The Cotton Club was a famous Harlem nightclub. This is the story of the people who visited this club as well as the people who ran it, and the film is generously peppered with the jazz ...
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Rusty James, an absent-minded street thug struggles to live up to his legendary older brother's reputation, and longs for the days when gang warfare was going on.
A Sergeant must deal with his desires to save the lives of young soldiers being sent to Viet Nam. Continuously denied the chance to teach the soldiers about his experiences, he settles for trying to help the son of an old Army buddy.
Director:
Francis Ford Coppola
Stars:
James Caan,
Anjelica Huston,
James Earl Jones
Bennie travels to Buenos Aires to find his long-missing older brother, a once-promising writer who is now a remnant of his former self. Bennie's discovery of his brother's near-finished play might hold the answer to understanding their shared past and renewing their bond.
Director:
Francis Ford Coppola
Stars:
Vincent Gallo,
Alden Ehrenreich,
Maribel Verdú
A middle-aged artist obsessed with his pretty young assistant, a precocious 12 year old living in a hotel, and a neurotic lawyer with a possessive mother make up three Gotham tales.
The Cotton Club was a famous Harlem nightclub. This is the story of the people who visited this club as well as the people who ran it, and the film is generously peppered with the jazz music that made the Cotton Club so renowned in the 1920s and 1930s.Written by
Colin Tinto <cst@imdb.com> with corrections by BSmith
Enticed by a script by Mario Puzo and the promise of funding from Las Vegas casino-owning brothers Edward Doumani and Fred Doumani, Paramount offered producer Robert Evans the talents of Richard Gere as leading man and access to its studio facilities along with further production funds. However, determined to re-establish his reputation as a major player in Hollywood, Evans turned down the latter offer in favor of the services of Orion Pictures--which was in the business of marketing and distributing films rather than producing them, meaning that Evans would need to raise more production money and find a studio in which to shoot the film, causing further delays and adding to the already bloated budget. See more »
Goofs
At about 9m into the film, there is a scene where Richard Gere pulls the bed sheet up close to the lady's arm but in the next shot, where Gere is sitting, the bed sheet is near to the lady's waist. See more »
In the original version, the opening credits were intercut with dancers performing "The Mooche." In the 2019 revision, the dancing is eliminated and the credits roll straight through, but have been joined with straight cuts rather than dissolves. Additionally, Coppola has changed his billing from "Francis Coppola" to "Francis Ford Coppola." Finally, restoration credits have been added after the end titles. See more »
Alternate Versions
It seems that the first murder is a bit shortened in the German Constantin Video release (FSK 16). See more »
One gets the sense that 'The Cotton Club (1984)' will improve upon repeat viewings, once you've become accustomed to what director Francis Ford Coppola was attempting. After all, this is a gangster film from the man who brought us 'The Godfather (1972)' and its sequels – what else could we expect but another Corleone saga? The film we're delivered is nothing of the sort, a testament to the director's constant willingness to take risks and experiment with new ideas. Indeed, rather than trying to emulate Coppola's former successes, 'The Cotton Club' could more accurately be described as a "gangster musical," a realisation that took me until the film's second half. Do those two genres even go together? Perhaps taking inspiration from Herbert Ross' 'Pennies from Heaven (1981)' – and the mini-series on which it was based – the film blends the ugly brutality and corruption of the Prohibition- era with the dazzling bright lights of the Cotton Club, Harlem's premiere night club. It is this deliberate but uneasy juxtaposition of reality and fantasy that fuels Coppola's vision, an ambitious undertaking without a dominant focus.
The film's major storyline concerns Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere), a comparatively ordinary jazz musician who unexpectedly finds himself associating with organised crime boss "Dutch" Schultz (James Remar). Dixie is interesting because, unlike your typical hero consumed by the allure of amoral riches, he always remains peripheral to the world of gangsters; he observes, with disapproval, its dishonesty and depravity, but rarely finds himself a part of it. In fact, the closest he ever comes to being a gangster is in Hollywood, where he shares the sort of film roles that made James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson famous. Coppola might have been offering a commentary on the inherently romanticised version of reality offered by the movies, but his "real world" of gangsters is scarcely less stylised. The seedy underbelly of organised crime is paradoxically depicted as taking place in the classiest locales in Harlem, where the crime bosses consume the best alcohol and mix with Hollywood's elite talent (Chaplin, Swanson and Cagney among the featured patrons).
Proving further that Coppola wasn't attempting to replicate his Corleone saga, 'The Cotton Club' also features a rather extraneous subplot with Maurice and Gregory Hines as African-American tap-dancers vying for the "big-time" at the Cotton Club, where (in a bizarre discriminatory switch) only black performers are hired. The regular cross-cutting between this story and Dixie Dwyer's doesn't quite work, and, in any case, the taut romance between Dwyer and tough-girl Vera (an absolutely gorgeous Diane Lane) is much more involving than that between Sandman Williams (Gregory Hines) and mixed-race dancer Lila (Lonette McKee). Among the film's impressive supporting performers are Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne as crime associates, Nicholas Cage as an overly-ambitious young thug, Laurence Fishburne as black crime boss Bumpy Rhodes, and James Remar, playing a sleazier and less identifiable version of Dutch Schultz to Dustin Hoffman in 'Billy Bathgate (1991).' The premiere gangster film of 1984 was Leone's 'Once Upon a Time in America (1984),' but, despite being runner-up, nobody can accuse Coppola of playing it safe.
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One gets the sense that 'The Cotton Club (1984)' will improve upon repeat viewings, once you've become accustomed to what director Francis Ford Coppola was attempting. After all, this is a gangster film from the man who brought us 'The Godfather (1972)' and its sequels – what else could we expect but another Corleone saga? The film we're delivered is nothing of the sort, a testament to the director's constant willingness to take risks and experiment with new ideas. Indeed, rather than trying to emulate Coppola's former successes, 'The Cotton Club' could more accurately be described as a "gangster musical," a realisation that took me until the film's second half. Do those two genres even go together? Perhaps taking inspiration from Herbert Ross' 'Pennies from Heaven (1981)' – and the mini-series on which it was based – the film blends the ugly brutality and corruption of the Prohibition- era with the dazzling bright lights of the Cotton Club, Harlem's premiere night club. It is this deliberate but uneasy juxtaposition of reality and fantasy that fuels Coppola's vision, an ambitious undertaking without a dominant focus.
The film's major storyline concerns Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere), a comparatively ordinary jazz musician who unexpectedly finds himself associating with organised crime boss "Dutch" Schultz (James Remar). Dixie is interesting because, unlike your typical hero consumed by the allure of amoral riches, he always remains peripheral to the world of gangsters; he observes, with disapproval, its dishonesty and depravity, but rarely finds himself a part of it. In fact, the closest he ever comes to being a gangster is in Hollywood, where he shares the sort of film roles that made James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson famous. Coppola might have been offering a commentary on the inherently romanticised version of reality offered by the movies, but his "real world" of gangsters is scarcely less stylised. The seedy underbelly of organised crime is paradoxically depicted as taking place in the classiest locales in Harlem, where the crime bosses consume the best alcohol and mix with Hollywood's elite talent (Chaplin, Swanson and Cagney among the featured patrons).
Proving further that Coppola wasn't attempting to replicate his Corleone saga, 'The Cotton Club' also features a rather extraneous subplot with Maurice and Gregory Hines as African-American tap-dancers vying for the "big-time" at the Cotton Club, where (in a bizarre discriminatory switch) only black performers are hired. The regular cross-cutting between this story and Dixie Dwyer's doesn't quite work, and, in any case, the taut romance between Dwyer and tough-girl Vera (an absolutely gorgeous Diane Lane) is much more involving than that between Sandman Williams (Gregory Hines) and mixed-race dancer Lila (Lonette McKee). Among the film's impressive supporting performers are Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne as crime associates, Nicholas Cage as an overly-ambitious young thug, Laurence Fishburne as black crime boss Bumpy Rhodes, and James Remar, playing a sleazier and less identifiable version of Dutch Schultz to Dustin Hoffman in 'Billy Bathgate (1991).' The premiere gangster film of 1984 was Leone's 'Once Upon a Time in America (1984),' but, despite being runner-up, nobody can accuse Coppola of playing it safe.