lucy-19 Review of The Shooting Party

The Shooting Party (1984)

Critique of 1913 attitudes burdened with 1985 attitudes

[8/10 · 10 October 2006]

It's difficult not to see the past through the spectacles of the present, and this is more obvious 20 years after this film was made. The beautiful Lady Olivia has the opinions of an educated, liberal woman of 1985 - she likes the socialist Ruskin! How flattering to ourselves as we identify with her. How smug we feel as we tut tut over the class ridden society of pre WWI England! Sorry, folks, English society is still just as class ridden, and rich people still have servants - they just don't dress them in white caps and aprons or call them parlourmaids. Am I alone in finding Lady Olivia and her admirer unspeakably wet? And surely nobody said "nothing in common", "keep in touch" or "competitive" in 1913? (They certainly did in 1985.) In the Shooting Party, tragedy occurs because the soppy Ruskin-reader and Edward Fox try to outdo each other. This is not only ungentlemanly, it is competitive. In the 80s competitiveness was evil. We had to believe that we are all the same, and different skills and talents are due to environment, education, empowerment and access. So if anyone excels it is due to competitiveness. People went right on being competitive, though, especially when it came to trading Marxist pieties. Despite those reservations, though, this is an excellent film with some great acting, costumes and atmosphere. PS The real Cornelius Cardew was a communist British composer.