The Ruling Class **** (1972, Peter O’Toole, Alastair Sim, Arthur Lowe) – Classic Movie Review 7974

Director Peter Medak’s 1972 The Ruling Class is a superb British comedy with a superb British comedy cast that kicks into top gear a painstaking version of Peter Barnes’s offbeat play satirising the nation’s aristocracy, manners and beliefs with some incision, considerable wit and much charm.

The Ruling Class is perhaps too long at 155 minutes, and maybe not for all tastes, but it is still a total gem.

Peter O’Toole has a field day with his loopy lord role, as Jack, the 14th Earl of Gurney, who inherits his father (Harry Andrews)’s estate and title, but thinks he is Jesus Christ. He was Oscar nominated as Best Actor in a Leading Role, one of his eight nominations without a win. In 2003, the Academy gave an Honorary Award to Peter O’Toole, ‘Whose remarkable talents have provided cinema history with some of its most memorable characters.’  And it is one of Alastair Sim’s best chances to shine, as Bishop Lampton.

Peter Barnes writes his own screenplay, adapting his stage play.

Also in the cast are Arthur Lowe, Coral Browne, Michael Bryant, Nigel Green, William Mervyn, James Villers, Carolyn Seymour, Hugh Burden, Graham Crowden, Kay Walsh, Patsy Byrne, Joan Cooper, James Grout, James Hazeldine, Hugh Owens, Griffith Davies, Henry Woolf, Oliver MacGreevy, Neil Kennedy, Llewellyn Rees, Ronald Adam and Leslie Schofield.

The Ruling Class is available on DVD in The Criterion Collection.

Peter Medak is the director of Negatives (1968, with Glenda Jackson), A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1972, with Alan Bates and Janet Suzman), The Ruling Class (1972, with Peter O’Toole), The Changeling (1980), The Men’s Club (1986), The Krays (1990), Let Him Have It (1991), Romeo Is Bleeding (1993), Pontiac Moon, (1994) and Species II (1998).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7974

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