I saw Ragtime back in the early 80s and it made a powerful impression. But seeing it again some 25 years later reveals a few weaknesses.
The sequences with Elizabeth McGovern as Evelyn Nesbit are as effective as ever, but other sequences don't hold up as well. For example, Coalhouse Walker is introduced as a poor movie-theater pianist who gets a job as a member of a band, which gives him enough income to marry the woman whom he got pregnant. Yet in short order, he has a fancy car, and then after his humiliation by the bigoted Irish firemen, suddenly he has a gang of violent henchmen, and then he has an expensive supply of rifles, pistols, and dynamite. His gang and his armaments just appear; in reality there is no way a mere band piano player, however talented, would have these. And the scenario for his wife's fatal injury -- yelling in the midst of a presidential campaign crowd to get the vice-President's attention -- isn't convincing; police officers wouldn't fatally beat a slightly- built, well-dressed African-American woman just because she was shouting in the midst of a noisy crowd gathered around a campaigning politician. The film could easily have found a more plausible scenario in which police would over-react and hurt her fatally. Thus, the provocation that leads Coalhouse to conduct his reign of terror -- horse manure on his car, followed by official indifference, followed by his wife being fatally injured by police -- isn't the kind of action that would motivate a gang to unite around him. It is not all that hard to imagine a more convincing set-up for Coalhouse's rampage, so it is puzzling why the film seems to go out of its way to develop an implausible set-up. The extraordinary performance by Rollins in the role does a lot to correct this implausibility, but it is tantalizing to think of just how powerful a performance it could have been had the story been stronger.
One strength of the film is that all of the characters are morally complex. Tateh, the immigrant who becomes a movie director, is outraged when he catches his wife cheating on him, but later, he is quite willing to romance a woman whom he knows is married and tempt her to leave her husband. The 'father' character is priggish and formal, yet shows himself the most truly courageous and idealistic person in the film.The 'mother' character is presented as the most moral person, caring for the abandoned baby and his mother despite their being African-American (a big issue for most whites in 1906) -- positions which her husband always supports, although after initial hesitation -- yet she leaves him without a qualm to go off with the movie director.
One minor factual tid-bit for those who are interested: in the film, Evelyn Nesbit's husband Thaw is outraged because it is thought that a nude statue of the Greek goddess Diana the hunter ("Diana of the Tower") that adorns the top of Madison Square Garden is Evelyn's body as the model; Thaw finds it humiliating that all of New York can gawk at his wife's nakedness. While this works very well as drama, sadly, factually is it wrong. Nesbit was born in 1884 and never came to New York until 1901. The first version of the statue (18 feet high) went up on the top of the tower in 1891, but was too large; a second version, more lithe and fleet (13 feet high), went up in 1893. Evelyn was 7 when the first version went up, 9 when the second, and when she arrived in New York the second version had already been up for 8 years. The model for the body was Julia 'Dudie" Baird, a well-known artist model born in 1872 -- 12 years older than Nesbit. The model for the face was a different woman, Davida, also active in New York modeling circles, who was the sculptor's mistress.
The sequences with Elizabeth McGovern as Evelyn Nesbit are as effective as ever, but other sequences don't hold up as well. For example, Coalhouse Walker is introduced as a poor movie-theater pianist who gets a job as a member of a band, which gives him enough income to marry the woman whom he got pregnant. Yet in short order, he has a fancy car, and then after his humiliation by the bigoted Irish firemen, suddenly he has a gang of violent henchmen, and then he has an expensive supply of rifles, pistols, and dynamite. His gang and his armaments just appear; in reality there is no way a mere band piano player, however talented, would have these. And the scenario for his wife's fatal injury -- yelling in the midst of a presidential campaign crowd to get the vice-President's attention -- isn't convincing; police officers wouldn't fatally beat a slightly- built, well-dressed African-American woman just because she was shouting in the midst of a noisy crowd gathered around a campaigning politician. The film could easily have found a more plausible scenario in which police would over-react and hurt her fatally. Thus, the provocation that leads Coalhouse to conduct his reign of terror -- horse manure on his car, followed by official indifference, followed by his wife being fatally injured by police -- isn't the kind of action that would motivate a gang to unite around him. It is not all that hard to imagine a more convincing set-up for Coalhouse's rampage, so it is puzzling why the film seems to go out of its way to develop an implausible set-up. The extraordinary performance by Rollins in the role does a lot to correct this implausibility, but it is tantalizing to think of just how powerful a performance it could have been had the story been stronger.
One strength of the film is that all of the characters are morally complex. Tateh, the immigrant who becomes a movie director, is outraged when he catches his wife cheating on him, but later, he is quite willing to romance a woman whom he knows is married and tempt her to leave her husband. The 'father' character is priggish and formal, yet shows himself the most truly courageous and idealistic person in the film.The 'mother' character is presented as the most moral person, caring for the abandoned baby and his mother despite their being African-American (a big issue for most whites in 1906) -- positions which her husband always supports, although after initial hesitation -- yet she leaves him without a qualm to go off with the movie director.
One minor factual tid-bit for those who are interested: in the film, Evelyn Nesbit's husband Thaw is outraged because it is thought that a nude statue of the Greek goddess Diana the hunter ("Diana of the Tower") that adorns the top of Madison Square Garden is Evelyn's body as the model; Thaw finds it humiliating that all of New York can gawk at his wife's nakedness. While this works very well as drama, sadly, factually is it wrong. Nesbit was born in 1884 and never came to New York until 1901. The first version of the statue (18 feet high) went up on the top of the tower in 1891, but was too large; a second version, more lithe and fleet (13 feet high), went up in 1893. Evelyn was 7 when the first version went up, 9 when the second, and when she arrived in New York the second version had already been up for 8 years. The model for the body was Julia 'Dudie" Baird, a well-known artist model born in 1872 -- 12 years older than Nesbit. The model for the face was a different woman, Davida, also active in New York modeling circles, who was the sculptor's mistress.