Synopsis
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.
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Cast
- Brad DourifYounger Brother
- Howard RollinsCoalhouse Walker Jr.
- Elizabeth McGovernEvelyn Nesbit
- Mary SteenburgenMother
- Moses GunnBooker T. Washington
- James CagneyNew York Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo
- Kenneth McMillanWillie Conklin
- Pat O’BrienDelmas, Thaw's Lawyer
- Donald O'ConnorEvelyn's Dance Instructor
- James OlsonFather
- 88
Chicago Sun-Times
Rgatime is a loving, beautifully mounted, graceful film that creates its characters with great clarity. - 88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Ragtime itself twinkles with delight - perhaps only an immigrant, and a recent one, could have made this film, which looks squarely at the social problems gnawing at North America but which finds, within them and without them, cause for hope. [20 Nov 1981] - 80
Variety
The page-turning joys of E.L. Doctorow's bestselling Ragtime, which dizzily and entertainingly charted a kaleidoscopic vision of a turn-of-century America in the midst of intense social change, have been realized almost completely in Milos Forman's superbly crafted screen adaptation. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
Ambitious, but only sporadically engaging. - 60
The New York Times
The movie is sorrowful, funny and beautiful. It is also, finally, very unsatisfactory. - 60
Time
Forman and Weller have created an impressive but strangely lopsided movie. - 38
Boston Globe
Except for the evocative sets and Randy Newman's upbeat musical score, Ragtime is better read than seen. [18 Dec 1981] - 20
Chicago Reader
What's left is a curiously disconnected illustration of American racism, which nevertheless fails to realize the power and irony inherent in its pop-Marxist analysis.