RAGTIME: Paramount Presents...Blu-ray (Paramount, 1981) Paramount Home Video
Handsomely mounted, exceptionally
nuanced and subtly underplayed to the point of perfection, director, Miloš
Forman’s Ragtime (1981) remains an extraordinary picture about an
unusual time in America’s evolutionary chronicle from young nation ushered into
the hedonist glamor of the early 20th century. It also stockpiles a
roster of mindbogglingly gifted performers, to include James Olson, Mary
Steenburgen, Howard E. Rollins Jr., Brad Dourif, Elizabeth McGovern, Mandy Patinkin,
Donald O’Connor, Jeff Daniels, Fran Drescher, Samuel L. Jackson, Ethan
Phillips, Debbie Allen, and John Ratzenberger into its kaleidoscopic reflection
of the gilded age, and, marks the final screen appearances of two Hollywood
alumni, Pat O’Brien, and the legendary James Cagney, herein cast as Police
Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo. Ragtime often meanders through its cornucopia
of vintage Americana, sumptuously bedecked in vintage finery a la John
Graysmark’s impeccable production design and John Dapper’s art direction,
immaculately captured by cinematographer, Miroslav Ondrícek. Yet, it never
fails to enthrall. At just a little over 2 ½ hours, and based upon E.L.
Doctorow’s 1975 chart-topping historical novel, Ragtime is a magnificent,
truthful and compelling tale of graft, corruption, hard knocks and vigilantism,
set against the bustling, gritty metropolis of New York, with intermittent
respites to the moneyed upper middle-class digs of New Rochelle and windswept/sun-filled
boardwalks of Atlantic City. Parts of it were also shot in Britain,
convincingly to sub in for the aforementioned locales.
If only for these virtues, to say
nothing of Anna Hill Johnstone’s impressive costuming, then Ragtime
would already have much going for it. Yet, even more impressive is the way Michael
Weller’s screenplay, based on Heinrich von Kleist’s distillation of Doctorow’s
sprawling proses, manages to weave seemingly dissimilar narrative threads into
a finely wrought tapestry of life, teaming with a vitality generally ignored in
period recreations, heavily involved in establishing their waxworks and moving
tableaus as though it were a history that never was, painted with light for the
paying customers. Ragtime, however, just feels genuine. Whether intentional
or otherwise, the actors here, with varying degrees of success, embody their
roles with a certain dignity for the work, but moreover, a distinct passion to ‘live’
in the moment of their performances. So, what we get is not a likeness of
something we already thought to be true, but a fresh, new vigor breathed into a
bygone era that was, in its time, as relevantly ‘of the moment’ as our
own, where the rigidities of an imported Victorian age were suddenly, if still
gradually, about to give way to the more progressive experiment that ‘was’
America at the turn-of-the-century.
Ragtime has, for far too
long, been out of the public spotlight, despite its Broadway musical revival in
more recent times – a movie (not a musical) whose distinct qualities and
virtues, by now, ought to have branded it a bona fide classic rife for rediscovery
and appreciation, instead of to endure as a critical and commercial flop it
ultimately came to be regarded in its own time, perhaps, in part due to its
multi-character roman à clef. Doctorow’s carnival-esque approach to livening up
the past was very much of its own wrinkle in time, ostensibly, even uncomfortably
to be considered passe by 1981. Yet, those intent, only on seeing Ragtime through
this distorted prism of ‘quaintly’ watered down social critique, will
undoubtedly find something lacking in Forman’s inability to see this exercise
through to its darker, uglier truths – the sheen here, very much elevating the visuals
while strangely devaluing its art into artifice. Czech-born Forman brings to the
picture’s plush patina all sorts of ‘outside-looking-in’ verve for that
idealized version of America much sought after by the immigrant class, eager to
embrace its prosperity, only ultimately to unearth, with more than a modicum of
disillusionment, a far more unusual, foreign, and, complex pantheon of iniquities.
Ragtime is the beneficiary of this outsider’s perspective, while very
much to foreshadow the nation’s brewing bicentennial cognizance in this ever-changing
and frequently volatile American landscape.
Doctorow’s novel was a more
stylized and loose depiction of America’s melting pot. The movie tries, on
occasion – desperately – to be less impish and franker about the troublesome miscegenate
crossroads, straddling race and class, but never entirely finds that sweet spot
in ‘wokeness’ Doctorow describes as ‘correspondent’ with humanity’s common
spirit “touching one another like notes in harmony.” Forman does,
however, get the essential rhythm of the piece down pat; no small feat,
considering the disparate nature of these mediums and considerations essential,
in which all books and movies are independently conceived. Doctorow’s runaway
best seller, while hardly titanic in girth, was nevertheless impressive in its ability
to intermingle a slew of deep and enriching characters into a story spanning
from 1900 to 1913. Weller’s screenplay achieves almost the same effect, albeit,
exorcising various characters, also, Doctorow’s tropes and trimmings, while still
ambitiously to imbue this translation with a lush investment in visually
stimulated creative substitutes the novel could only have guessed at. So, in
the end, what we get is a rather earthy, smartly turned out, and exceptionally
gorgeous movie, admirable despite its shortcomings. The rights to produce Ragtime
were initially acquired by Italian producer, Dino de Laurentiis for
director, Robert Altman. Alas, a ‘lover’s quarrel’ between these two over
creative differences resulted in Forman taking the reins, in part due to his cache
as the Oscar-winning director of the 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
In Forman’s life story, we have a
bittersweet saga worthy of a film itself. His mother, Anna, died in Auschwitz
in 1943. After the man Forman believed to be his biological father, Rudolf, also
died from typhus while interned in Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp the
following year, the impressionable youth was to learn his real father was a
Jewish architect, Otto Kohn, who had actually survived the holocaust. Subsequently raised by uncles and family
friends, Forman aspired to become a theatrical producer, but studied screenwriting
at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, departing his homeland after the Warsaw
Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and, long after his first failed
marriage to movie star, Jana Brejchová ended in divorce in 1962. A year after
his immigration to the U.S., Forman divorced his second wife, Czech actress and
singer, Věra Křesadlová. A fallow romantic period then followed, in which Forman
filled his days with his creative genius on film, and, as a professor emeritus
at Columbia University, before marrying for a third time, to Martina Zbořilová
in 1999. Ragtime catches Forman’s career still at a rising apex, to be
capped off by the stunning success of Amadeus 3 years later. A badly
ailing James Cagney, came out of a 20-year self-imposed retirement to play
Commissioner Waldo – a character not in Doctorow’s novel.
Of the many crisscrossing lives
depicted in the novel, Ragtime – the movie – focuses on 3 evolving
threads – the tale of an impoverished street artist, Tateh (Mandy Patinkin) who
supports his young daughter (Jenny Nichols) by creating flip-books, eventually
to become a filmmaker; ‘Gibson Girl’, Evelyn Nesbit Shaw (Elizabeth McGovern), whose
husband, Henry (Robert Joy) – the mad millionaire, publicly executes aged architect,
Stanford White (Norman Mailer) in the middle of Madison Square Gardens, and, the
bittersweet story of Coalhouse Walker, Jr. (Howard E. Rollins Jr.) who, upon
the untimely death of his lover, Sarah (Debbie Allen), with whom he has sired a
child and planned to wed, now seeks blind justice after his car is desecrated
by prejudiced fire chief, Willie Conklin (Kenneth McMillan). Forman concentrates
much of his efforts on this latter story, otherwise to remain in the backdrop
of Doctorow’s novel, but herein, reviewed through the eyes of empathetic
whites, ‘mother’ (Mary Steenburgen) and ‘father’ (James Olson), the connective
tissue between this and the trajectory of Evelyn’s story, linked by Brad Dourif’s
‘younger brother’ – who has hopes of inheriting the firework factory he helps
to manage now, but applies his craft in service to Coalhouse’s cause to inflict
vigilante justice on the city’s firehouses.
In 1981, much of the critical
consternation heaped upon Ragtime centered on McGovern’s gratuitous nude
scenes. These did nothing to advance the plot, though much to earn the picture
its ‘R’ rating from the MPAA. Odd, however, the basic critical response to
Forman’s hotchpotch of Americana should come under severe scrutiny while his
contemporary, Robert Altman, could do no wrong similarly with such incongruent
narrative threads. As with the music to have inspired this generation, the rhythm
of Ragtime – the movie – goes well beyond the great American songbook or
even the performances, of which Howard E. Rollins Jr. was justly singled out
for a Best Actor nomination at Oscar-time. Rollins, a schoolteacher, was also acknowledged
for his work with a Golden Globe Award for Best Newcomer – rather insultingly,
to lose out to Pia Zadora. Yet, Ragtime’s milieu of disheveled lives caught
in happenstance, bring about vignettes - both fêted and outrageous. Forman’s
modus operandi here is not to provide us with a moving tapestry faithful to the
historical record, rather, an emotionally-driven facsimile where the likes of a
J.P Morgan (Robert Bisset), Harry Houdini (Jeffrey DeMunn), Teddy Roosevelt
(Robert Boyd) and Booker T. Washington (Moses Gunn) might have existed. But even
at 2 ½ hrs., Forman has no choice, except to distill much of the context and
characterizations in Doctorow’s Ragtime into a Coles Notes’ abstract,
emblematic of a civilization in flux, relying on the actors to fill in these gaps
with their presence and presence of mind. Forman’s non-linear approach to
recreating this snapshot, caught between history and fiction, deemed as disorienting
in ’81, has since caught up to contempo film-maker’s temperaments and tastes.
If anything, Ragtime makes much more sense of the world it was trying to
embody then - now, than it ever did back then. And Forman, with his own
immigrant’s view of America – the not so beautiful – has come to conclusions
about the vivacity, virtue, venality and sway of a nation – the idea of America
greater than its parts, and, firmly fermented in the hearts and minds of those
tired, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.
Ragtime begins in
earnest with a discombobulated series of images, some combined with newsreel
montages, depicting the celebrity class of its time - Houdini, Roosevelt,
Stanford White – the New York crème de la crème of a bygone era, set to the
tinkling piano of Coalhouse Walker, Jr. Millionaire industrialist, Harry
Kendall Thaw stirs a ruckus after White unveils a nude statue atop Madison
Square Garden, presumably modeled on Thaw’s wife, Evelyn Nesbit. Convinced
White has deflowered his wife, Thaw executes him with a pistol during an
elegant soiree. Meanwhile, an upper-class family in New Rochelle is marginally
scandalized after their maid, Brigit (Hoolihand Burke) discovers a naked black baby
abandoned in their garden. Mother, takes the child in and soon, finds
compassion in her heart for Sarah, the near-mute woman who bore the babe out of
wedlock. The family take Sarah in. Not long thereafter, Coalhouse reveals
himself to be the baby’s father and proposes marriage. Sarah is grateful, but naïve.
After Coalhouse’s car is defiled by members of the local fire brigade led by
Willie
Conklin, Coalhouse first seeks representation from the local constabulary. And
while P.C. O'Donnell (Jeff Daniels) is deeply sympathetic to Coalhouse’s
indignation after having discovered horse excrement placed on his front seat,
he is powerless to exact the justice Coalhouse seeks. Driven to vigilantism,
Coalhouse and his cohorts ambush the firefighters at night, killing many and
wounding others. Meanwhile, Sarah, believes she can speak directly to the President
on Coalhouse’s behalf. Instead, she is bludgeoned in the crowd of on-lookers by
police, later, to expire from her wounds, leaving Coalhouse to pursue his
crusade against the elitist power structure responsible for his sorrow. Younger
brother offers his services as an explosives’ expert. Soon, Coalhouse and his
men are inflicting fear across the city.
Meanwhile, having witness White’s
murder at Madison Square Gardens, younger brother becomes obsessed with Thaw’s
wife, Evelyn, whom he briefly courts on the sly. To spare her husband’s life,
Evelyn agrees to lie to the court about his sanity in exchange for a
million-dollar payoff, much to the strenuous objections of Thaw’s mother
(Eloise Taylor – actually, Mrs. Pat O’Brien). However, when Thaw’s attorney, Delmas
(Pat O'Brien) catches her and younger brother in a passionate flagrante
delicto, the offer of remuneration evaporates into a paltry $25,000 to keep Evelyn’s
infidelity a secret. Nevertheless, Evelyn is considered a celebrity. She also
encounters street artist, Tateh on the lower East Side, witnessing him cast his
own unfaithful spouse (Fran Drescher) into the streets. Ostracized by their
white community and under siege from reporters, Father and Mother leave for
Atlantic City where they encounter Tateh, now a silent film director on a
photoplay, starring Evelyn. Mother is attracted to Tateh and she and Father
quarrel. Coalhouse’s rebels take the Pierpont Morgan Library hostage. Police
Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo plots to use Coalhouse’s child as his bargaining
chip to snuff him out. Mother staunchly refuses. Mother and Father split, with Father
offering to aid Waldo while Mother departs with Coalhouse’s baby for parts
unknown. Booker T. Washington fails to procure Coalhouse’s surrender. Conklin
is made to apologize to Coalhouse and Waldo, disgusted by his bigotry, has him
arrested. Having achieved what he set out to do, Coalhouse plans to surrender
if Waldo permits his entourage their escape unmolested by police, while Father
volunteers to remain as Coalhouse’s hostage. This agreement is only
half-successful. Younger brother helps Coalhouse’s cohorts disappear into the
night. However, as Coalhouse surrenders, he is gunned down on Waldo's orders.
Ragtime concludes with another montage. We see, Evelyn, having made a great
success in Vaudeville. Thaw is released from the asylum. Younger Brother
returns to his former career at the fireworks company and Father quietly
observes as Mother departs with Tateh from their home in New Rochelle,
determined to care for Coalhouse and Sarah’s infant son.
At age 81, James Cagney agreed to
appear in Ragtime only after Milos Forman’s first choice for a ‘name’
above the title – Jack Nicholson – inexplicably bowed out. Mis-diagnosed in his
later years with glaucoma, but actually diabetes, Cagney had also suffered a
mild stroke in 1977. While he ostensibly recovered from this latter setback, it
deprived him of several passions, including horseback riding and dancing.
Forman’s invitation to partake of Ragtime gave the aged actor a
much-need boost in morale. “Everything fades but talent,” Forman later
commented, “I think he's some kind of genius. His instinct, it's just
unbelievable. I could just stay at home. One of the qualities of a brilliant
actor is that things look better on the screen than the set. Jimmy has that
quality.” Cagney, who had not made a movie since 1962’s One, Two,
Three for Billy Wilder, a picture and the experience of making it, he
would rather to forget - having met Forman ‘socially’ in Connecticut several
years before, finally agreed to partake of Ragtime on two conditions. First,
Cagney would not sign a contract, and second, he could pull out of the picture
as little as 3 days before shooting began, if failing health precluded his
participation. Forman willingly agreed to these terms, but kept them a virtual
secret from de Laurentiis and Paramount. For Cagney, however, the experience of
coming back to the screen proved poignant. Crowds mobbed him as he departed the
QE2 in Southampton, a show of affection unseen, even for the more popular stars
of the time. And the reception to his return was even more gratifying on Cagney’s
first day at Shepperton Studios, where he was greeted with thunderous applause
from the British film crew whose standing ovation seemed to go on forever.
Turning to Forman with tears
streaming down his cheeks, Cagney whispered, “I guess I’ll do your movie.” Cagney,
having matured his craft in the days when far more was expected of the ‘star’
class, not only stayed to shoot his close-ups, but remained on the set for the
reverse shots in which he did not appear, feeding his fellow actors their lines
to maintain the continuity of the scene, reinstating his reputation among the
troop as professionalism plus. Cagney
also encouraged Forman to hire Donald O’Connor for the minor role of Evelyn
Nesbitt’s dance instructor and Madison Square gaslight-era entertainer – a part,
that nevertheless, afforded O’Connor one final opportunity to perform a ‘lighter
than air’ dance routine on celluloid. Co-star, Howard Rollins admitted to
feeling intimidated by the aura of Cagney until he actually met the man in the
flesh. Upon Rollins query for a bit of free acting advice, Cagney explained, “You
walk in, plant yourself squarely on both feet, look the other fella in the eye,
and tell the truth.” Cagney also told Rollins the best way to ‘die’ on camera
was to “just die!” Rollins later admitted,
“It worked. Who would know more about dying than him?” However, the most prestigious honor for
Cagney came when he and costar, Pat O’Brien attended the Queen Mother's command
birthday performance at the London Palladium. Cagney’s appearance so startled
the Queen ‘mum’, she took to her feet in hearty applause and later, broke
protocol to attend Cagney in a private conversation backstage.
Viewed today, Ragtime is
arguably a movie that would never be made – its ‘quaint’ shadings of racism
turning a basically honest man into a vigilante – considered too ‘politically
incorrect’ for our ‘woke’ times. In the editing process, Forman lost 13-minutes
of Randy Newman’s music cues; also, a planned performance by Scatman Crothers,
singing ‘Change Your Way’ – a song and performer otherwise never to
appear in the finished film. In the
formative stage of production, Forman had wanted Doctorow to collaborate on the
movie’s screenplay. Alas, the author saw his own literary work as more of a
10-part miniseries than a movie. An agreement could not be reached to bridge this
creative chasm. The Coalhouse Walker narrative in Ragtime is actually a
rehash of Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist’s 19th-century German novella ‘Michael
Kohlhaus’ in which a Brandenburg horseman, made to pay a ‘toll’ by a member
of the nobility, only to observe as his beloved stallions are destroyed, exacts
his own justice on the perpetrators. But even Von Kleist's story was once
removed from a 16th-century story, similarly themed. And Kohlhass’
story had already been told on film in Der Rebell (1969). America was a relatively 'young' nation on the cusp of some very heady times when ragtime gripped its sunny shores. Forman's movie reincarnation is absent of the embalming quality that oft plagues such excursions into antiquity, and, better still, manages to typify all the exoticism and excitement of that faded generation for the present age, frustratingly bent on its own 'woke' hypocrisies. Moreover, it brings that crazy quilt of a past rushing back to life in ways that have not appeared to age at all. Very finely done, indeed.
Ragtime fittingly
arrives on Blu-ray via the Paramount Presents…prestige line-up.
And while the studio has deigned to include not only the original theatrical
cut, but also, Forman’s director’s edit, running almost 38-minutes longer, Paramount
has mastered this latter version from a work print, rather than going back and
re-editing the excised footage into a properly remastered scan from the best
surviving elements. The work print is in very rough shape. Setting aside the
included scenes in B&W, for which presumably, no other elements survive,
the rest of the footage here is badly faded, and, suffers from the added
shortcomings of edge enhancement, minor chroma bleeding and a barrage of
age-related artifacts. Frankly, it is a real slog to get through the director’s
cut of Ragtime – housed on a separate Blu-ray herein. And truthfully,
the extended scenes do not really add much to the continuity of the story, nor
our overall pleasure in seeing these actors in ‘more’ of the same. Now, for the
good news. The theatrical cut of Ragtime looks gorgeous. Here, Paramount
has gone back to a competently archived master and done their due diligence to
create a new 4K scan, dumbed down to 1080p with predictably fine results. Color
saturation is plush, and contrast could scarcely be better. A hint of black
crush persists, but is, if not forgivable, then none too distracting either. A
light smattering of grain looks indigenous to its source. Ragtime
features a 5.1 DTS audio. It sounds marvelous. Paramount has included both its ‘legacy’
extras as well as new-to-Blu stuff to augment our viewing experience. The work
print contains no extras. But on Disc One we get Milos Forman’s audio
commentary, recorded for the DVD release from 2005, plus newly discovered
deleted and extended scenes, Ragtime Revisited – a conversation
with Larry Karaszewski and screenwriter, Michael Weller, and Remembering
Ragtime – a vintage featurette that also belonged to Paramount’s DVD.
Bottom line: Ragtime is a fascinating, if flawed, film endeavoring to
capture and bottle the excitement and social hiccups of a generation all too
eager to break free from the restraints of its ancient classist and racial
prejudices. Its greatest achievement is Forman’s lyrical, lovely, graceful
handling of period Americana – the outsider looking in, having embraced America
in its fully faceted form from page to screen. Wonderful stuff here, and
presented in the ‘theatrical cut’ in a quality befitting the talents gone into
its creation. Very highly recommended!
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
Theatrical – 5+
Work Print – 2.5
EXTRAS
3
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