Self-mocking humor is a national pastime in Great
Britain, where the class system and British eccentricities are rich fodder
for ridicule. The likes of Benny Hill, the Black Adder, and those masters
of mockery, Monty Python, have made a tradition of lampooning the
descendants of a once-powerful British aristocracy ! descendants that
steadfastly hold to their belief in a sense of entitlement to wealth and
power. Peter Medak's 1972 farce The Ruling Class takes an
irreverent and comically dark look into the corrupt world of these
blue-blooded poseurs, who spend their days living off the riches of their
dead relatives while fretting about their social standing. With a
screenplay by Peter Barnes (from his own stage play), the film is a funny,
sometimes brutal send-up of the English upper class and the fine line that
can exist between acceptable eccentricity and out-and-out insanity. Peter
O'Toole heads a superb cast that features several of England's most
distinguished theater actors of the time, including Alastair Sim, Arthur
Lowe, Harry Andrews, and Coral Browne. As the film opens, we see the 13th
Earl of Gurney (Andrews) making a patriotic speech to a group of stuffy
old British gentlemen, extolling the virtues of noble England. By day the
Earl is a criminal judge, but at night he likes to take to his room, don a
ballet tutu, and mock-hang himself. But when he accidentally does hang
himself, his hanger-on relatives quickly begin jockeying for position in
an effort to secure their current lifestyle ! namely, living off the Earl.
But the Earl has left his estate to his erratic son Jack (O'Toole), a
self-committed paranoid schizophrenic living in a local sanitarium. When
Jack returns to take his position as the 14th Earl of Gurney, he arrives
Christ-like, with long robes and flowing hair, preaching a message of love
and professing to be the one true God. Jack even brings his own giant
crucifix to his new home, mounting it to hang from in times of stress, or
simply using it as a place to take a nap. Of course, Jack is a
self-indulgent adolescent in a man's body, but he's also someone who was
never loved and who desperately seeks normalcy .
But it all comes as a bit of surprise to his aunt, the Lady Claire
(Browne), and uncle, Sir Charles (William Mervyn), who had hoped to gain
the Earl's fortune for themselves. Faced with either ingratiating
themselves to their crazy nephew or finding a way to get him locked up
permanently, the ever-scheming Sir Charles cooks up a plot to get Jack
married, in the hopes that the union will produce a son; then Charles will
have Jack committed and take over as guardian of the infant heir. In the
meantime, Jack's psychiatrist (Michael Bryant) has his own plan to cure
Jack of his schizophrenia, but it soon backfires and leads to a rather
unpleasant case of, er ! murder.
* * *
With The Ruling Class, director Medak creates
organized chaos via a daring approach to the material. In his audio
commentary on the DVD, he explains that ! using a combination of
theatrical settings and movie fantasy ! he wanted the viewer to get a
sense of Jack's mindset, which fades in and out of reality. Scenarist
Barnes fleshes out each character down to the smallest of eccentricities,
and his marvelous dialogue gives significance to each situation. Scenes of
high drama are accompanied by outrageous hilarity, and sometimes lead into
characters bursting into song and dance. But throughout, the characters
remain precisely British, seemingly unaffected by the inanity of it all.
O'Toole, holding center stage, is brilliant as Jack, shifting in scene
after scene from lighthearted innocence to outright craziness, and
eventually from overwhelming pathos to evil cunning. When asked how he
knows he is God, Jack replies "The voices of Saint Francis, Socrates,
General Gordon, and Timothy Leary all told me I was God. If I only knew
then who I was now!" Criterion's Ruling Class DVD offers a longer
cut of the film than normally seen in North America, with more than 30
minutes of deleted scenes ! as such, longtime fans will want to seek it
out. Additionally, the anamorphic transfer (1.85:1) offers a generally
good source print, with only a small amount of color desaturation in some
exterior scenes (the English manor where the exteriors were shot is a
spectacular setting, and the indoor sets are equally magnificent in their
grandeur, adding a wonderful oversized quality that further illustrates
the insignificance of the characters). Audio is presented in the original
mono (as DD 1.0), although there is some ambient noise. And as can be
expected from Criterion, the supplements are useful. A commentary with
Medak, O'Toole, and Barnes offers interesting reminiscences about their
experiences working on the film. Also included are some silent "home
movies" Medak shot in and around the estate and in the House of Lords, no
less than 200 still photos from Medak's collection, and the theatrical
trailer. Keep-case.
From www.dvdjournal.com
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