Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
"Ruggles, how are you about shocks?" Though I've been massively impressed with Leo McCarey's dramas such as An Affair to Remember (1957) and Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), it's for his comedies that he is most remembered today, so I approached his 1935 feature Ruggles of Red Gap with high expectations. Though it's not been widely distributed in recent years, a recent Blu-ray release has show that this is a film that's been neglected for too long. McCarey had received a lot of praise for the 1931 Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup , but Ruggles comes at the start of what was to be a very prosperous time for the director, both commercially and critically, and the film itself was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Film in 1936 (losing out to Mutiny on the Bounty , which incidentally also starred Charles Laughton). The film concentrates on the character of Marmaduke Ruggles (Charles Laughton). Set at the turn of the century, he is employed as ...