The Ruling Class (1972)

The Ruling Class is a 1972 British comedy film, an adaptation of Peter Barnes' satirical stage play which tells the story of a paranoid schizophrenic British nobleman (played by Peter O'Toole) who inherits a peerage. The film costars Alastair Sim, William Mervyn, Coral Browne, Harry Andrews, Carolyn Seymour, James Villiers and Arthur Lowe. It was produced by Jules Buck and directed by Peter Medak. Peter O'Toole described the movie as "a comedy with tragic relief".

Jack Gurney, the 14th Earl of Gurney (O'Toole), at first he thinks he is God and shocks his family and friends with his talk of returning to the world to bring it love and charity, not to mention his penchant for breaking out into song and dance routines and sleeping upright on a cross. When faced with unpalatable facts (such as his identity as the 14th Earl), Jack puts them in his "galvanized pressure cooker" and they disappear. His unscrupulous uncle, Sir Charles (Merwyn), marries him to his own mistress, Grace (Seymour), in hopes of producing an heir and putting his nephew in an institution; the plan fails when Grace actually falls in love with Gurney.

Gurney gains another ally in Sir Charles' wife (Browne), who hates her husband and befriends Gurney just to spite him. She also begins sleeping with Gurney's psychiatrist, Dr. Herder (Michael Bryant), to persuade him to cure Gurney quickly.

Herder attempts to cure him through intensive psychotherapy, but this is to no avail; Gurney so thoroughly believes that he is the "God of Love" that, ironically, he dismisses any suggestion to the contrary as the rambling of lunatics. The night his wife goes into labour with their child, Herder makes one last effort at therapy; he introduces Gurney to McKyle (Nigel Green), a patient who also believes himself to be Christ, or, as the patient puts it, "The Electric Messiah", who subjects an unwitting Gurney to electroshock therapy. The plan is to use the electroshock to (literally) jolt Gurney out of his delusions, showing him that the two men could not both be God, and so he must be operating under hallucinations. The plan works, and, as Grace delivers a healthy baby boy, Gurney returns to his senses and reclaims his true identity, proclaiming "I'm Jack, I'm Jack".

Sir Charles, still intent on stealing the title, sends for a court psychiatrist to evaluate Gurney, confident that his nephew would be sent to an asylum for life. He is once again thwarted, however, when the psychiatrist discovers that Gurney was a fellow Old Etonian, bonds with him, and declares him sane.

Gurney soon relapses into mental illness, however, this time believing himself to be Jack the Ripper. Now a violent psychopath with a puritanical hatred of women, Gurney murders Sir Charles' wife in a fit of enraged revulsion when the aging woman tries to seduce him. He frames the Communist family butler, Tucker (Lowe), for the murder, and assumes his place in the House of Lords with a fiery speech in favor of capital and corporal punishment. Ironically, the speech is wildly applauded, and the lords have no idea that it is the ranting of a madman, in contrast to society's reaction when Gurney believed he was Christ. That night, he murders Grace for expressing her love for him.

The story's ending is ambiguous; it is left open to interpretation whether Gurney gets caught, or escapes detection to kill again.

The play was adapted by Peter Barnes from his play with few major changes. It cost around $1.4 million, with O'Toole working for free (he was instead paid a great deal for the big budget Man of La Mancha, released by the same studio later the same year). It was filmed at a sprawling estate in Harlaxton with the interiors reconstructed on sound stages.

It was the official British entry at the Cannes Film Festival in 1972, but divided critics. The New York Times described it as "fantastic fun" and Variety called it "brilliantly caustic", but the Los Angeles Times called it "snail-slow, shrill and gesticulating" and Newsweek said it was a "sledgehammer satire". Despite mixed critical reaction to the film, O'Toole's performance was universally praised and garnered numerous pretigious awards and prizes, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Reportedly, when United Artists, its North American distributor, told producer Jules Buck that it would be cutting the film extensively for US release, Buck punched the company's London representative and bought the film back. Avco Embassy then bought distribution rights and cut its 154-minute running time by six minutes.

In 1974, following an earlier-than-normal TV screening of the film on BBC TV, which broke a gentlemen's agreement allowing a 'window' of theatrical distribution before any TV screening, the UK's Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association (the theatrical distributors' association) recommended its members black all future movies produced by Jules Buck.