The Gathering Storm

To borrow my title from Churchill, this story tells of the end of Edwardian England. A period of the leisure and pleasure, at least for the ruling classes, is coming to an end. Set in late 1913 the world and the the people of the upper classes of England seem, all-bar-one (James Mason's character Lord Nettleby), to be entirely inured to the rapidly approaching cataclysm of The Great War.

The film hints at the social changes beginning take place in the roles of the lower class characters. World War One was to accelerate this process. This film (and the excellent book) capture the end of an era beautifully and reveal the that such shifts in social and political world are rarely foreseen. The final scenes are perhaps most fitting to the story. The gathering storm indeed.

This film epitomises a school of British filmmaking. It is full of superb actors and acting in which the drama is subsumed into the story. It is NOT an 'action' film and does not feature grisly murder, do not interpret the title in modern parlance. A shooting party was merely a term for people going on a game shoot.