#132: MEDAK, Peter: The Ruling Class (1972)

MEDAK, Peter (United Kingdom)

The Ruling Class [1972]

Spine #132
DVD

Peter O'Toole gives a tour de force performance as Jack, a man "cured" of believing he's God — only to become Jack the Ripper incarnate. Based on Peter Barnes' irreverent play, this darkly comic indictment of Britain's class system peers behind the closed doors of English aristocracy. Insanity, sadistic sarcasm, and black comedy — with just a touch of the Hollywood musical — are all featured in this beloved cult classic directed by Peter Medak.

154 minutes
Color

Monaural

1:78:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2001

Director/Writers

Screenplay by Peter Barnes, from his play.

Peter Medak was 35 when he directed The Ruling Class.

The Film

GRACE (Carolyn Seymour)

“You deserve a big kiss.”

JACK (Peter O’Toole)

“Not here in the garden. The last time I was kissed in a garden, it turned out rather awkward.”

GRACE

“Oh, but Judas was a man.”

JACK

“Yes. Strange business.”

Barnes — the author of both the play and the film screenplay — certainly had a knack for writing funny lines, like the above.

Satire can be as subtle as whispering wheat or as dead on as a wrecking ball smashing into a concrete wall. To find a balance between the two extremes is a tricky — yet doable — task, and Medak is certainly up for the challenge here. He largely succeeds.

Not that the English aristocracy isn’t ripe for ridicule to begin with. The first joke is certainly the most macabre and is set up perfectly. The 13th Earl of Gurney (Harry Andrews), having delivered an impassioned patriotic speech, is … gonna relax.

As he undresses, his trusty valet, Tucker (an astonishing Arthur Lowe) picks up his clothes as they drop, and sudddenly Tucker presents his lordship with a box containing two nooses.

“Might I suggest the silk tonight, sir?”

A little erotic asphyxiation seems to be in order.

**

Andrews may be gone, but this film absolutely swims in wonderful performances from here until the very end. Lowe is particularly outstanding as the drunken butler turned bolshie. But just about stealing the film away from its star (O’Toole) is Alastair Sim as Bishop Lampton, a stuttering purple-vested blubber-faced foolish clergyman — who seems completely and perpetually incapable of comprehending the madness all around him …

“Why was he — why was he — why was he in his underpants, Charles?”

Subplots involving Lady Claire (Coral Browne, Vincent Price’s third wife) and the foreign psychiatrist, Dr. Herder (Michael Bryant) are film fluff. Excellent in close-up after close-up is William Mervyn, playing the unenviable role of Sir Charles, an amoral boor …

O’Toole is, of course, simply incredible. Carolyn Seymour (Grace, and Medak’s future wife) is note-perfect, and gorgeous.

As to the occasional sections where everyone breaks out into song … well, perhaps the less said the better.

The bifurcated nature of the plot (pseudo-Jesus/Jack the Ripper) tends to obscure the scornful caricature of “The Ruling Class” Medak and Barnes seem to have in mind when O’Toole turns on a dime and creates a brand new, terrifying character. [A nice touch in the commentary is O’Toole speaking of watching the film with an audience and noticing how the women seemed to prefer Jack #2 to the schizo-Jesus!]

The film is probably 34 minutes too long. But it’s worth it for Jack’s final speech to the … Lords … ah, but what have we here? Skeletons and cobwebs. Very well done.

A wonderful scene:

• 1:43:22: Jack is alone, sitting on a bench in the garden. He no longer thinks he’s Jesus, and is trying to behave “normally,” but something is gnawing at his innards. O’Toole is brilliant here, slowly cracking up; building up to cackling sounds … Fug! Fug! That means you! Fug! Fug! Silence when you speak! Silence! Steady the buffs! Waiter! I say, waiter! There’s a moustache in my soup! Korkshist! Korkshist! Korkshist! Kork! (The camera pulls back here in a high crane shot.)
• Medak then cuts to the top of a tree, filled with birds’ nests, as the flock simultaneously fly away in a cacophonous series of bird cries. Beautiful cinema.

Film Rating (0-60): 

54

The Extras

The Booklet

Ten-page wraparound featuring an essay by Ian Christie.

“The Ruling Class is unashamedly theatrical, and it emerges from a particularly interesting period in English culture when theatre and cinema together were mining a rich vein of flamboyant self-analysis. Many stage works of this period cry out for filmic extension — in fact, Medak had just filmed a very different play that mingled fantasy and reality by a writer often bracketed with Barnes, Peter Nichols’  A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. But what makes The Ruling Class exceptional (and difficult for some) are its outrageous mixing of genres and its sheer ambition. Not only are there allusions to Shakespeare and Marlowe, but also to Wilde and Whitehall farce; to the gentility of Ealing Studios, with a plot that distantly evokes that other great black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets ( 1949, Spine #325), and to Hammer’s gore-fests. It is perhaps all very un-English, as William Mervyn’s cynical Sir Charles says of Dr. Herder, but only in terms of a very censored notion of Englishness. And among its starry cast of great character actors relishing their chance to go over the top with Peter O’Toole in what is surely his greatest role after Lawrence, there are also some remarkably purely filmic inventions. The image of Dr. Herder embracing the police cut-out silhouette of Lady Claire has an eerie pathos, and the chilling final scream that rings out over the brooding exterior of the Gurney mansion after Jack has stabbed his wife, flushed with his acclaim in the House of Lords, seem to unite the bloody poetry that Hammer aspired to with a real protest against Britain’s decaying aristocratic tradition.”

Commentary

Featuring O’Toole, Medak, and writer Barnes.

The three-Peters commentary!

O’Toole is anecdotal (stories about how the actors awarded each other points for scenes where they either had to sit or lie down, etc.) … Barnes compares play to screenplay … Medak talks technical filmmaking.

For example, during the wedding scene, he discusses the importance of a great editor (here, Ray Lovejoy [this was his second gig; right after 2001!])

Medak’s home movies

Shot on location for The Ruling Class.

Mostly these show how absolutely boring filmmaking really is! The opening is Lowe, just hanging around, waiting for someone to say action.

The best are the last few minutes of the skeleton/cobweb scene.

Collection

Of rare publicity and behind-the-scenes production stills.

Original trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

35

54 + 35 =

89

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