“Ragtime” (1981)

This 1981 epic never really found an audience on first release, suffering in comparison to both Warren Beatty’s Reds and the sleeper British hit of that year, Chariots of Fire.  Arguably Milos Forman’s adaptation of E L Doctorow’s much respected novel is better than both films yet it is easy to understand why its appeal is far from universal.  Despite an impressively eclectic cast, stunning cinematography, and an evocative score by Randy Newman that delivers on the promise of the title, the unusual structure and somewhat cold and distant characters resist the conventional.

As in Doctorow’s book a fictional storyline is interwoven with a recreation of historical events and figures from the New York of the early 1900s.  The notorious real life career of model turned silent actress Evelyn Nesbit is presented alongside that of Doctorow’s invention, Coalhouse Walker, a black pianist whose outrage at the institutional racism of the day leads to a violent standoff.  Forman avoids cliches or  political statements but allows humour or at least irony in his depiction of human weakness.

Then newcomers Elizabeth McGovern and Howard Rollins achieved award recognition playing, respectively,  Nesbit and Walker.  Equally outstanding is the little known character actor James Olson as a middle class patriarch whose life slowly unravels through association with Walker, and the great James Cagney, who came out of a twenty year retirement for one final part, his talent undiminished at age 81.