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Ragtime (1981)
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by Paramount
Sales Rank: 4728
Price: $14.95
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Fact and fiction intertwine in Milos Forman's colorful kaleidoscope of E.L. Doctorow's sprawling novel of turn-of-the-century America. Anchored in the true story of the murder of architect Stanford White (Norman Mailer) by Harry Thaw (Robert Joy) over the affections of his wife Evelyn Nesbit (Elizabeth McGovern), Forman weaves a portrait of early 1900s America in a tapestry of intertwining fictional tales. The primary thread involves the proud black pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr. (Howard Rollins) and his demand for justice when a racist fireman destroys his automobile, which escalates into a reign of terror by Walker and a band of revolutionaries. A secondary story involves an ambitious immigrant artist (Mandy Patinkin) whose primitive flipbooks send him on the road to creating early cinema. Centering all of these stories in one way or another is an upper-class family known simply as Father (James Olson), Mother (Mary Steenburgen), and Younger Brother (Brad Dourif). James Cagney came out of a twenty-year retirement to play the irascible Irish police commissioner, a character created for the film. Forman's biggest departure from Doctorow's novel, however, is his focus on Walker's story, cutting away the other threads to little more than asides in the final half of the picture, the primary dramatic weakness of an otherwise rich evocation of America's past. Randy Newman's lyrical score and Miroslav Ondricek's understated cinematography earned two of the film's eight Academy Awards nominations <i>--Sean Axmaker</i>
Viewer Reviews
I very much liked the E.L. Doctorow novel and this movie over 25 years ago. Seeing the movie again, I enjoyed it just as much. Several reviewers have commented on the McGovern nude scene, as if that was the core of the film, but it isn't. Nor was it deleted from the DVD I received trom Amazon.
There are two connected stories here, somewhat ragged as the music for which this was named. First, there is the story of Evelyn Nesbit and the murder of Stanford White--which actually happened, pretty much as the film shows. Then there is the fictional story of Coalhouse Walker, a black piano player who only wants respect and justice. The connecting link is a young man who becomes enamored of Newbit, then takes up the cause of Walker.
The acting is very good throughout. The atmosphere of the Edwardian Age in New York feels right. There are wonderful side stories, such as the Jewish silhouette artist in the Lower East Side ghetto who becomes a "count" and a silent film director with Nesbit as his star. As an aside, she did make several such films in real life.
This is a movie worth seeing, if for the beautiful Elizabeth McGovern alone and her very natural and au natural acting. She plays the dim bulb Nesbit perfectly, far better than Nesbit was portrayed by Joan Collins in "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing."
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Ragtime (1981)
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