Ragtime

[1981, Movie]

Ragtime: Review

Although more than $32 million was pumped into this kaleidoscopic portrait of American life in 1906, RAGTIME is too long, too splintered in its characterizations, and too much of a good thing squeezed dry. The most impressive aspect of the film is the return, after a 20-year hiatus, of top-billed Cagney, at age 81, to play a feisty NYC police commissioner.

Based on Doctorow's novel, the film balances several themes and four families--one factual, three fictional. The most compelling story is that of the infamous Thaw-White murder case, in which mad millionaire Harry K. Thaw (Robert Joy) kills famed architect Stanford White (Norman Mailer) over the affections of Thaw's showgirl wife Evelyn Nesbit (Elizabeth McGovern). This story was better told in THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING. A second plot line follows the disintegration of an upper-class American family led by Mary Steenburgen and James Olson; their complacency is disturbed by black ragtime artist Coalhouse Walker (Howard E. Rollins Jr.), who arrives to woo a pregnant young woman living in their home. Walker's sense of dignity turns to rage when he is abused by local racists; he gathers a band of revolutionaries who are joined by Steenburgen's younger brother (Dourif), a munitions expert. Another plotline follows starving immigrant artist Patinkin, who encounters Nesbit by chance and later sets off to make his fortune in Hollywood. An exploration of the down side of the American Dream, RAGTIME is not always convincing, and under Forman's occasionally heavy-handed direction, its performances are uneven. Ambitious, but only sporadically engaging.