The Cotton Club (1984)
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The story
The story centers on the Cotton Club, a 1930s Harlem jazz club. A musician named Dixie Dwyer begins working with mobsters to advance his career but falls in love with Vera Cicero, the girlfriend of gangland kingpin Dutch Schultz. Meanwhile, Sandman Williams, a dancer from Dixie's neighborhood, and his brother Clay are hired by the Cotton Club, a jazz club where most of the performers are black and the customers are white. Owney Madden, a mobster, owns the club and runs it with his right-hand man, Frenchy Demange.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
Dixie Dwyer becomes a Hollywood film star thanks to the help of mobster Owney Madden, but his success angers gangland kingpin Dutch Schultz. Despite this, Dixie continues to see Schultz's gun moll, Vera Cicero, whose new nightclub was financed by the jealous gangster. Simultaneously, Dixie's ambitious younger brother Vincent becomes a gangster in Schultz's mob and eventually a public enemy, holding Frenchy Demange hostage. At the Cotton Club, Sandman Williams alienates his brother Clay by agreeing to perform a solo number. While the club's management interferes with Sandman's romantic interest in singer Lila Rose Oliver, the cruel treatment of the performers leads to an intervention by Harlem criminal 'Bumpy' Rhodes. The conflict culminates when Schultz is violently dealt with by Madden's men while Dixie and Sandman perform on the Cotton Club's stage.
- First release year
- 1984
- Runtime (minutes)
- 128
- Production countries
- United States
- Original languages
- English
- Directors
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Writers
- William Kennedy · screenplay; Francis Ford Coppola · screenplay; William Kennedy · story; Francis Ford Coppola · story; Mario Puzo · story
- Cast and characters
- Richard Gere · Dixie Dwyer; Gregory Hines · Sandman Williams; Diane Lane · Vera Cicero; Lonette McKee · Lila Rose Oliver; Bob Hoskins · Frenchy Demange; James Remar · Vincent; Nicolas Cage; Allen Garfield; Fred Gwynne
- Genres
- musical; crime; drama
- Themes
- organized crime; racial dynamics; ambition
- Tone and mood
- extravagant; energetic
- Premise and plot tags
- musical; crime drama; biographical elements
- Source material / true-story basis
- James Haskins' 1977 book of the same name
- Reception
- The film was a commercial failure but received generally positive reviews and has become a cult favorite among fans of the musical genre.
- Reported review scores
- Rotten Tomatoes · score: 76% · review count: 33; Metacritic · score: 68% · review count: 14
- Awards and nominations
- BAFTA Award · Best Costume Design · win; Academy Award · Best Art Direction · nomination; Golden Globe Award · Best Director · nomination; Japan Academy Film Prize · Outstanding Foreign Language Film · nomination; Golden Reel Award · Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing · nomination
- Production trivia
- The film took a total of five years to complete.; Robert Evans was the original producer who hoped the film would bring public attention to African-American history.; The film was the first to use the Macrovision copy protection system on VHS.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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