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The Ruling Class. (Homevideo).

Article Excerpt
Directed by Peter Medak; screenplay by Peter Barnes; cinematography by Ken Hodges; music by John Cameron; edited by Ray Lovejoy; starring Peter O'Toole, Alastair Slim Arthur Lowe, Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Michael Bryant, Nigel Green, William Mervyn, Carolyn Seymour, James Villiers and Graham Crowden. Color, 154 mins., DVD. A Criterion Collection release distributed by Home Vision Entertainment, www.homevision.com.

The points of departure for Hungarianborn director Peter Medak's scathing satire that brought British playwright Peter Barnes's equally scathing play to the screen in 1972 are those points in Western history when various institutions, political as well as religious, made the New Testament Christ, who served a god of love, do an about-face and marched him backwards so that he might serve the Old Testament's vindictive and wholly authoritarian god, thereby giving the ruling classes added clout to vindicate their absolute power. For those of you who may have forgotten this cult classic--or who, heaven forbid, may never have seen it-I remind you that the first half of The Ruling Class presents us with Jack, the 14th Earl of Gurney (played by Peter O'Toole in a once-in-a-lifetime performance), an English aristocrat living in an outlandishly big and elaborate castle. Jack, you see, is a paranoid schizophrenic (so-called) who thinks he's Jesus Christ-the New Testament version complete, via the hippies and flower chi ldren of...