ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

SnoopyStyle Millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw (Robert Joy) is enraged when architect Stanford White put a naked statue, modeled from his chorus girl wife Evelyn Nesbit (Elizabeth McGovern), on top of Madison Square Garden. He shoots White in a packed nightclub. He offers a $1 million divorce if Evelyn testifies for him. He is found not guilty by reason of insanity. She had been having an affair with Younger Brother (Brad Dourif) and Harry threatens to sue her for a small settlement. Younger Brother's family lives in comfortable upper class. Sarah (Debbie Allen) abandons her baby in their yard. Mother (Mary Steenburgen) takes them both in. Brash ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr. claims to be the father. He gets into an ongoing battle with the firemen and cops. Tateh (Mandy Patinkin) leaves his cheating wife and the tenements in New York. He takes his daughter and becomes a director.This is just too epic. Director Miloš Forman expertly films it. It is beautiful looking and jam packed with story. It is packed with too many characters and too many stories. There are maybe two or three full movies and this connects them with thin little threads. The flow is disrupted again and again. Some of characters are not compelling enough and their stories drag. It may be better to divide this epic into solid stand-alone sections.

classicsoncall Evoking the spirit and look of turn of the century New York, I was dumbfounded to learn that most of the filming for "Ragtime" took place at Shepperton Studios in London. This was Cagney's first appearance before the cameras for almost twenty years, due in large measure to his doctor's insistence that he get back to work to 'recharge his batteries'. Cagney was being treated for diabetes following a slight stroke in 1977. Following a lunch meeting with director Milos Forman, Cagney willingly agreed to accept a part that he found suitable, a toss-up between his eventual role as Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo, and Mandy Patinkin's character Tateh. To get Cagney, Forman offered him ANY part in the picture, including that of Evelyn Nesbitt if he thought it would work. Fortunately, senility was not one of Cagney's ailments.Knowing a good deal of the country's history of slavery from the mid 1800's through the Civil Rights turmoil of the Sixties, it's a bit difficult to place in context what blacks would have been going through about mid-way in that span. Prior to the altercation with the firemen, Coalhouse Walker Jr. (Howard Rollins) seemed to have fashioned a rather successful career for himself as a ragtime piano player for the Clef Club Band - "I read music so good white folks think I'm fakin' it." So as an impartial viewer, I was torn between Walker's commitment to a cause and his bullheaded approach to seeking retributive justice. This was one of those 'unintended consequences' stories that ended badly for the picture's central character. It forces the viewer to make a mental choice between sucking it up and walking away, or setting in motion a string of events that's bound to end badly. Personally, I believe I would have seen the wisdom of backing down in favor of a larger battle should one emerge down the road.As a classic film fan of movies made from the Thirties through the Fifties, I've seen just about all of Jimmy Cagney's team-ups with contemporary Pat O'Brien, my favorite being "Angels With Dirty Faces". If my math is correct, they did eight films together prior to "Ragtime", all of them back in the day of course. So my one disappointment with the picture in question is that there was no scene of them together. Come on, how hard would that have been to write into the script?

Robert J. Maxwell Very neat production that captures the essence of New York City and its upper-middle-class suburbs in the early years of the 20th century.The performances are uniformly good. On the first viewing, Jimmy Cagney disappoints. We are, after all, used to seeing him as a bouncing semi-psychotic, even in his last film, "One, Two, Three." Here, in his age, he hardly movies, content to wave a finger or slowly swivel in his desk chair or nod his head. A second viewing gets you past that kind of sadness. He's still Jimmy Cagney, with that ironic/comic voice and that mustache like a pair of russet turned-up handlebars.The rest of the cast can't be faulted either. Howard Rollins, Jr., as the degraded black victim exemplifies a certain kind of pent-up dignity and pride. Rollins' pride, like Coriolanus', can be a weakness when it becomes unyielding. It can lead to escalation and become lethal. Whether or not he should have swallowed the insults and jokes is arguable in this case but I think if I'd been in his position I'd have swept the turds off the car seat and driven away leaving behind a thick cloud of curses against the Irish. His character may be misguided but Rollins isn't. He handles it extremely well, and it's a demanding part.James Olsen is stiff, formal, and courageous. Elizabeth McGovern is very amusing as Evelyn Nesbitt, a pixillated airhead who reads numbers better when they're preceded by dollar signs. But then everyone is quite good.I haven't read Doctorow's novel but I gather that it was necessarily compressed and that several sub-stories were left out. I can understand why. As it is, some of the threads seem to dribble away. Did Tatah become a famous director? Did Nesbitt become a star? Why did Olsen's wife, Mary Steenbergen, run off with Mandy Potamkin? What happened to Rollins' baby? Well, we can't expect too much. In order to do justice to ANY of the stories, the film has to resemble a brief encyclopedia entry on a subject like, say, the French Revolution. Robespierre walks on stage, bows, and leaves.The ending is a sad one. We've grown to like and admire Colehouse Walker, Rollins' character. And the escape of his accomplices, which we probably applaud, foreshadow the urban unrest and racial conflicts which were let loose on us in the 1960s. Of course it's a plausible argument that if the system had worked perfectly in 1910, we might not have had the 1960s.The score by Randy Newman is first rate. He plays a good piano.Well worth seeing.

bkoganbing Back in the day when Hollywood was grinding out B westerns it wasn't unusual at all to see famous folks of the west in stories that had absolutely nothing to do with their own lives or to see many famous people interacting when they never even met in real life.Ragtime revives some of that dubious tradition in filming E.L. Doctorow's novel about the Teddy Roosevelt years of the first decade of the last century. Teddy figures into this briefly as does his Vice President Charles Fairbanks. Booker T. Washington is here too, as are the principals of the Stanford White murder, and New York City Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo.It's quite a blend because Roosevelt and Fairbanks ran for re-election in 1904 as Fairbanks is shown delivering a campaign speech. He wasn't even Vice President then, just a Senator from Indiana. Fairbanks was running for Vice President because Roosevelt had no Vice President in his first term. He succeeded to the presidency when Willima McKinley was assassinated.The Stanford White murder took place in 1906 and was then called the crime of the century. Many such murders right up to O.J. Simpson were given that dubious distinction. And Rhinelander Waldo was not NYPD Police Commissioner until 1910 and he was much younger than James Cagney. Still and all E.L. Doctorow's book is made into a fine film which got a whole bunch of Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Director for Milos Forman and Supporting player nominations for Howard Rollins, Jr. and Elizabeth McGovern.The main story is about Coalhouse Walker, Jr. a black ragtime pianist and his Sarah. She has his baby and they'd like to get married. But a whole lot of things, some of them peripherally connected to the true events and people previously mentioned that lead him and a gang to take possession of the Morgan Library and threaten to blow it up.Howard Rollins was a real tragedy. This was a great start to a short, but brilliant career that included his long running role as Virgil Tibbs in the TV series In the Heat of the Night and the film A Soldier's Story. He died way too young from AIDS contracted from a lot of intravenous drug use. Elizabeth McGovern is the famous Evelyn Nisbet, the girl on the red velvet swing which was the title of another film that dealt with the Stanford White murder. McGovern's performance is probably closer to the real Evelyn than Joan Collins was in that earlier film. She's basically a goldigger who juggled two men, her husband Harry K. Thaw and her upscale lover, society architect Stanford White. Her circus act led to White's death, Thaw's commitment to an insane asylum and a vaudeville career for her.Ragtime was eagerly awaited because of the anticipated return of James Cagney to the screen after being off for 19 years. Cagney is clearly aged, but he gets through the role because unlike that television film Terrible Joe Moran, he's not the center of the film, though he's first billed. Note that he's sitting down during most of his performance and when he has to stand the camera is a discreet distance. It's nothing like the bouncing Cagney of old, but light years better than Terrible Joe Moran.This was also the final joint appearance as it turned for the team that invented the buddy film, James Cagney and Pat O'Brien even though they have no scenes together. O'Brien is Harry K. Thaw's attorney and Mrs. O'Brien plays Thaw's mother under her maiden name of Eloise Taylor. She was an actress before she married Pat, but gave up her career to raise their four children. Author Norman Mailer plays Stanford White, fulltime architect and hedonist and Robert Joy plays the demented millionaire Harry K. Thaw and both fit the parts perfectly. Maybe one day we will have a definitive film version just concentrating on the murder and it's aftermath for the three principals.Milos Forman gave us a remarkable evocation of an exciting time in American history. It seemed that America had limitless possibilities then. I doubt they'll be saying that about the first decade of this century.