Ragtime (1981)

Overrated and overhyped

Excellent adaptation.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Just finished watching this lovely, ethereal, haunting and enchanting film. Well acted, beautifully and naturally written dialogue, period costumes, hair, atmosphere and throughout it all, the music. Also recently watched "The Sting," an academy award winner many remember for its music, a soundtrack provided by Marvin Hamlisch based on the music of Scott Joplin. "The Sting" is set in 1936. Joplin died in 1917, almost 20 years earlier. Joplin's music didn't fit the film or the time period. There was plenty of great popular music in the 1930's, maybe not as upbeat as Joplin's syncopated piano rolls. "The Sting" was a just another buddy flick for Newman and Redford. A period piece it was not.Not so with Ragtime. I'm sure, as another reviewer wrote, there were anachronisms within the characters whose lives tell the story. But the music! It is glorious. It is spot on.The story, like the glorious melting pot of influences that made ragtime music, is the changing of American society as it moved toward World War. And throughout it all, there was the music.

This must be Milos Forman's best and greatest film. It's a complex story, I haven't read the recently deceased E.L.Doctorow's novel, but the film communicates the story well enough, nothing needs to be clarified (unlike for instance Kubrick's "2001" where the book was as clear as the film was utterly incomprehensible), while Forman's personal touch adds an important flavor of irony and distance to the tragedy, which quality you recognize with relish from his earlier films. The direction is completely satisfactory, Howard E. Rollins Jr and James Olson as the main leads match each other excellently and augment the impact and profundity of the tragedy, which really is one of integrity, while the real asset of the film is the panoramic set-up with almost Schlesingerian scenes of the everyday life of New York social life before the first world war, focusing on dancing halls, entertainments, banquets and even early cinematography scenes, in which you feel how much the director himself is enjoying it. James Cagney makes a remarkable appearance as the Police Commissioner 50 years after his days of glory in the 30s, and Brad Dourif is convincing enough as the renegade. Music has its special place in this film and is neither too dominating nor reduced in importance. Usually "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Amadeus" are ranked as his best films, but the Kesey film has its flaws, there are better asylum films, like both Rossen's last film "Lilith" and Litvak's famous "The Snake Pit", and "Amadeus" is a terrible example of historical forgery - none of it is true, and everyone who knows anything about Mozart must object to this even exaggerated character assassination, turning one of the greatest composers into a caricature. "Ragtime" on the other hand gives a fair picture of American society and New York social life under Th. Roosevelt and is a success in realism. The film is so good that it's impossible to imagine that the novel underlying it could in any way have been reduced in quality and importance.

I read the book years ago, and am glad I finally got around to watching the movie. It is an engrossing and well crafted story, beautifully set in the final years of the American Gilded Age. On the surface it appears to be a wonderfully happy and enthusiastic era, but the tensions created by the different racial groups and social classes of that time show that, aside from the wonderful architecture, manners and wardrobe of the well-to-do, most people of that period suffered the same challenges and woes as they always have. Same crap, better packaging.I was originally unhappy that they didn't do more with the character of Evelyn Nesbit, played by the captivating Elizabeth McGovern, but I finally understood that her character wouldn't let herself get involved with the many nasty situations that happened. She just floated away to the next soirée when things got ugly. All the other characters got sucked into the many interrelated subplots because they cared, and wanted to deal with the challenges and problems - not simply move on to greener pastures.Some of the less enthusiastic comments here indicate some viewers didn't care for the film because it didn't contain all the characters and sub-stories that were in the book, but to me that is irrelevant. The movie stands well on its own merits. It is a powerful and thoroughly enjoyable film, with a great ending. As Evelyn elegantly waltzes around in dreamy bliss with yet another beau, we see that all the efforts of most of the other key characters to solve their problems and find happiness have turned to doo doo. It ends with a shot of a newspaper headline announcing the start of World War I. The Gilded Age is over.

I haven't read the novel this film was based on. But I understand it had myriad plot lines snaking throughout the narrative. The director, Milos Forman, apparently chose the Coalhouse Walker story line to hang this movie on. It is about racial injustice, and a revolutionary response to it. OK, I understand that racial injustice is a big part of the American story. I'm not saying that it should be swept under the rug, or that the story shouldn't be told. But if I need to be preached at about racial injustice, I could just go rent a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. Aside from this, the film is well done, with excellent acting, good photography, high-quality production values. I guess there was only so much screen time available, but some of the other plot lines got seriously short shrift here, and I think the movie suffers for it.