Plot
A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.
Release Year: 1981
Rating: 7.2/10 (4,456 voted)
Critic's Score: 57/100
Director:
Milos Forman
Stars: James Cagney, Elizabeth McGovern, Howard E. Rollins Jr.
Storyline The story runs in the 1910's New York. Coalhouse Walker Jr. is a black piano player. He has won fame and fortune playing with a jazz band. Some white men do not like this situation, and one day they assault him and spoil his brand new car. Walker tries by all means to get justice, without an answer...
Writers: E.L. Doctorow, Heinrich von Kleist
Cast: James Cagney
-
Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo
Brad Dourif
-
Younger Brother
Moses Gunn
-
Booker T. Washington
Elizabeth McGovern
-
Evelyn Nesbit
Kenneth McMillan
-
Willie Conklin
Pat O'Brien
-
Mr. Delphin Delmas
Donald O'Connor
-
Evelyn's Dance Instructor
James Olson
-
Father
Mandy Patinkin
-
Tateh
Howard E. Rollins Jr.
-
Coalhouse Walker Jr.
Mary Steenburgen
-
Mother
Debbie Allen
-
Sarah
Jeffrey DeMunn
-
Harry Houdini
(as Jeff Demunn)
Robert Joy
-
Henry 'Harry' Kendall Thaw
Norman Mailer
-
Stanford White
Taglines:
Good Time ... Bad Time ... Ragtime
Release Date: 6 January 1982
Filming Locations: 81 West Main Street, Mt. Kisco, New York, USA
Opening Weekend: $151,351
(USA)
(22 November 1981)
(5 Screens)
Gross: $21,015,710
(USA)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia: James Cagney's powers of memorization were failing him and cue cards had to be used for the 81-year-old actor.
Goofs:
Factual errors:
Charles W. Fairbanks was not the Vice President of the United States when he was running with Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. He was a Senator from Indiana and was chosen as Roosevelt's running mate that year. Roosevelt was Vice President when he succeeded to the presidency upon William McKinley's assassination and he had no Vice President for his first term of office.
Quotes: Coalhouse Walker Jr.:
[praying]
Lord, I'd hoped I'd have the courage to know what I should do now. You must see how sick at heart I've been... and how I've performed this thing with little appetite.
[sobbing]
Coalhouse Walker Jr.:
I'd hoped... you'd reveal to me along the way why you put such a rage in my heart.
[a brief pause]
Coalhouse Walker Jr.:
Tell me what to do now!
[another beat]
Coalhouse Walker Jr.:
Please.
[sighs]
Coalhouse Walker Jr.:
God, tell me what to do.
User Review
Now clearly a classic
Rating: 9/10
Ragtime has emerged as a classic film. Its astonishing array of great
performances--literally a score of them, from Howard Rollins's truly tragic
stand for human dignity at the film's center to James Cagney's historic
return to film at the end of his life and the end of this motion
picture--would almost alone qualify this as a great motion picture. But
Michael Weller's breathtakingly complex and complete dramatization of
Doctorow's sprawling novel, the gorgeous production and costume designs and
the superb direction of Milos Forman seal the deal. This is a magnificent
tapestry of American life at the beginning of the American century.
Lavishly entertaining, genuinely heartbreaking and a dandy history lesson to
boot, Ragtime has joined the pantheon of great, epic movies.
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