To tell the truth, Coppola did experience kind of a backlash, that began with an exposé published in Esquire during the filming of Apocalypse Now. The article, from about 1978, was a stack of arrogant-sounding letters where Coppola took James Cameron's King of the World attitude, proclaiming the show a creative quest that his production staff didn't properly appreciate. After dressing down his people for their lack of humility, a followup Coppola letter launched into a self-aggrandizing discussion of why he should drop the 'Ford' from his name and become just Francis Coppola, as he's billed on this film.

The Cotton Club is a big movie with lots of subplots jammed with interesting actors playing roles based on real personalities of the late '20s. 'Cameos' include Gloria Swanson (Diane Venora), Charlie Chaplin, Duke Ellington, James Cagney, Fannie Brice, and Cab Calloway. Dutch Schultz, a.k.a. Arthur Flegenheimer, was a real gangster whose story is woven into the movie, along with that of Lucky Luciano (Joe Dallesandro). Diane Lane's Vera Cicero gets herself a nightclub and uses the line, 'Hello Suckers!' as her trademark, making her a transposition of 'Texas' Guinan, a real nightclub impresariatrix previously portrayed by Phyllis Diller in Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass! Nicolas Cage's 'Mad Dog Dwyer' is really Mad Dog Coll, a short-lived killer whose famous demise is faithfully recreated here. And Laurence Fishburne plays the real gangster Bumpy Rhodes, the Harlem neighborhood resistance to Schultz's attempted takeover: Fishburne would recreate the role as 'Bumpy Johnson' in an MGM film called Hoodlum made in 1997.

As if that wasn't enough, Coppola's first-class casting decorates the movie with so many familiar faces, you'd think the studio system had come back. Old timer Fred Gwynne, a great actor who never got out from under his Munsters curse, has the best scene in the movie with relative newcomer Bob Hoskins. Allen Garfield, Tom Waits and John Ryan make colorful hoods. Dixie's family is fleshed out with welcome bits from veteran Gwen Verdon and fledgling dirty dancer Jennifer Grey. And there are other names I frankly missed this time around, like Woody Strode (how do you 'miss' Woody Strode?) and Bill Graham.

The Cotton Club is a showy, old-fashioned gangster epic that uses all the old material (stock story elements, machine-gun montages) and interweaves them with musical material from the Club's dance floor. Although Coppola never jumps the line into free-form showoff style tricks, as with the later Tucker, he shows he's going in that direction in the slightly kaleidoscopic ending, a final dance number which appears to be happening simultaneously on stage, and in the middle of Grand Central Station. Yes, all the acting isn't perfect but most of it is excellent. Add to all this the veneer of Richard Sylbert designs and all the John Barry music in between the standards, and there was more than enough to keep this reviewer heartily entertained. The violence quotient, after a pretty rough beginning, was pretty low as well ....

MGM Home Entertainment's DVD of The Cotton Club contains an excellent transfer of the movie (which the IMDB says was screened in 70mm on first release). The picture is flawless, as if it were a release of a new title. MGM's cover art is appropriately elegant. Some copywriter confused the Bob Hoskins and James Remar characters in the plot synopsis on the back. Savant considers this disc a major bargain of the summer.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
The Cotton Club rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Trailer
Packaging: Amaray case
Reviewed: July 12, 2001