Product Description

Oscar®-winners* Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo rejoin forces to create a mesmerizing (L.A. Weekly) homage to 1930s gangster films and musicals. Nominated** for three Oscars® The Cotton Club is a genuine vision (Newsweek) of the golden age of jazz you won t soon forget!1928 New York. Spirits are high and sultry jazz lively dancing and ruthless gangsters rule supreme. In the center of it all is Harlem s Cotton Club. Playing on stage is cornet player Dixie Dwyer (Gere) who dreams of the big time but he s too mixed up with the club s owner (Hoskins) -- and his sexy moll (Lane) -- to get anywhere fast. Add the frustration of tap sensation Sandman Williams (Hines) who can t touch his girl the lovely lounge singer Lea Rose Oliver (Lonette McKee) and you ve got a short fuse ready to go. As tensions rise so do tempers and the legendary nightclub becomes a pressure cooker of jilted loves and mob jobs that blows the lid off one of the most shocking showdowns ever staged.System Requirements: Running Time 129 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 027616864369 Manufacturer No: 1002205

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8388 in DVD
• Brand: MGM HOME VIDEO (UNDER FOX)
• Released on: 2001-07-10
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 129 minutes

Features

• Oscar®-winners* Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo rejoin forces to create a mesmerizing (L.A. Weekly) homage to 1930s gangster films and musicals. Nominated** for three Oscars®, The Cotton Club is a genuine vision (Newsweek) of the golden age of jazz you won t soon forget! 1928, New York. Spirits are high and sultry jazz, lively dancing and ruthless gangsters rule supreme. In the cent

Amazon.com
The Cotton Club is routinely eclipsed by the controversies that surrounded its tumultuous production, but the film itself offers abundant pleasures that should not be overlooked. If Apocalypse Now represents the triumph of director Francis Coppola's perilous ambition, then The Cotton Club represents the ungainly glory of uncontrolled genius, as brilliant as it is out of its depth. As an upscale homage to classic gangster films it's frequently astonishing, cramming a thick novel's worth of plot and characters into 129 minutes, gloriously serviced by impeccable production design, elegant cinematography, and stylistic flourishes that show Coppola at the top of his game.

What The Cotton Club lacks is cohesion. As written by Coppola and novelist William Kennedy (then enjoying the peak of his critical acclaim), the movie struggles to exceed the narrative scope of The Godfather, but its multiple early-'30s plot lines fail to form any strong connective tissue. It's three (or four) movies in one, with cornet player Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere, playing his own jazzy solos) drifting from one story to the next--loving a young, ambitious vamp (Diane Lane, with whom Gere shares precious little chemistry), enjoying the success of a hotshot hoofer (Gregory Hines), and protecting his brazen bother (Coppola's then-newcomer nephew, Nicolas Cage) from the deadly temper of mob boss Dutch Schultz (James Remar). Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne also score big in grand supporting roles, but The Cotton Club is perhaps best appreciated for its meticulous re-creation of Harlem's Cotton Club heyday, and the brilliant music (Ellington, Calloway, etc.) that brought rhythm to gangland's rat-a-tat-tat. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Great movie but where are the deleted scenes?
It's great to finally have this movie on video in the widescreen format. However, I am disappointed that the deleted scenes which were advertised here and on MGM's official website are not on this DVD. It would have been nice to view them but I guess MGM decided not to release them at the last minute (perhaps a special edition DVD is in the works in the near future) or Coppola didn't allow MGM to release them. Perhaps he's planning to extend this film like he did with Apocalypse Now. Anyway, despite the missing deleted scenes, it's great to see this film again in its original aspect ratio with the theatrical trailer which ironically has brief moments of scenes that were deleted from the film.

Great movie finally available on a so-so DVD
The lines between jazz, bootlegging and race are blurred in Francis Ford Coppolas's wonderful 1984 feature set during the late 20's and early 30's in Harlem, NYC at the world famous Cotton Club. At long last, MGM has finally released The Cotton Club on its "Contemporary Classics" series. What this means is that die hard fans will get a reasonably priced DVD in the widescreen format but with virtually no extras included. MGM is notorious for being stingy on their DVDs. The theatrical trailer is included. You can watch the film in French or read French or Spanish subtitles. Nice hard case but only a card listing the cast and a brief description of the film, no booklet. As for deleted scenes: well, there aren't any. Unless you included a brief shot during the trailer or an exchange between Vince (Nick Cage) and Dixie (Richard Gere) in which Dixie asks "Why were you fighting niggers?" when he said "Why were you fighting the coloreds?" in the earlier version. This is not a restored version and the color has tinges of red from fade in indoor scenes, a few light scratches also visible. Still, one of the best movies ever. Wonderful musical scenes and a terrific cast featuring Gere, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins, Lonette McKee, and Gregory and Maurice Hines. Usually ragged on for costing too much (it lost money in the theatre and was the most expensive film for its time) but for first time viewers (and there are a lot of you out there), I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. A must have for lovers of the film, but we can only hope a restored director's cut DVD with some of the many scenes that were cut from the film along with some commentary from the pricipals will be released in the future. Until then, enjoy this version and be wowed for 2 hours and 9 minutes.

Great music, acting, production
This is one of Coppola all time greats. A must for any jazz fan. The sound track is also a must have. Coppola put a lot into this production; unfortunally it was underrated and under appreciated and never got the credit it deserved.