Ragtime

New York at the start of the twentieth century. A fire crew blocks the road in front of Coalhouse Walker, a Black pianist, and wrecks the car he has just bought. Walker pursues it through the law; no court and no official will hear him. He ends by arming himself and seizing the Pierpont Morgan Library. Around the story move real names and figures of the period: Evelyn Nesbit, Harry Houdini, Booker T. Washington. Miloš Forman directed. The source is E. L. Doctorow's novel. What it is most remembered for is a return. James Cagney, aged eighty-one, came out of a twenty-year retirement to play the police commissioner, a character not in the book and written for the film. It was his first appearance on screen since Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three in 1961 and his last film role. There is another oddity in the cast: Stanford White, the architect of Madison Square Garden, is played by the writer Norman Mailer. It received eight Academy Award nominations, including one for Elizabeth McGovern as Evelyn Nesbit. It won none of them and did not do business. Who it is for: viewers who like period panoramas and Forman's American films. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a focused narrative. The film carries too many stories at once and several strands are left hanging.