From Paramount Pictures
Directed by Milos Forman
Starring
James Cagney
Howard E. Rollins Jr.
Elizabeth McGovern
James Olson
Mary Steenburgen
Brad Dourif
Mandy Patinkin
Kenneth McMillan
Pat O'Brien
Donald O'Connor
Robert Joy
Norman Mailer
Moses Gunn
Debbie Allen
Jeff Daniels
This was a director-fueled film for me. I had seen Forman's two prior American projects, so different from one another... One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Hair (1979)... and dearly loved them both. I knew this was nothing like either one of them and I was anxious to see what other tricks he had up his sleeve.
Of course the title also spoke to me. Ragtime was a musical genre and it was also a time. I couldn't wait to be transported back to the early 20th century New York, syncopating and toe-tapping into the lives of both real and fictional characters. Based on E. L. Doctorow's popular novel and adapted for the screen by Michael Weller, Ragtime is a fictional story that blends in some real events... and I might add, does so very well.
If all this wasn't enough to get me to buy an early ticket, veteran actor James Cagney was returning to the screen after 20 years. After finishing One, Two, Three in 1961), he loudly announced enough. What a hoot, I thought, to see the old boy one last time.
The film's opening introduces a real-life trio... lunatic millionaire Harry Thaw (Joy), his chorus girl-model-actress wife, Evelyn Nesbitt (McGovern), and architect Sanford White (Mailer). White, a prolific womanizer, had sexually assaulted Nesbitt and Thaw was out for revenge. Thaw was additionally humiliated when White designed a nude statue of Nesbitt that was publicly displayed. The three were on the rooftop of Madison Square Garden in 1906 when Thaw delivered a fatal shot to White's head. (Their story was the subject of 1955's The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing with Ray Milland, Joan Collins and Farley Granger.)
Meanwhile, in New Rochelle is a staid, cautious and quiet upper-class family that is engaged in the fireworks business. We only know them as Father (Olson), Mother (Steenburgen) and Younger Brother (Dourif). The latter witnesses the White murder and becomes infatuated with Evelyn whom he pursues. The family's orderly lives are tested when a black baby is found in their garden. Soon they take in the mother (Allen) and hire her as a domestic.
Things really get rolling when the child's father, Coalhouse Walker Jr. (Rollins) comes on the scene. He is a well-mannered, likeable, stylishly-groomed jazz piano player at a local dive who is boyishly-thrilled to be getting married soon. But all that glee evaporates the day he is driving past a volunteer fire department and the white men inside harass him and vandalize his car... for no reason other than he's black and they're brainless, white bullies. Pleading with them to stop does no good nor does recruiting the cops and higher government officials.
He decides to take matters into his own hands... meting out his form of justice. He and some cohorts, hooded and armed with guns and explosives, blow up firehouses around town and kill a few firemen. When the law closes in on them, they take over a large library, in a building owned by J.P. Morgan, which they will blow up if certain demands aren't met.
Coalhouse has one, new white friend who is helping out in a big way... Younger Brother who is dismayed with how his relationship with the flashy Evelyn has turned out and how Father, his brother-in-law, seems to be dismissing him. In his anger, Younger Brother has furnished Coalhouse with the explosives.
Called in to engineer the dangerous situation is steely police commissioner Rhinelander Waldo (Cagney) who is generally amenable to meeting Coalhouse's terms while determined to take him down. It is just the tense kind of standoff I like in films.
I remember a friend calling me one day in 1981 asking I'd seen Ragtime? (I think it had opened the day before). I told her that I was seeing it, I think, that day. She had seen it the prior day and asked that I call her when I got home.
You liked it? she wailed. You actually liked it? I told her that I very much liked it and I didn't find it was as outstanding as Forman's two prior films. I knew she had read the novel and loved it... and we all know what that usually means. Oh, they just did not do that wonderful book justice at all, she bemoaned.
I told her that I was less enthralled with a fourth story involving Mandy Patinkin who rises from being a street vendor to becoming an early movie director but that I was impressed with how all the stories and characters intersected. There were other famous people introduced in briefly into the proceedings such as Houdini, Teddy Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington and others. Overall, with such an ambitious project, I thought there was a brilliant construction of time and place.
Hey, I can see how my friend felt. Damn, there was a lot to say and in that regard, sure, the book stands the chance of being better in the film. But at two hours and 35 minutes, I still think Forman and company did an admirable job. He had to excise large passages of the novel or it would have taken three days to watch this film. With a book one does not get this grand visual treat nor do we get to see actors in those roles... and this ensemble is terrific.
Other than Cagney, there wasn't a truly big star on board. Some I hadn't heard of at all and quite a number were still in the early stages of their careers. Apparently producer Dino De Laurentiis felt the same and told Forman he needed just one big name, especially for the European market. Forman saw the point and called upon his buddy Jack Nicholson who accepted and then had to back out.
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| Cagney as the wily police commissioner |
Forman knew Cagney casually and felt he'd never accept another movie role but the director felt he needed to try to coax him to join up. At 81, Cagney was not in the best of health and at the moment had a severe sciatica issue. Still, he checked with his doctor who thought making a movie might be good for him. His part would all be filmed in London (the site of the library scenes). I suspect there were many accommodations made for Cagney due to his age and poor health. Some shots looked like they were filmed at other times and edited into the final cut. He moves little and very slowly but at no time does one forget this is one of the great movie legends.
Cagney would be given top-billing for what is essentially a co-starring role. Except for a brief, non-verbal shot in an opening scene, he doesn't appear again until the climactic finale gets underway. The star of the film is actually Rollins, making a striking film debut. This is a man who comes alive on the screen... impassioned, thoughtful, earnest. What a career he could have had but unfortunately he died in 1996 at age 46. I'm imagining, however, that he has been reincarnated as Sterling K. Brown.
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| Rollins as piano-playing Coalhouse Walker Jr. |
Making only her second film is McGovern, a total delight as the daffy, social-climbing Evelyn, providing the film with what little comedy there is.
Olson, mainly a television actor, offers one of his usual self-effacing, officious performances. The Father role was one severely downsized from the novel.
Younger Brother is a character with some depth and is featured in three of the four stories. Dourif, who had worked with Forman in Cuckoo's Nest, already had a deer-in-the-headlights look that would keep him employed for years.
The role of Mother was a character who needed to exude grace and poise. Who better to cast than Steenburgen? Ragtime was the first film she made after her Oscar-winning role in Melvin and Howard.
Joy was a perfect Harry Thaw. He's always had that odd, faraway look which is certainly why he's played so many unhinged characters. I thought casting Mailer was window dressing but he made White a force of nature. This was an early film for Allen and Daniels and if you blink you'd miss Samuel L. Jackson, Fran Drescher, Michael Jeter and John Ratzenberger.
On the other hand, it brought Cagney's long-time Warner Bros. buddy, Pat O'Brien back to the big screen for his final work. And Cagney asked that fellow hoofer, Donald O'Connor, who was having bad times, be given the role of Evelyn's dance instructor.
All technical credits are glorious. Here, have a peek:
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Movie-making in the 1950's
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