NFR Project: ‘Ruggles of Red Gap’
Dir: Leo McCarey
Scr: Walter DeLeon, Harlan Thompson, Humphrey Pearson
Pho: Alfred Gilks
Ed: Edward Dmytryk
Premiere: March 8, 1935
90 min.
The most American of all screwball comedies is a gentle tale of an Englishman. From faceless subordinate to sole proprietor, the gentleman of the title comes to the New World and, enchanted by its possibilities, throws himself into the democratic and capitalist experiment with vigor and enthusiasm. His appreciation of his freedom transforms those around him, and makes him the most American of subjects – a naturalized citizen and an independent businessman.
The conceit of the movie is concise. In Paris, an English lord loses his butler Ruggles (Charles Laughton) in a poker game to a nouveau riche American, played by the great Charlie Ruggles. (His social-climbing wife wants a butler for the prestige it brings.) They live in the little Western town of Red Gap, Washington, so off they return, bringing a reluctant but tactful Ruggles with them.
Soon Ruggles is mistaken for a former colonel in the British Army, and paraded and feted around the small burg. He is harassed by a resentful, snobbish local, Belknap-Jackson, but maintains his poise. Soon Ruggles realizes that he no longer want to be “in service” to another man. Instead, he wants to open a restaurant. He does so with great aplomb. His former master the Earl comes to collect him, but finds Ruggles an entirely different person, one motivated and happily self-sufficient.
Director Leo McCarey was already a comedy expert, having directed some of Laurel and Hardy’s best movies, along with entries collaborating with the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, and Mae West. Here he deflates Ruggles’ assumptions about class quickly and insistently. “I’m no better than you, and you’re no better than me,” insists Ruggles’ new American employer Egbert Floud, who keeps calling Ruggles “Bill” and inviting him to sit down and have a snort with him.
The centerpiece of the film is Laughton’s performance, and this great film actor, who usually played villains and oddballs, here portrays perfectly the quintessential Englishman – reserved and polite – but also gives us all the swinging, dizzying sweep of emotions that swim in Ruggles’ eyes as he stands patiently still, responding politely and complying with his fate. Without cracking a smile or frown, Laughton lets us know what Ruggles thinks of the crazy situation he’s in at all times, and his sympathetic vulnerability puts us on his side immediately. Ruggles is in some senses a babe in the wood, unexposed to democratic realities as he is.
Ruggles quickly takes to American ways. In a moving scene, everyone in the bar Ruggles is standing in tries to remember the words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Quietly and somberly, but with great feeling, Ruggles recites the immortal words, transfixing everyone around him. (Laughton would become famous for this recitation.) Sometimes it takes the perspective of someone outside your cultural context to make you appreciate it.
So Ruggles creates his restaurant, earns the plaudits of the town, and wins the love of a local widow (the great Zazu Pitts). It is one of the most unvarnished and wel-earned happy endings in the cinema of the day.
The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Top Hat.