Boring

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

British-born but American-naturalized comedian Bob Hope had first followed his classic Western comedy THE PALEFACE (1948) with FANCY PANTS (1950) where he played a stuffy English butler out West; it was pure coincidence, therefore, that I happened to come across the remake of the former – the Don Knotts vehicle THE SHAKIEST GUN IN THE WEST (1968) – and the original of the latter (which is the film under review) for this year's Christmas season.RUGGLES OF RED GAP was an oft-filmed novel and this version (perhaps the best-known and undoubtedly the best) was already the third screen treatment. Charles Laughton was clearly on a roll in the early 1930s, with three superlative performances in 1935 alone – the others being his celebrated (and Oscar-nominated) Captain Bligh in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY and Javert in LES MISERABLES – but I'd venture to say that his Marmaduke Ruggles is the one that ought to have been singled out for the highest praise. His social standing as a butler doesn't allow him to appear flustered by all the lunacy going on around him and, as a result, his subtle reactions are a sheer joy to behold and a clear testament to the actor's capabilities and emotional range. In fact, the film's first 20 minutes or so (set in Paris, France) are a hilarious succession of events that seriously test the age-old values of the unflappable Ruggles (culminating in a memorable drinking sequence that brought tears to my eyes from laughter).It is ironic that a film which headlines a character named Ruggles should have an actor named Ruggles in a main role but Charlie Ruggles manages to defeat that challenge and emerge almost as shiny as Laughton himself; he plays a hen-pecked American tourist (as usual, he's married to bossy Mary Boland who wins Ruggles in a bet with his reckless master Roland Young) and proceeds to take him to his hometown of Red Gap, Washington, U.S.A. Charlie's persistence in treating Ruggles as his equal and call him "Colonel" gives his compatriots the mistaken notion that Laughton was a high-ranking British officer and, consequently, they start regarding him as a local celebrity. However, his ruse slowly starts to unravel when he meets up with klutzy cook Zasu Pitts and starts giving her pointers on spicing up her meat sauce… Although the film eventually loses some of that initial frenzied momentum, it is never less than enjoyable and, occasionally, even moving: at one point, Laughton lets his real cultured self show through in front of his feather-brained American bar-room cronies when murmuring Abraham Lincoln's famous address at Gettysburg – according to Edward Dmytryk (who worked as an editor on the picture), ultra-sensitive Laughton got so emotional in speaking those lines (and which subsequently became favorites of his) that it took director Leo McCarey one-and-a-half days to shoot the scene! Also, according to Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester, the subject was clearly close to his heart as it was he who brought to Paramount's attention and picked McCarey to direct the film, whose sole Oscar nod would be for the Best Picture of the Year (although Laughton did eventually win the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Actor).P.S. This was yet another case of DivX foul-up for me as the copy I initially got kept pixelating and freezing before the DVD conversion conveniently resolved the issues satisfactorily.

Ruggles of Red Gap is the warm and tender story of Charles Laughton, gentlemen's gentlemen to Lord Roland Young who loses his services in a poker game to American western tourist Charlie Ruggles and his wife Mary Boland. Ruggles has some ideas about class distinction and one's proper place in society and he's in for quite a culture shock when he's brought back to the western town of Red Gap in Washington State.In a way Ruggles of Red Gap is the polar opposite of The Earl of Chicago where an American gangster Robert Montgomery inherits an English title and experiences a reverse culture shock. In that film Montgomery has an English valet in Edmund Gwenn who indoctrinates him in reverse of what Laughton experiences. Of course things turn out a whole lot better for Marmaduke Ruggles than for the Earl of Kinmont.In a way Ruggles of Red Gap may have been Charles Laughton's most personal film. In his life he became an American citizen because he preferred the American view of no titles of nobility and that one had better opportunities here than in Europe. It caused a certain amount of friction between Laughton and some other British players.Laughton up to then had played a whole lot of bigger than life parts like Nero, Henry VIII, Captain Bligh, Edward Moulton Barrett, parts that called for a lot of swagger. Marmaduke Ruggles is a different kind of man. Self contained, shy, and unsure of himself in new surroundings. But Laughton pulls it off beautifully. It's almost Quasimodo without the grotesque make up. Also very much like the school teacher in This Land is Mine.Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland never fail to entertain, they worked beautifully together in a number of films in the early Thirties. They always were a married couple, Boland a very haughty woman with some exaggerated ideas of her own importance and her ever patient and somewhat henpecked husband Charlie. In Ruggles of Red Gap, Charlie Ruggles is a little less henpecked.My guess is that Zasu Pitts played the role she did because Elsa Lanchester might have been busy elsewhere. I believe she was making the Bride of Frankenstein around this time. Pitts's scenes with Laughton resonate the same way as some of Charles Laughton's best work with his wife.The highlight of Ruggles of Red Gap has always been Laughton's recital of The Gettysburg Address. In a scene in a saloon where none of the American born people can remember anything of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Laughton the immigrant recited it from memory. It was a harbinger of some of Laughton's later recitals which I remember as a kid on the Ed Sullivan show. The scene is a tribute to all the immigrants who come here because of the ideals this country is supposed to represent. Sometimes our immigrants have taken it more seriously than those who were born here. Immigrants like Charles Laughton.

RUGGLES AT RED GAP is an example of a film that was far better when it came out than it is today. I realize, as I say this, that most of the comments on this thread are positive ones - that they emphasize the better points of the cast and scenes of the film, and of Leo McCarey's directing abilities, but the film is a bit too mild for today's taste.McCarey was capable of doing very funny film comedies like THE AWFUL TRUTH, and homey quasi-religious films like GOING MY WAY and THE BELLS OF ST. MARY, and romantic classics like LOVE AFFAIR and AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, and he did one of the best films ever made about the tragedy of growing old, MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW. But he could make movies, or films that were not as lasting in public appeal. For example, his extreme Catholicism made him as big a foe of Communism as Cecil B. DeMille. He did that abysmal film MY SON JOHN (Robert Walker Sr.'s last film) about a young man who becomes a Communist Russian agent.RUGGLES OF RED GAP is not as bad a misfire as MY SON JOHN. First of all it does have a funny set of problems in it's story. Set in the year 1900 or so, the movie is about Egbert and Effie Floud of Red Gap, Washington State (Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland). Floud is a wealthy rancher, and his wife is trying to polish him up by taking him on a modern grand tour of Europe. But Egbert is very down-to-earth, and keeps up a continuous quiet rear guard action against his wife's pretensions. She keeps burning his loud, checkered suits. He keeps finding ways of replacing the "monkey" suits (tales) that she gets him. He never really picks up on the cultural advantages that she pushes (he really dislikes them). One thing that Floud does pick up is Marmaduke Ruggles (Charles Laughton), a butler and valet to George, Earl of Burnwell (Roland Young). Floud wins Ruggles in a high stake poker game with the Earl. Floud is a good democratic type, and refuses to call the timid but competent butler Ruggles. Instead he keeps calling him Bill. He also introduces Ruggles to the pleasures of getting drunk, much to the disappointment of Effie.Effie's snobbery (which is undercut by her ineptitude in pronouncing French) is encouraged by her brother in law Charles Belknap - Jackson (Lucien Littlefield). A total snob, he looks down at the decent Egbert (who is footing the bills for his own family and Belknap - Jackson's) and he considers that Ruggles is a step in the right direction, as long as Ruggles knows his place.The Flouds and their party return to Red Gap, and Ruggles slowly finds that he really fits into the community. Particularly when he meets Prunella Judson (Zazu Pitts), whom he finds himself falling in love with. Back on their home turf Effie (still manipulated by Belknap - Jackson) keeps trying to raise the community's social standards. But even Effie, back at home, eases a bit. Her neighbors like her, but they can tune out her pretensions, If any scene is recalled from RUGGLES it is when Egbert, his neighbor Ma Pettingill (Maude Eburne) and his friend Jeff Tuttle (James Burke) are drinking beer in the local saloon with Ruggles, and discuss President Lincoln and his appearance at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery in November 1863. It turns out none of them recall Lincoln's Gettysburg Address - except Ruggles. Speaking softly but with increased emphasis, Laughton recites the complete four minute speech, and gave one of most memorable moments in movies (and in his own career) to the public. His recitation of the speech is the culmination of his adherence to the democratic ideals that he has hitherto feared, but now welcomes.The conclusion of the film is a party attended by the entire community that both Marmaduke and Prunella throw at their new restaurant. And it culminates in Marmaduke reacting violently (if politely) to Belknap - Jackson who has been sneering at the democratic riffraff. Firmly grasping the snob by his jacket he pushes him out of the restaurant.The film is appealing in it's adherence of the leveling and freeing aspects of American democracy, and so it deserves an "8" out of "10". But it is not as great a film as that ranking would seem to suggest. There are long stretches of the film that drag. Some of the humor is a trifle more slapdash (particularly Ruggles' reaction to alcohol) than one would appreciate. McCarey had been trained in silent comedy, particularly with Laurel & Hardy, but he could fall flat occasionally.There is also a problem about his villain. Littlefield does well as Belknap - Jackson, but we never understand the reason for his outrageous snobbery. It might have helped to understand this character's reasons.Still hearing Laughton recite Lincoln is a great treat, as is his interactions with Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland and Roland Young. It is certainly a film to watch once or twice, but beyond that I can't really feel that you would gain much more pleasure from viewing it.

What's great about having a hundred years worth of movies is the ability to see how people have solved various cinematic problems. It isn't that we have exhausted the limits of the thing -- in fact I think we are just getting started.But the simple things, I mean. And in particular the simple comedic things.I'd like to talk you into seeing this for comedy by the rolling, moving, shifting eye. Charles Laughton is a valet who gets involved in a traditional British comedy of class. You know, the business about shifting levels. Absolutely mundane in its basic shape and I've seen other versions that are thoroughly mundane.But here, all the comedy depends on Laughton. And all his technique (except for some subtle hand flappings with his arms aside) is in his eyes. He rolls them. he sifts them, opens wide, sometimes stares. He's otherwise the staid servant.It is a lesson in comedic acting. Pure, almost as if it were designed as an example. And everything that surrounds it is bland, as if to highlight the example.There's something about eyes and cinema. Even in a simple comedy, we subconsciously know we are watching. Sometimes we choose to watch askance ourselves. In a strange way, this sometimes staid observer is our standin. And when he rolled his eyes, I felt mine pulled a bit.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.