So, there’s this movie, Ruggles of Red Gap. It’s from 1935 and it stars Charles Laughton, and I’ve seen it a couple of times and it’s pretty great. And it turns out that it was adapted from a book, also called Ruggles of Red Gap, and that the book, written by Harry Leon Wilson and published in 1915, is in the public domain. I was pretty excited to find out about that.
And it’s…well, it’s good. Really funny. The movie is more gentle; the book has a touch of that thing where you feel like the author may not have much love or respect for any of his characters. If it was a television show, I wouldn’t be able to watch it. As a book, I like it. Parts of it are hilarious. But I never entirely warmed to it because there was nothing warm in it. Read the rest of this entry ?
