In this comedy of an Englishman stranded in a sea of barbaric Americans, Marmaduke Ruggles, a gentleman's gentleman and butler to an Earl is lost in a poker game to an uncouth American cattle baron. Ruggles' life is turned upside down as he's taken to the USA, is gradually assimilated into American life, accidentally becomes a local celebrity, and falls in love along the way.
L'Extravagant Mr Ruggles, Ein Butler in Amerika, Il maggiordomo, 红谷英仆, Vamos à América, Nobleza obliga, Рагглз из Ред-Геп, 레드 갭의 러글스, Раґлз з Ред-Геп, Noblesa obliga, Det var livat i Paris, 勇闖紅峽鎮
USANR
USA
A British butler goes West to lose his mind and find his sense of human dignity.
“Ruggles of Red Gap” was purportedly Charles Laughton’s most treasured of all his own movie roles. A simple sort of fairy tale about a man being what he makes of himself; “Ruggles” is rightfully treasured by the man who embodied the character himself.
Directed by Leo McCarey, “Ruggles” is a harmonious midpoint in the filmography of the man who was behind both “Duck Soup” and the devastating elder care melodrama, “Make Way for Tomorrow.” There are deep wells of sentiment and humor in “Ruggles,” perhaps all inside one man, in Charles Laughton, who manages to turn from vaudevillian gag comedy to a pathos of…
One of the great miracles of American film. A wonderful overactor in a fish out of water comedy that somehow becomes a perfectly balanced, subdued ensemble piece. Laughton is great, he has so many perfect reaction shots, but the movie secret involves how the movie finds equal room for everyone else as form ideally follows theme. McCarey's behavioral gifts, his good rapport with actors and eye for improvisation and how to let character disappear into action, pay off often in the late 30s and 40s and this talent really find full expression for the first time on this one. There’s so much great character stuff spread throughout that I always forget before my once every decade visit that it runs a tight 90 minutes.
O Butler Where Art Thou? This shares with Ninotchka and Sullivan's Travels (amongst others) the idea that there's nothing more funny than watching someone's exaggerated pretensions get stripped away when they find themselves outside of their natural habitat. Charles Laughton as the unflappable English valet does more comedic face and eyeball acting in the first reel than some actors will do in their lives. It's one of those instances in which his very posture and appearance is hilarious, his eyes flicking back and forth like one of those Felix the Cat wall clocks. Also like Ninotchka and Sullivan's Travels, there's a sweet optimism and faith in humanity that make it as moving as it is funny.
”I'm putting out your light grey, my Lord. There is something in the air this morning which calls for light grey, I think.”
The glaring issue with Ruggles of Red Gap, the third screen incarnation of Harry Leon Wilson’s best-selling 1915 novel (following two now-lost silent versions, the second of which starred Edward Everett Horton in the lead) is crystallized when our titular gentleman’s gentleman first enters the mansion of the nouveau riche American couple who won him in a poker game with Ruggles’s former employer, the Earl of Burnstead. Seeing the household’s servants, a Black woman and a Chinese man, he asks, “A genuine Black Moor, madam? And a China person?” Ruggles’s subsequent self-discovery and embrace of the American…
"Indubitably, madam."
"What beautiful French you speak, Ruggles."
They say that comedy is tougher than drama, and Charles Laughton proves that he's a character actor that can do more than cold-hearted, unfeeling authority figures with Ruggles of Red Gap. As the titular Ruggles, Laughton oversees the transformation of a lighthearted satire of America's rootin'-tootin', uncivilized reputation into a celebration of those same principles and eccentricities. Great contrast compared to Laughton's two other big blockbusters from the same year (Mutiny on the Bounty and Les Mis), both of which had the character actor typecast with a jutting jaw and a perpetual scowl. The careful balance between the proper English gentility and the slow emergence of Ruggles' self-confidence and a love for American opportunity is handled delicately, even if the plot gets a bit scattered later on as the comedy wears slightly thin.
Has any other actor starred in three Best Picture nominees from the same year?
Every Best Picture Nominee, #579/591.
3rd Leo McCarey (after Duck Soup and Love Affair)
A wholly successful picture, the film is funny, genuinely touching, and may well be one of the best films ever made – including those by Capra – about the idea of America.
Paul Harrill
Collab with ANNA!
The final scene brings tears to my eyes. So what if Ruggles is a little stuffy? He’s gotten the rough edges sanded off of by the natural warmth of his new American friends, their complete lack of pretension making him feel like Somebody for the first time in his life. Ruggles believes his background is too modest for that to happen; watch him burst into song thinking it’s for his former employer. But America imagines…
It's taken nigh on 44 years for my faith in America to be completely dismantled, razed, the earth salted, and one picture to put it all back together again, if for a moment only. The Belknap-Jacksons may have won in real life - they're everywhere now, at every lever of power - but the cinema is much more splendid, more true, and, it goes without saying, much preferred.
An odd but amusing culture-clash comedy from 1935. The movie opens in Paris, 1908. Marmaduke Ruggles (Charles Laughton) is manservant to the Earl of Burnstead. To the dismay of Ruggles, the Earl has just lost his services in a poker game to a millionaire from the United States. Egbert Floud (Charlie Ruggles) and his wife Effie (Mary Boland) plan to take Ruggles back to their home in Red Gap, Washington.
Once there, Ruggles is confused for a military officer and treated as the Flouds' social equal. Ruggles begins to like the idea of social mobility rather than service. He also has his eye on a woman in Red Gap (ZaSu Pitts) who might just like him back.
The movie sets…
I wonder if this might be Peak Leo McCarey? He made movies that I think are better, but they come with an asterisk (Make Way for Tomorrow is an outlier in his career for being crushingly depressing, Duck Soup is still first and foremost a Marx Brothers picture), leaving this as, I think, maybe the purest cinematic distillation of his worldview. It's warm and kind of hokey and unstintingly devoted to a vision of America as land of equality and dignity that surely must have felt at least somewhat like a damn dirty lie in the heart of the Depression, though I am sure a very cozy and affecting and appealing lie, all of which still apply to it. One's…
it's almost 90 years later and half of the comedies produced in america since have stolen this set up and structure outright and done it much worse. a perfect movie.
I've never been prouder to be an American from the great state of Washington.
Mini-collab with Dr Ethan Lyon
Charles Laughton is [redacted] Ruggles, an English butler who is sadly transported to Red Gap, east coast of the U S of A, to be servant to the nouveau riche. Specifically Charles Ruggles who plays Egbert Floud. (What can I say? This movie has delicious names.)
There are layers of irony. Ruggles is classist because that's how he was brought up and that's how England operates. He's on the lower rung of the social ladder in the UK and yet manages to be more cultured than the higher stratosphere of rural America like Egbert. Even when he knows this himself, he doesn't rub it in Egbert's face, because manners. Though Laughton's acting means Ruggles was…
