Thaw and Stanford White, all drawn from life, and by Mr. Washington, Emma Goldman, Evelyn Nesbit, Harry The book is the work of an irrepressible storyteller, its pages filled with odds and ends of fact and fancy, peopled by such characters as J.P. Those who profited from the duplicable event and those who got in its way. Sprawling, cheerily mordant novel can be easily summed up, ''Ragtime'' is about two kind of people - some of them historical figures and some figments of Mr. Because eccentrics slowed things up, they were suspect. The duplicable event became the basis of an economy and of a civilization, and, by extension, a way of looking at life. Highland Park assembly line, one by one, every six minutes, at a price to make the modern state of horselessness available to the entire population or, at least, to those citizens who mattered. Each Ford automobile was composed of interchangeable parts so that Model-T's could roll off the No one, perhaps, perceived this quite so successfully as Henry Ford with his magnificent construction called the Model-T. Value of the duplicable event was everywhere perceived.''
Doctorow observes with some understatement, ''The Somewhere toward the middle of the novel, which has the effect of lighting up the first two decades of this American century with skyrockets and cherry bombs, Mr. Not at all sure that anyone who has not read the book will have any idea what's going on much of the time, or why. It is superbly acted by a large cast that includes the recently unretired James Cagney, and it has been immaculately photographed (by Miroslav Ondricek), designed (by John Graysmark) and scored (by Randy Newman). It is also, finally, very unsatisfactory. The movie, which opens today at the Loews State and Coronet Theaters, is sorrowful, funny and beautiful. This image not only frames the film, it also characterizes the best things in it. Thaw of Pittsburgh, shot and killed her former lover, Stanford White, the architect, during the opening night of ''Mamzelle Champagne'' in the roof garden of the old Madison Square Garden on Evelyn is in the process of disappearing, leaving no trace of the notoriety achieved when her rich husband, The woman is Evelyn Nesbit, the pre-World War I showgirl, dancing earnestly into obscurity with a vaudeville partner. Novel, begins and ends with a dreamlike image - a pair of ballroom dancers, caught in a spotlight, surrounded by darkness, performing, not very gracefully, to an unfamiliar melody, before an unseen audience. Ilos Forman's ''Ragtime,'' adapted by Michael Weller from E.L. 'Ragtime' Evokes Real and Fictional Pasts By VINCENT CANBY 'Ragtime' Evokes Real and Fictional Pasts
0 kommentar(er)
