Life for Ruth

I have been desperate to see this film since I first read about it three or four years ago. Through the kindness of a stranger, I finally have done so. Why it has not been made available via VHS or DVD is even more of a mystery to me than it was before.

County Durham, in the bleak north-east of England is the setting for Patrick McGoohan's second Sixties 'kitchen-sink' drama. His first was in the potentially even bleaker location of Sweden! His role in 'Life For Ruth' is, however, much more straightforward than his conscience-raddled postal clerk in 'Two Living, One Dead'.

A blissful family day introduces us to a sweet little girl-child. In a tragic sequence of events she is badly injured in a boating accident on some rocks. She needs a blood transfusion. She doesn't get one. She dies.

Using this excruciatingly sad canvas the story that unfolds is an exploration of how an individual trying to stand by his 'beliefs' is vilified and punished by his dissenting society. The events that the viewer has watched have been so extreme that we, the audience, have been plunged into that dissenting society and want the hapless religious zealot, played by Michael Craig with literally gritted-teeth, punished. The thwarted doctor, James Brown, played by Patrick McGoohan, declares !WAR! but finds that, as another James Brown has mentioned, "War! What is it good for?" By the end of the film McGoohan has communicated how his character's hot anger against the idiotic Craig and his guilt over Ruth's death has mellowed into sad regret for the girl and forgiveness for the tragic humanity that is her father.

The film takes the audience through all the complex issues: Religion versus Secularism. Science versus Superstition. State versus Individual Right. Minority Belief persecuted by Majority Consensus. They are all wheeled out; it could be tedious but it is actually quite thought-provoking. You start the movie detesting Craig's wretched soul but by the end, whilst you don't support him, you have realised that this is a tough conundrum to solve.

Because we had a side at the beginning we are as bewildered as the jury is, at the conclusion of the court-case. As British law requires no shadow of a doubt, then he must be acquitted.

At the same moment Society forgives him, the man's own conscience awakes and he desperately admits both his guilt and his awful sin of pride that led to the entire disaster. He had seen himself as Abraham and had awaited the Angel that would come to stay the hand of death as a reward for his Faith. It was redolent of that old joke where the Holy Man runs to the church in the flooded village telling his flock to remain steadfast, for the Lord will save them. As his flock are taken away in boats he refuses help, saying the Lord will save him. As the final helicopter leaves with the final villager he spurns their help crying, the Lord will save me! As the water folds over his head and he drowns, his soul cries out to the Lord, "I believed in you! Why did you not save me?" And God's voice replies, "What do you mean? I sent you a boat. I sent you a helicopter. What more did you expect?"

McGoohan's Doctor Brown saves this holy man from throwing himself under a bus but he can do little for the same man who is left on the cliff-top howling to the moon for the daughter that was lost on the rocks below him.

May God forgive us all.

Filmed in Durham, 'Life for Ruth' is a surprisingly effective story about a man who puts his daughters life in the hands of God and ignores the advice of surgeons. Ruth dies and a court case ensues in which the tension of the situation is brought to a head. Well acted by Michael Craig and especially Patrick MacGoohan as a journalist who comes to see both sides of the argument. This is one of those typically British films with dignity that makes use of unusual locations.

Michael Craig turns in a strong, emotional, performance in this thought provoking drama. He takes his young daughter and her friend from next door on a trip to the seaside. They get into some difficulties and though he ("Harris") manages to rescue both children, it is soon clear that his hospitalised daughter "Ruth" will need a blood transfusion if she is to survive. The doctor "Brown" (Patrick McGoohan) assumes that consent will be readily forthcoming from the father and his wife "Pat" (Janet Munro) but when he discovers that they have religious convictions that will not permit this intervention, a tragedy looms large - and is promptly delivered upon the family. The doctor seeks a prosecution as he felt the father was criminally negligent in the care of his child, and what now ensues is a delicately balanced analysis - played out in a courtroom - of the relative merits of his case and that of the doctor, and of the position the "law" might reasonably take. What would you do, if it were your child? That's the obvious question and Munro is excellent as the emotional and conflicted mother and wife, with Messrs. Craig and McGoohan performing sensitively too, polarising family and community attitudes and posing questions about the value of life, choice and religious freedoms in a fashion that does give us a conclusion, but one tinged with guilt and regret. It is still a subject dealt with in courts around the world 50 years later, and does make you think.

In 2017, Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci starred in a courtroom drama based on the same late 1930s legislation that is used for the manslaughter case in this Relph and Dearden message movies collaboration. The later film was based on a novel by popular writer Ian McEwan.

The theme is similar: the refusal of a blood transfusion based on a religious dogma. A difference is that in Life With Ruth, the onus for the decision fell on the father, whose eight year old girl was not yet of age to really understand the faith he had taught her and to make a decision for herself. Whereas in the later story the decision is made by a teenage boy on his own, though he is not yet an adult according to the law so is covered as a child.

In both films there is a subplot about a crumbling marriage though in the Emma Thompson film it is the lawyer's marriage that is affected.

The original Dearden film is an impressive piece of craftsmanship with black and white lensing by veteran Otto Heller, good supporting performances and well cast leads. My sympathies were on the side of the outraged doctor but the script is balanced enough to allow us to understand why the jury would acquit the father.

Though some of his best films (The Captive Heart, The Smallest Show On Earth, The League of Gentlemen, Khartoum) fall outside the rubric of the socially conscious message format, Dearden's work in that format far surpasses the comparable Hollywood contribution of someone like Stanley Kramer and can be better compared to the achievement of the French director Andre Cayatte.

A father's religious beliefs are put to the test when he refuses a blood transfusion for his daughter on religious grounds, and the child dies as a result. The doctor who tried to save the girl's life charges the father with manslaughter.

This is a thought-provoking film that does not take the easy way out. It would be easy to make a scapegoat out of the father's religion, or absolve him of responsibility by taking a fatalistic view. To this film's credit, it does neither, but strives to present all points of view with fairness.

As topical, relevant, and fresh today as when it was made. Highly recommended.