Ragtime

Based on the E.L. Doctorow novel by the same name,  Ragtime won an Academy Award for best picture in 1981. Outside of the academic reasons that we are watching the film, this movie is quite enjoyable on many counts. It has a fantastic score composed by Randy Newman. It contains some of Hollywood's more recognizable actors like James Cagney toward the end of his career and a young Samuel L. Jackson and Jeff Daniels before their acting careers had really taken off. Plus it delivers a compelling story.

We are watching it in our class for its fictionalized account of turn-of-the-century America. It will be important for you to grasp the film's multiple story lines and accept them as while not always fully related to one another, they compose a montage of the whole - a time period when a variety of forces shaped the nation. It is set roughly in 1905-1908 just as the tide went out on the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era hit its full swing. We see elements of both, from the elaborate excesses of Stanford White to the Progressive-Era inspired insanity plea of Harry K. Thaw. We see the racial tensions of early twentieth-century America in the dilemma of Coalhouse Walker Jr. and the forces of modernity on traditional patterns of patriarchy in the collapse of the Delmas family. In short, you should be able to relate a variety of themes in this film to topics that we have studied in class.

The film will be available online, streamed on Blackboard. Be sure to select the "Streaming Video" option at the bottom of the main list of selection items.