantine in its nature, his way of working is as direct and collaborative as any I have ever come across.” Watson has worked for Alan Rudolph and Tim Robbins, two directors who are Altman proteges, and thus found herself unfazed by his working methods: “For a man of his age, he has very little rigidity. He gets into this situation, sniffs what’s on the air. He’s so fluent with how to put a camera into a space and make it interesting.”

Altman’s great British adventure, then, looks to be a success already, on his terms. “Everyone’s enjoyed it, and we’ve had a terrific time,” he said. And the early buzz on the film has been good, with talk of possible Oscar nominations for some of the cast.

But will that translate into commercial success? Altman gives an old-fashioned look: “Kids aren’t going to see this film. I don’t know how to make a film for 14-year-olds.” And it doesn’t bother him a bit. “I live well enough. I didn’t get into this business to get rich.” *