With such quality cinematic ingredients as direction by Milos Forman, a producer as respected as Dino De Laurentiis and James Cagney among a starry cast, you can't go wrong. And they don't. This is a sweeping, panoramic portrait of early 20th-century America as taken from E L Doctorow's bestselling book of the same name. It dazzingly charts a kaleidoscopic vision of a burgeoning country coming to terms with the disparate social mores of a multiracial society. Superbly adapted by Forman (he helmed Amadeus), Ragtime is a fascinating blend of fact and fiction, of real-life characters and invented ones. Impressive it is and worth watching if only to see the great Cagney (at 81) back on the big screen after an absence of 20 years. It was to be his last feature film.


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