The Cotton Club | Richard Gere, Gregory Hines | wish i could have been to one of those shows!

The Cotton Club | Richard Gere, Gregory Hines | Busting at the seams with talent and panache

DVDs:

The Cotton Club

	The Cotton Club Richard Gere, Gregory Hines MGM (Video & DVD), 2001 average customer review:based on 40 reviews view larger image
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wish i could have been to one of those shows!

za za za zoom! the music, the cast and the dancing... gregory hines is absolutely un-hooked in this film. his unbearably cool tap solo centerpiece is filmed so well it is simply stupendous. it is spliced with the gangsters violence and the contrast between the art and destruction is astounding.
this movie is bliss if you love jazz, dance and great cinematography.
what a superior treat!

Busting at the seams with talent and panache

There are not enough superlatives for this movie. It brims with style, class, talent and low-down, no-good scum. There are the heartless ones trying to stay at the top of the dog heap juxtaposed against the ones with heart selling their souls to crawl higher on the heap.

Richard Gere and Diane Lane are young, star-crossed, and multi-talented. Gere does his own cornet solos and Lane sings a gravelly "Ain't I Blue" while carrying a torch for Dixie Dwyer (Gere) right before her mobster boyfriend's deadly jealous eyes. Gere and Lane hate each other for their impossible love: they dance a slapping fight on the dance floor of the club while other dancers imitate their brawl, believing it to be a new dance step. This is among the many classic moments not to be missed.

A sub-theme of segregation is interwoven with stunning tap numbers and loaded songs, showing the irony and snobbery of a famous club that allowed only black people to sing, dance, and hoof it on stage while not allowing them entry via the front door as patrons. (See The Cotton Club's own Website for more history.)

At times, although the rivalry and bloodshed was riveting (I abhor gratuitous violence in movies but this one could not be told without depicting the violence of the era) there were moments when I wished we could just cut to the stage for an entire performance--instead of seeing snatches cut, albeit skillfully, into the mob and romance scenes. The song and dance numbers were sensational; it left me longing to transport myself back to the hey day of The Cotton Club for a year's worth of stellar entertainment.

My one disappointment was Cab Calloway. The actor chosen for the role certainly had the energy and crazy spontaneity of the real Cab, but not near the voice. It was like hearing a lukewarm sound coming out of a powerhouse body.

I spent years not realizing that Richard Gere is a very talented man, not just an actor. After seeing him in Chicago we found him ballroom dancing in Shall We Dance. A chance look at Laurence Fishburne's bio at the end of Tuskegee Airmen led us to The Cotton Club and we pounced when we saw Gere in the cast line-up. I've gone from feeling so-so about Richard Gere to wishing he would make more movies of this ilk.

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Homage to black culture

I say to hell with the critics who slammed this film. What is the movie REALLY about? Its about the superiority of Afro American culture in every aspect - family, dance, music, dress, values and the stupidity and crassness of the so called superior white culture composed of Irish, Jewish, Italian et al which is to say European culture. It is a metaphor for the rise of Africa and the fall of Europe and the battle will be fought and won in the USA. Forget the halting narrative and love interests and focus on the Duke Ellington music - glorious musical wonder of the 20th century - the Nicholas Brothers dance sequences - the dancers, the vocals, the sequence in the hoofers club and all the joy that permeates the film. The dead white dead like faces of many of the characters - Dutch Schultz among them and his no name helpers - symbolise the dead spirit in the bodies they inhabit. Black is truly beautiful in this flawed but ultimately satisfying entetainment.

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An Interesting Misfire

The 1970's delivered the greatest work from Francis Ford Coppola but in the 1980's he was more eclectic and saw some of his more diverse, not to say successful, work. The one thing you can't say about Coppola's work from this period is that he wasn't boring. "The Cotton Club" falls into the category as an interesting failure. There is much to admire in this film. The sets and costumes are gorgeous. The music is great. The acting, for the most part, is not bad. Ultimately it's the story that does this film in which is a puzzlement because the script was written by award-winning novelist William Kennedy ("Ironweed"). I think where this film goes wrong is that it was a big-budget vehicle trying to appeal to a "mainstream" audience. The story of the Cotton Club is an interesting one, a Harlem nightclub whose black entertainers catered to the rich and famous. Instead of focusing more on the entertainers the story concentrates on a love story between a musician(Richard Gere) and a gangster's moll(Diane Lane). Interspersed we get stories involving gangsters who are so over-the-top in their rendering that they are more comical then menacing. This is odd coming from the director of "The Godfather". I recommend this film to anybody interested in Coppola's work because even his lesser work is of interest(Well, maybe not "Jack").

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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