The Shooting Party is a 1985 film directed by Alan Bridges and based on a book by Isabel Colegate that won the 1981 WH Smith Literary Award. The film is set in 1913 and shows the way of life of English aristocrats, gathered for pheasant shooting and general self-indulgence. Their way of life is contrasted with the local rural poor, who serve as 'beaters', driving the game for the aristocrats to shoot.[1] There is also an early and very genteel animal-rights/socialist activist (played by John Gielgud).
There is a general feeling of the end of a way of life,[2] as the characters go about their lives unaware of the coming war (World War I) and the changes it will bring.[1] The older standards of the gentry have slipped and they are no longer sure what they are doing or why.[3] Traditional functions of the aristocracy are undermined by their own hypocrisies, contemplations, and revelations, and the discontent of the lower classes and politically minded characters.[4]
This is one of the last film appearances by James Mason, who plays Sir Randolph Nettleby, the local landowner who has something of the old values. Edward Fox as Lord Gilbert Hartlip represents the newer types who don't have the same solid beliefs: he gets into a competition over who is the best shot, despite his host's disapproval.
The film was reviewed positively by the eminent critic Pauline Kael. "Bridges [as can be seen also in his 1982 film The Return of the Soldier], has a special gift for these evocations of a world seen in a bell jar, and now, with Geoffrey Reeve as producer and Fred Tammes as cinematographer, he has refined his techniques. A late bloomer (he was born in 1927), Bridges goes beyond being pictorial and literary. He sharpens the novel's wry observations on the Edwardian era and at the same time infuses a sensuous sweetness into the material. On television, a novel like The Shooting Party would be a six part series, full of longueurs. Here, after we've met the key members of the party, the movie puts us among actions and conversations going on simultaneously. And as the events become more intense Bridges picks up the pace and tightens the film's emotional hold on us. Actresses such as Cheryl Campbell and Judi Bowker make a stronger impression in their brief screen time than they do in their much longer stints on TV. Cheryl Campbell is at one moment a pert-faced, nosy gossip, and at the next a tantalizing sensualist being caressed by her own long, wavy blond hair. It's a quicksilver performance that recalls Joan Greenwood at her most seductive. And Judi Bowker as the guileless Lady Olivia, the wife of thickheaded Lord Lilburn (Robert Hardy), looks at the camera with a direct gaze that makes her seem infinitely beautiful. When the tall, slim young barrister Lionel Stephens (Rupert Frazer), declares his love for her, you think, Of course - how could he look into her clear eyes and not imagine depths of mystery?" [5]
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