So when I read about this new production that started at the Kennedy Center I was intrigued and then when I heard it was transferring to Broadway -- I really had hoped to catch it. My work schedule for the fall, though did not allow me the luxury of travel time and now that the show is closing on January 3rd, well .... I guess I'll have to wait and see if someone somewhere produces another version of the show before I kick the bucket. Or I'll just have to be content with my memories of the show.
As the next best thing, I rented the DVD of the 1981 Milos Forman-directed film from Blockbuster as a sort of consolation prize. This was Forman's follow up to Hair and he reteamed with screenwriter Michael Weller on the project. Having read E.L. Doctorow's novel, I was a bit surprised that someone decided to condense the project into a 2-1/2 movie instead of turning it into a prestigious television miniseries. The book was so dense and contained so many historical figures who interact with the fictional characters that Doctorow had created it cried out for a longform treatment. Nevertheless, Forman and Weller perservered and crafted a flawed but engrossing movie. What makes it so much fun to watch now in hindsight is to spot several actors whose careers were in their nascent stages -- blink and you might miss Fran Drescher (The Nanny) or John Ratzinberger (Cheers) or Frankie Faison or Jeff Daniels or Samuel L. Jackson or Michael Jeter. There's supporting work from Robert Joy (as Harry K. Thaw) and Moses Gunn (as Booker T. Washington) and in a DVD extra Mariclare Costello as Emma Goldman (although it's easy to see why that scene was cut).
The main family doesn't even have conventional names; they are known simply as Mother (Mary Steenburgen fresh off her Oscar win for Melvin and Howard), Father (James Olson) and Younger Brother (Brad Dourif). They are an upper middle-class family who has settled in the wilds of New Rochelle in the early 1900s. At the time, mixing with immigrants and African Americans just wasn't done. So when a black baby turns up on their property and Mother pushes to take in the child and its mother Sarah (Debbie Allen strinking a wrong note by channeling Butterfly McQueen), the times are a-changin'. Younger Brother develops a crush on Evelyn Nesbit (a fetching Elizabeth McGovern), the chorus girl at the center of a scandal due to her relationship with Stanford White (Norman Mailer sounding a great deal like Tommy Lee Jones) and her husband Harry K. Thaw (the aforementioned Robert Joy). The pragmatic and mercenary Evelyn sort of romances and then drops Younger Brother -- partly leading him to channel his anger and throw his lot in with Coalhouse Walker, Jr. (Howard Rollins, Jr.).
Coalhouse is an educated African American -- what some of the prejudiced characters term "uppity" -- who makes his living as a piano player. He's also the father of Sarah's baby -- the one she left on the grounds of the family's home. He drives to New Rochelle in his new Model T to woo her and eventually she agrees to marry him. On his way home from one of his weekly visits, he gets stopped by racist firemen led by Willie Conklin (Kenneth McMillan) who can't comprehend a black man being able to own a car like that. They foul it up and he complains to the police (Jeff Daniels) which leads to Walker's arrest and his quest for justice.
All he wants is restitution for the damage done to his car. Sarah intervenes and pays a terrible price for it which only spurs Coalhouse's determination and fuels his righteous anger.
There's also a subplot about a Jewish immigrant called Tateh (Mandy Patinkin), a man with a young daughter to flees the Lower East Side to reinvent himself as a movie director known as the Baron Ashkenazy. While he later directs Evelyn in a movie, he is strangely drawn to Mother who begins to return the favors.
Also in the mix is the police commissioner (James Cagney in his last screen role) who oversees the last third of the film when Coalhouse and his band take over the Morgan Library. Here is where the movie becomes a bit of a curiosity and may be why the audience for the musical was a bit reluctant to see the show. One might argue that Coalhouse Walker embraces what became known as the Black Power movement in the 1960s. He certainly doesn't embrace Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent approach. Walker is pushed to the limits and the refusal by those in power in the Caucasian circle (he seeks the proper channels to file a complaint only to be given the bureaucratic runaround) as well as a rejection by his own people -- a black lawyer (Ted Ross) refuses to take his case and Booker T. Washington denounces him. When Walker resorts to violence, it is an outlet for the frustrations he has experienced -- and in Doctorow's novel it seems inevitable. In both the movie and the stage play, it becomes something of a choice. Judging him by today's standards -- he might be considered a home-grown terrorist -- and that may be something audiences don't want to see. The world has changed so much since 1981 when the film was released and 1998 when the musical opened.
The film's production values are suberb as one come to expect from Forman and his collaborators. (Special mention goes to Randy Newman's exquisite musical score.) In the general cannon of Forman movies, Ragtime falls between his two Oscar winners. It aspires to greatness but sadly falls a bit short. Weller's script tries to condense too much and some of the storylines are dropped or not followed through enough. I'm sure someone could write a thesis on the way Weller approached adapting the novel and contrasts that with Terrence McNally's approach for the book of the musical. McNally's version streamlines in a different manner and builds up aspects that Weller doesn't. (For instance, the relationship between Tateh and Mother in the musical becomes more organic -- and the intersection of the three stories is so beautifully laid out in the choreography of the opening number.) The stage show sends Father off on travels whereas the movie focuses on him (and James Olson does yeoman work -- I think he was terribly underrated when the movie first opened).
Anyway -- they are definitely two different animals. Arguably both only partially succeed (although I love the stage score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens).
Rating of the film: B+
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