THE COTTON CLUB - Encore Edition: Blu-ray (Orion, 1984) Lionsgate
The newly minted ‘encore edition’ of The Cotton Club, director,
Francis Ford Coppola’s much maligned 1984 homage to that infamous New York City
nightclub, to have catered to a startling array of black headliners from
1929-40 – including the Mills Brothers, Cab Calloway and Lena Horne – elevates
the picture’s stature from epic flop to frivolous failure. I cannot help but
think Coppola intended to make a better picture in ’84, and, now, firmly
believes that he has in releasing this unseen director’s cut, excising some 13
minutes of original footage, but reinstating 20 minutes more, trimmed after
studio meddling sought to minimize the contributions of Gregory Hines and
Lonette McKee, leaving a good many of Coppola’s finely wrought musical
performances on the cutting room floor. But word to Mr. Coppola – The Cotton
Club in either incarnation is hardly a classic. In its ‘encore’ edition, it
plays with a slightly more involved and evolved integration of character
development (we get two sincerely flawed romances now instead of one – the other
between Richard Gere and Diane Lane); each, nonetheless played with a very
curious and total malingering of heart. It must have seemed like a good idea at
the time – a gangster/musical hybrid with the added visual heft of production
designer, Richard Sylbert’s exquisitely reproduced Depression-era chintz, so
authentic in its recreations that even one-time Cotton Club showgirls visiting
the open set thought they had been magically teleported back in time. As an
homage to the club that started it all, The Cotton Club is decidedly
more self-involved in its gangster subplot, than in any of the legendary
‘performers’ resurrected to offer up the spice and flavor of a night’s slumming
at this Harlem hot spot. And while The Cotton Club – in life – was a rather
ambitious showcase for legendary black talent, it rather shamefully was open to
whites only.
The original cut of The Cotton Club excised a good deal of the
late Gregory Hines’ Sandman Williams burgeoning romance with Lonette McKee’s
blended-race chanteuse, Lila Rose Oliver – the couple having far more engaging
on-screen chemistry now, with a subplot newly reinstated to flesh out its
racial overtones and undercurrent. Alas,
there is still too much of the lover’s triangle between Richard Gere’s
‘dull-as-paint’ cornetist come movie star, Dixie Dwyer, James Remar’s uber-violent
racketeer, Dutch Schultz, and, Diane Lane’s slinky and heartless moll, Vera
Cicero – a triumvirate to fall flat almost from the outset. William Kennedy’s
screenplay, with input from Coppola, never gets to the raw and kinetic sexual
energy of this tempestuous trio. Instead, we get a ridiculous moment where a
sexually aroused, and as frustrated Dwyer, ordered by Schultz to take his woman
out and show her a good time without getting too close, begins to smack and
drag Lane’s pert and platinum-haired princess across the dance floor in a sort
of fractured Apache that catches on with the other amused guests in attendance.
But the real problem with The Cotton Club – in 1984, and even now – is
that Coppola’s gats and taps remix never resolves whether to play as an
old-school turf-war/gangster flick a la the grand ole James Cagney/Warner Bros.
days, or as big-budgeted musical extravaganza via the MGM gala glamour of yore.
As such, the former narrative gets distilled from hooch into vinegar while the
prospects of becoming immersed in a frothy - if over-inflated - spectacle, miserably
fails, even intermittently to envelope, as virtually all of the numbers are
interminably interrupted by amateur theatrics of one kind or another.
As example: I recall hearing Hine’s spunky rendition of ‘Copper-colored
Gal’ in advance of seeing the movie in 1984 – a big band-styled gavotte – given
brassy sass on the album, and, that I had hoped to see in the movie, only to
discover it buried behind an intense showdown between Gere’s steely-eyed stud
and Remar’s venomous thug, capped off by Hine’s interrupting his own
performance to over-dramatically kick a pistol loose from Dutch Schultz,
thereby averting a very public murder in the packed club. I suppose Coppola was
going for some sort of misguided parallel in artistic pathos here. At least, I
suspect this was his modus operandi. But again, it never came off. Too much
going on. And Hines, enigmatic seemingly without even trying, draws our eye to
him instead of these escalating foreground theatrics. There are, in fact, too
many instances in the encore edition of The Cotton Club where what is
going on in the background, or at the peripheries of the screen is more
fascinating to watch than what we are supposed to be paying attention to in
dead center frame. The show now just runs longer, but without any arc of
dramatic tension, or even, the casual spark of sexualized wickedness,
occasionally – if only superficially – to be gleaned from Milena Canonero’s
naughty costume design. Look for a bare-chested Mario Van Peebles, sufficiently
bronzed and sweaty, barely packaged in tight-fitting red pants, seductively rubbing
up against an unknown dancer as Priscilla Baskerville, with inimitable sultry
aplomb, crows Creole Love Call.
What is improved in this extended cut is the Hines/McKee relationship; also,
the bittersweet bromance between Sandman Williams and his brother, Clay (played
by Hines’ own brother, Maurice). In ’84, the studio didn’t think Gregory Hines
had what it took to be a star and did their level best to wreck his chances of
becoming one in this picture by ordering Coppola to shave off whole portions of
his character’s evolution. Lost in transition was Hine’s solo, ‘Tall, Tan
and Beautiful’ – a tour de force – as well as his ‘debut’ moment with Clay as
an audition for the club. Both have been reinstated in this ‘Encore’ edition
and are show-stopping moments in their own right. Aside: interesting to think of
a movie about Harlem’s most celebrated nightclub with Hollywood’s revisionist’s
take, exclusively focused on the white patrons who slummed there to soak up its
jazzy and smoke-filled atmosphere. Indeed, original B&W poster art for the
picture showed only Gere’s cool customer, lazily reclining with a Tommy Gun reflected
in shadow alongside his coronet in the foreground. Yet, even with its color-coded
narrative reinstated, The Cotton Club fails to monumentally impress. There
is, after all, only so much Coppola can do with the raw footage. So, the
vacuous crime drama that was the picture’s métier, remains at its forefront, without
actually driving the narrative. Bob Hoskins, as the club’s wily boss, Owney
Madden, is one of the movie’s too few legitimate assets, augmented by some
stellar cameos from Fred Gwynne (as Madden’s right-hand and bookkeeper, Frenchy
Demange), Laurence Fishburne (eloquent as gangster, Bumpy Rhodes), Gwen Verdon
(as stylish matriarch, Tish Dwyer) and Woody Strode (the club’s doorman –
keeping out the riffraff and mixed-race clientele). All of the aforementioned
are underutilized in this movie, yet somehow manage to enliven those brief
moments in which they appear. Verdon gets to show off her dancer’s prowess in a
brief reinstated snippet from the movie’s fantastic fantasy finale. But Nicolas
Cage as Dixie’s slightly psychotic wannabe mob kingpin/brother, Vincent, is a
total wash; Cage, ill-prepared to play anything better than frenetic
frustration – just a bundle of nerves with a trigger finger that will not quit.
While Coppola frequently has difficulty integrating the musical portions
of his story with the gangland melodrama, when the movie actually pauses to partake
of the songs, it quite literally stops the show; as when Lonette McKee electrifies
the screen with a blistering rendition of Stormy Weather, or Larry
Marshall does a spot-on reincarnation of Cab Calloway performing Minnie the
Moocher. Jackée Harry, performing a comedy routine about a wayward hubby
and his abusive and vengeful woman, gets the laughs. Even the Lane/Gere duet to
‘Am I Blue?’ has spunk. And certainly, Coppola’s Fellini-esque ‘all’s
well that ends well…well – sort of’ finale makes a lot more sense now, as
the rest of the picture has given ample opportunity to illustrate that The
Cotton Club is as much – if not more so – about the music, as it is about
telling its story. The impasse here remains, that unlike conventional Hollywood
musicals, in which music and plot generally run a parallel course – each, to
inform the natural progression of the other - the songs herein remain iconic
pop standards of their day, apart and lingering above the plot itself, never to
serve even as dramatic irony set against the movie’s contradictory violence.
In 1984, The Cotton Club was presented as front-page folly.
Troubled production does not even begin to cover its Michael Cimino/Heaven’s
Gate-sized debacle. Coppola reportedly rejected script after script – a weekend
writing marathon producing no less than 12 drafts, with the final estimate
coming in at somewhere between 30 to 40 complete rewrites to hone and massage
the details. Coppola’s own inspiration had been a picture-book history of the real
Cotton Club, written by James Haskins. But the movie in Coppola’s head was fast
shaping up to be a 3-hour crime epic with music factored in; a movie that
distributor, Orion, had absolutely zero interest and zero capital to fund. Presenting
his ideas to producer, Robert Evans, with a rough draft of a screenplay written
by Mario Puzo – Evans, instead tried to take the project away from Coppola and
assume the directorial duties himself. At the last minute, Evans – who had hoped
to cast his pal, Alain Delon as Lucky Luciano (a role eventually to go to Andy Warhol
softcore fav, Joe Dallesandro instead) and whose own life was fast spiraling out of
control via his drug addiction – changed his mind yet again. The screenplay was
rewritten – again – and this time, by William Kennedy. Even so, it remained a
narrative for a sprawling 3-hr. saga.
Meanwhile, production designer, Richard Sylbert whose fetishized Plantation-style
sets, with their overstated and sexualized murals absolutely typifying the club’s
original décor, tried to dissuade Evans from hiring Coppola; a claim, later refuted
by Coppola with letters from Sylbert to prove it – asking him to intervene on the
unwieldy project already mismanaged by Evans’ flightiness and extravagances. The
Cotton Club was hardly a passion project for Coppola. In fact, he accepted payment
as both its screenwriter and director primarily to shore up his own hemorrhaging
bank account – having incurred epic losses on the ill-fated musical, One
from the Heart (1982) produced for Coppola’s fledgling company, Zoetrope, but,
with his own money. Having already spent $13 million on The Cotton Club even
before the ink on Coppola’s contract had dried, another $30 million was poured
into its evolution by Las Vegas financiers, Edward and Fred Doumani, with even
more money put up by Arab arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi, and vaudeville promoter,
Roy Radin, who was later murdered by a drug-dealing ‘associate’ over a
dispute regarding profits derived from the movie. The official budget for The
Cotton Club - $47 million – was later dispelled by Coppola, who
conservatively estimated in his head he had spent in excesses of $65 million to
bring it to the screen. Finally, on June 7, 1984, Victor L. Sayyah filed a
lawsuit against the Doumani brothers, lawyer David Hurwitz, Robert Evans and
Orion Pictures for fraud and breach of contract. Sayyah claimed his $5 million
investment had been squandered and all but wiped out by the picture’s
ballooning $25 to $58 million tally. Accusing the Doumanis of forcing out Evans,
and, unnecessarily increasing the movie’s budget, Evans then countersued
Doumani to keep him from acting as the picture’s general partner.
Given how much time and effort was poured into the many drafts of the
screenplay, the final edit of The Cotton Club is a fairly straight-forward
affair. We are introduced to cornetist, Dixie Dwyer, who has been away for some
time in Chicago, much to his mother, Tish’s despair. Welcomed back with open
arms, Dixie learns his brother, Vincent has since married Patsy (Jennifer Grey)
– a not terribly bright young thing who likes to cavort around the house half-naked
in her skivvies. One night, while showing off his coronet-playing skills at a
local nightclub, Dixie inadvertently thwarts a murder plot aimed at gangland
kingpin, Dutch Schultz. So, Schultz takes
Dix’ into his confidences and his employ as something of a bodyguard, mostly in
gratitude for saving his life. Schultz is involved with flapper, Vera Cicero.
Cool customer, that Vera. She never gets to first-base with Dutch but enjoys
all the moneyed perks of a gangster’s moll. Dixie and Vera are present when, in attempting
to broker a truce between Dutch and another mob leader, the pair instead
witness Dutch stick a knife through the man’s throat. For Dixie, this is enough
for him to know he wants absolutely no part of Schultz – however ‘grateful’ he
may be to him in the moment. Alas, no one says ‘no’ to Dutch. So, Dixie
continues to oblige his new boss, squiring Vera to various clubs and showing
her a good time, under the watchful eye of Schultz’s observer, Sol Weinstein (Julian
Beck).
Everyone – except Dutch – is aware Dixie has fallen in love with Vera;
nowhere more apparent than when, in attempting to dance with her at the club,
the two instead engage in a sort of reckless apache, revealing their mutual
sexual frustration to the amused crowd of onlookers. Meanwhile, back at The
Cotton Club, Sandman and Clay Williams audition for Owney Madden and their
chance at the big time. Having earned the right to perform on stage, Sandman
takes an immediate shine to chanteuse, Lila Rose Oliver. Alas, his repeated
attempts to woo her are thwarted, either by the club’s thug muscle/stage
manager, Danny (Leonard Termo) or by Oliver herself, who can pass for white and
does so at her pleasure. It would therefore not behoove her to fall in love
with any man who is so obviously ‘dark-skinned’. Not taking ‘no’ as his answer,
Sandman pursues Oliver to a nearby church where she is volunteering. He woos
her in song and dance and instantly wins her heart. However, when Sandman has
the opportunity to present himself as a solo act at the club, he jumps at the
chance and nails the audition. This alienates Clay, who resents being thrown
under the proverbial bus for greed’s sake. The brothers separate and do not speak
to each other for some time.
Desiring to disentangle himself from Dutch’s control, Dixie’s coronet-playing
and good looks land him a chance to do a screen test in Hollywood. Dutch is incensed
when Madden secures Dixie a contract in pictures. Nevertheless, he leaves Dix’
alone…for the time being. But Dix’ cannot get Vera out of his mind or heart
even though she illustrates little emotion to suggest her own favors him as
well. In the meantime, Dixie’s younger brother, Vincent, whom Dutch hired on as
a favor to Dix, has become a loose cannon and high-profile detriment to Dutch’s
organization. Indeed, Vincent just
cannot leave well enough along. Hence, and when, in his desire to gun down Sol
in the streets, Vinnie and his entourage manage to kill several children
playing in the streets, the firestorm of public outrage and the manhunt that
immediately follows this act of aggression is proof enough to Dutch that Vincent
needs to be dealt with immediately and quietly. Dispatching with Vincent’s
ever-loyal sidekick, Ed Popke (Glenn Withrow), brutally gunned down in an alley,
Vincent knows he is being backed into a corner. So, he kidnaps Frenchy, holding
Madden’s right-hand-man as bait and ransom for a handsome payoff – enough dough
to get out of town and never look back. Dixie makes the drop-off, then
encourages his brother to leave at once. The trade is made, and Dixie returns
Frenchy to the club.
Having interfered with his romance for the last time, Sandman's pleas to
Harlem gangster, Bumpy Rhodes to avenge Danny’s constant humiliations of him,
leads to a memorable intervention; Rhodes and his men brutalizing and dunking
Danny’s head in a toilet. Now a big movie star attending a performance at club,
Dixie is threatened with bodily harm by Dutch whom he assaults in defense of
Vera’s honor as club attendees look on. Humiliated, but unable to respond,
Dutch retreats to a local watering hole with several of his men to regroup and
plot his revenge. Alas, it is not to be, as Madden, having already come to an
arrangement with Lucky Luciano, sends his latest errand boy on a mission. Dutch
and his entourage are brutally gunned down in an after-hours’ restaurant. As
the night winds down at the Cotton Club, the performers gather onstage for one
last hurrah. Dix’ proposes to Vera. In the movie’s penultimate musical montage –
an escapist fantasia of ‘love conquers all’ – Sandman and Lila run away
together while Dix’ and Vera are seen boarding the 20th Century
Limited, departing from Grand Central Station on their honeymoon as Tish
tearfully waves them goodbye from the platform.
Regrettably, when it was all over, no one was the winner. The Cotton
Club barely scraped together $26 million against its estimated $58 million outlay.
Evans blamed Coppola and Coppola, knowing he had not made the movie he initially
wanted to, walked away from this red-headed stepchild with his reputation in
the industry further in tatters. In the intervening decades, rumors swirled
that The Cotton Club had been another Coppola masterpiece, derailed by
studio shortsightedness. Yet, time – and Coppola’s re-edit of this material now
as the ‘Encore Edition’ - has neither enriched nor ripened the overall tenor of
the piece. The Cotton Club remains bereft of any on-screen chemistry
between its actors. It is as though everyone remains isolated in their own
heads and private world, the wellspring of their emotional depth never to be
shared with each other, and certainly, never to strike an indelible chord with
the audience. While Coppola has improved upon themes of racial prejudice and
struggle, and, manages to bring the McKee/Hines’ romance back into focus, retaining
the best elements from the original movie’s design, with – again – with great cameo
performances scattered throughout, including one from the, as yet to be
mentioned, legendary hoofer, Charles ‘Honi’ Coles who gets in only a few choice
steps, while suggesting a more sublime transition into the full-blown art of
movement and rhythm, Coppola’s opus magnum to this Harlem hotbed of criminal
activity is still an albatross, only to have marginally stepped up from its
former ‘turkey’ status.
It should be noted that in Coppola’s re-edit we lose three wonderful
cameos; Diane Venora, as silent screen siren, Gloria Swanson, Gregory Rozakis
as Charlie Chaplin, and Rosalind Harris as Fanny Brice. All three appeared in a
scene completely cut from the Encore edition, marking Dixie’s arrival in Hollywood
and his being embraced by the acting community for one of their own. While
hardly a disaster, The Cotton Club cannot be justified as a Coppola
masterpiece either. It’s action and drama are perfunctory at best, if splendidly
photographed by cinematographer, Stephen Goldblatt. Yet style never trumps
substance here. There is nothing special or even remotely exciting about the characters
who inhabit this world and that remains the movie’s greatest tragedy. In
hindsight, the picture reeks of Coppola’s artistic desperation. As the
screenplay was ever-evolving, even while Coppola was shooting, I suspect he had
his misgivings about where the whole darn thing was headed. The best parts are
owed the musical portions, with Gregory and Maurice Hines’ Crazy Rhythm
a particularly energetic standout. If only Coppola had settled on making a
musical instead of a drama with wall-to-wall numbers staged – mostly – as background.
While the real The Cotton Club was a Harlem institution, the movie that bears
its name – if rarely, its likeness – grieves for that instant and infectious dynamism
that set the club apart from virtually all others.
Our post-modern revisionist era has increasingly become enamored with ‘director’s
cuts’ - something of the vogue, allowing directors to revisit their
time-honored catalog by thoroughly reworking and, in some cases, fruitlessly to
bastardize their vintage product; an ambition that, at least in The Cotton
Club’s case, seems a tad more apposite and long-awaited. Even so, The
Cotton Club falls short of Coppola’s usual verve for telling good stories.
Difficult to pinpoint the exact whereabouts of this shortcoming. For one thing,
the gangland turf wars milieu, arguably the picture’s focus, offers nothing new
to anyone who has seen at least three mob movies in their lifetime. The picture’s
strictly paint-by-numbers plot is a run through of the various clichés and
circumstances we have come to expect from this sub-genre. But the real strength
of the picture, its newly reinstated jazzy outpouring of vintage songs and
dances, deprived audiences in 1984, still never quite gels with the rough n’
ready outlay of the plot. Yes, it is
gratifying to have the Hines brothers back on the screen, effortless in
electrifying the screen with their mesmerizing display of footwork (aside: I
don’t think Gregory’s feet ever touch the floor during ‘Crazy Rhythm’). But
the rest of the movie interrupts their sheer joy and professionalism, beating
it to death with tragically lumbering, listless and sterile vignettes favoring Gere
and Lane’s milquetoast pas deux. As a ‘period
piece’ the nexus of a formidable ensemble, tricked out in Richard Sylbert’s
stunningly handsome Art Deco production design and sensuous costumes by Milena
Canonero, The Cotton Club decidedly has its virtues. So, it is still
worth a glance – if not much else. Coppola has great fun employing wipes and
montages – both main staples of film-making during the 20’s and 30’s – the era,
in which this movie is set, but even in its newly reinstated form, this Cotton
Club isn’t one for the ages.
New main titles, and lots of new footage – not always looking up to
snuff, Lionsgate’s newly minted The Cotton Club – Encore Edition is
properly framed in 1.85:1 and offers a generally pleasing 1080p hi-def
experience, albeit, with certain baked-in limitations. Grain is, at times
rather dense. Derived from source materials of varying quality, Lionsgate’s Blu
bests the one released by Umbrella Entertainment in Australia. For those
interested, the Umbrella release contained only the theatrical cut, but it was
region free. Lionsgate’s contains only the ‘Encore’ edition. So, if you want
both cuts, you have to buy both discs. Colors adopt a warmer tone on the
Lionsgate edition, with flesh tones frequently looking a tad too ruddy orange.
Given – a lot of Stephen Goldblatt’s cinematography is shot under highly
stylized lighting conditions, augmenting everything in a theatrical glam-bam to
heighten mood. Yet, on occasion, the spectrum of colors here just seems
slightly off. Much of the image will surely please, with better saturated colors
and excellent contrast. Where the image falters, I suspect, is in its
shortcomings due to the source being used – we get a soft patina and grain that
becomes grittier than anticipated. A lot
of the scenes are played under the cover of night, and darkness itself seems to
be Coppola’s friend, but it tends to conceal finer details as well. The Lionsgate
5.1 DTS audio is a distinct upgrade to the Umbrella’s 2.0, with finer nuances,
overall separation and clarity in both dialogue and musical sequences, much
improved. For something called an ‘Encore edition’ extras on the
Lionsgate release are very disappointing. We get barely 10 minutes of a Q &
A from a live screening event, featuring Maurice Hines and Coppola. Coppola also
offers one of his most perfunctory introductions to any of his movies.
Honestly, it is as though he is just so bored with the whole idea. No audio
commentary. No ‘making of’. No restoration comparison. And worst of all – no
original theatrical cut to compare the two editions. For shame! Bottom line:
for those who saw The Cotton Club in ’84 and had a warm affection for
its ‘warts and all’ theatrical cut – the Encore edition gives you more to
love, but decidedly a different viewing experience. It’s not so much ‘improved’
as just different for difference sake. Judge and buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
1
Comments