A definite oddity from the early '70s, when the UK film was in a
precipitous decline, The Ruling Class is a blacker-than-black
comedy with only one message to get across - that the British
aristocracy is an outmoded embarassment. The better English
comedies, such as the Ealing series, had dealt satirically with the
issue for decades (Kind Hearts and Coronets) but The
Ruling Class had the advantage of being made when most of the
rules of screen censorship had gone out the window. Not a bit of of
Peter Barnes' eclectic, irreverent, and sometimes hilariously
profane play had to be left behind when the picture was brought to
the screen.
Synopsis:
The 13th Earl of Gurney accidentally hangs himself
while dressed in a military tunic and a ballet tutu, an embarassment
which throws the palatial Gurney Manor into a tizzy. Jack, the
successor and heir to everything Gurney, is a total nutcase who
thinks he's Jesus Christ and even relaxes on a ten-foot cross he
erects in the middle of Gurney Hall. Naturally the various layabout
relatives, mainly Sir Charles (William Mervyn) start conniving to
steer the title away from the completely unpredictable Jack, using
music-hall 'entertainer' Grace Shelley (Carolyn Seymour) to seduce
Jack into a marriage by pretending to be his lost love, The Lady of
the Camelias. With the eccentric Lady Claire (Coral Browne) trying
to seduce him, the family doctor (Michael Bryant) trying to shock
him with a visit from the supernatural Electric Messiah (a wonderful
Nigel Green), and the silly-ass Dinsdale (James Villiers) worrying
about what folks will think of the sometimes obscene proceedings at
Gurney Manor, Jack is having a tough time keeping about him those
wits still in his possession. Only the contemptously hilarious
butler Daniel (Arthur Lowe), a closet Communist, seems to be having
a good time. Cured of his messianic complex, all goes well until
Jack decides to take his seat in the House of Lords, an atmosphere
that brings out another, much more horrifying personality in the
newly 'cured' Earl.
By 1972, depending on who you talked to, the American film had
either disintegrated into chaos, or was in the middle of a new
renaissance of creativity. The scrapping of the production code
resulted in plenty of movies being made that would not have been
considered even possible before, and even pornography had gained a
ever-so-slight foothold on respectability.
The Ruling Class sneaked onto the scene as one of those
off-the-wall things that hipsters said you had to see, even if they
couldn't explain it. (My two friends and I at a Westwood screening
seemed to be the only people in the audience not smoking dope.) A
combination of sophomoric sub-Monty Python jokes and bizarre Lewis
Carroll-like speeches, this is basically a drawing-room comedy on
acid.
It's a black comedy, where people you don't understand kill
themselves and each other, where all the characters seem to be broad
caricatures to be lampooned. It does its best to be offensive, with
all manner of slights to the Church (not necessarily Christianity).
The only thing like it is the more successful (and far less
classifiable) O Lucky Man from the same year. The Ruling
Class almost plays as an upscale Lindsay Anderson wanna-be, an
idea underscored by the use of several favorites from the Anderson
club (Lowe, Graham Crowden). Mixing variety hall comedy, Hollywood
songs and semi- choreographed dance numbers, what's obviously
desired is a double assault on the senses and the funny bone.
There are laughs. Peter O'Toole's manic delivery sells his
gibberish lines in much the desperate but effective manner of
What's New Pussycat?. He's very likeable as the lost-lamb Jesus,
and terrifying as the bloodless-faced Jack of the final reel.
Alastair Sim has a good go at his stuttering, swooning cleric. And
Arthur Lowe gets the biggest laughs with his sneering (and
wonderfully deadpan) insults to the assembled nobility.
Deliberately,
The Ruling Class is one very cold film.
O'Toole is a fun center, but we certainly don't have any emotional
involvement with him. We don't know how to take his dethronement by
the Electric Messiah (just one of many stunning scenes), and his
subsequent character change comes off as arbitrary as everything
else in the show. Is the Electric Messiah some kind of analog for
shock treatment? Is someone going to explain that this royal farce
is all just happening in Jack's befuddled mind? By the horrorshow
ending, there's nothing left but the idea that the writer of this
thing really, really hates upperclass Brits enough to seriously call
them murdering, ghoulish zombies, a plague to be rid of as soon as
possible.
So the thesis is there. At the time (1972), as an ardent student
of MAD Magazine and The National Lampoon, Savant still
believed that all-out satire could change things. I read the Lampoon's scathing comedic attacks on the Nixon
administration and Vietnam, and thought that expressing the truth
would allow it to prevail. Well, it doesn't, and all the clever
satire of the period now just seems so much self-loathing and
posturing. Reading this stuff, agreeing with it and moving on
allowed me the false assumption that a big segment of the population
agreed with my point of view.
The Ruling Class makes its points loud and clear, but not
very cleverly. It's easy to get attention when you're making fun of
Jesus on the cross, etc., but people resent such tomfoolery if there
isn't some very strong reason for it, and 'aren't we so devilishly
clever' is the only real message we're left with. Perhaps a UK
audience cheered this show and rushed out to demand that their
unfair class system be scuttled ... but I doubt it.
Handsomely photographed (like most pictures from the era, this
DVD easily looks far better than the miserable release prints we
saw), The Ruling Class is not directed with any great
distinction. The emphasis is on extra-wide shots and closeups, and
Mr. Medak's blocking and camera placement seem arbitrary most of the
time. The musical moments (Jesus cakewalking to The Varsity
Drag) kind of just sit there. The zoom lens does a lot of work
in various jaunts in the gardens. Medak overuses his crane to
underline too many scenes .... just as things are winding up or
O'Toole gets to the author's message, up the camera goes, time and
again. Some strong visuals seem openly cribbed, such as the spinning
dance where the manor interior segues seamlessly into a Whitechapel
mews (Vertigo?) or the camera's dive into a closeup of O'Toole's
mouth bellowing an endless scream (Night of the Hunter).
From DVD
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