Ruy Blas (1914) [N/A]

Featuring:
William Garwood, Francelia Billington, Frederick Vroom

Written by:
Victor Hugo

Directed by:
Lucius Henderson


Release Date:
January 1, 1914

Original Title:
Ruy Blas

Genres:
Drama

Production Companies:
Majestic Motion Picture Company

Production Countries:
United States of America

Ratings / Certifications:
 N/A

Runtime: 20

Ruy Blas, a commoner disguised as a nobleman, falls in love with the Queen, Maria de Neubourg, after being manipulated by Don Salluste, a banished prime minister seeking revenge.

The scene is laid in Madrid at the Spanish Court at the close of the seventeenth century. Victor Hugo, as he himself states in his preface to the play, intended it to be in a measure symbolic of those troublesome times, when the throne was held by a weakling, a defective, the last of a long line of degenerate rulers, and the kingdom itself was a prey to the cupidity of the nobles. The three leading male characters Victor Hugo meant to personify were the three contending forces in the tottering kingdom: Don Sallusto, the unprincipled covetous element; Don Caesar, the adventurous but still chivalrous element; and Ruy Blas, the People, who still revered the Crown. As for the story of the play itself, it may he briefly stated. Ruy Blas is a poet reduced by poverty to the position of lackey to the unscrupulous Don Sallusto, who, at the opening of the play, is banished by the Queen for refusing to marry a serving-maid whom he had betrayed. Ruy Blas is secretly in love with the Queen, and Don Sallusto on learning this, wishing to be avenged for his disgrace at Court, palms off on the nobles, the Queen and Ruy Blas, his servant, who is disguised as the adventurer Don Caesar de Bazan, a cousin who returns unexpectedly to Madrid, and with whom be surreptitiously makes away. The ruse succeeds so well, against the wishes of the noble-hearted Ruy Blas, that he becomes the Queen's favorite and her Prime Minister. At the moment when he reaches the limit of his power Don Sallusto returns, relieves him of his office and takes his vengeance on the Queen by disclosing to her the fact that her favorite is none other than his lackey. Ruy Blas resents this insult to the Queen and kills his master. The Queen refuses to pardon the luckless poet for the part he has played in this deception, and Ruy Blas takes his life. At the last moment the Queen relents and pardons him, and he dies happy in the knowledge that the Queen loved him and has forgiven him.

Additional information:

The Search Form


Rankings and Honors

Ruy Blas (1914) on IMDb

Director:
Lucius Henderson

Theatre Play:
Victor Hugo

Writer:
Elmer Harris

About the Movie Section

Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).

Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.

Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

Regarding profile removals and data corrections:

  • If you would like your profile removed from this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's gone from their site, it should soon be gone from this site.
  • If you would like to correct movie data on this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's corrected on their site, it should soon be corrected on this site.
  • For additional corrections and profile removals, please e-mail The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.

Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.