A true film maudit (cursed film): out of control costs & drugs, murder behind scandalous mob financing, endless script revisions, mismarketing (see GODFATHER-like poster below), a soft reception & huge financial loss. Producer Robert Evans, originally hoping to direct, corralled Francis Ford Coppola for the project (Coppola, in serious debt, brought in half the family); Evans wound up suing him. And while he produced six more projects over the next two decades, Evans never fully recovered. Yet, nearly four decades later, Coppola’s back for a narrative strengthening re-edit (ergo ‘ENCORE’), beefing up one of the two main romances and retooling nightclub acts to add more content. (Coppola never met a film he didn’t want to re-edit.) Sure enough, the film is better . . . just not ‘better’ enough. Basically, a double romance steeped in fact-inspired mob & nightclub atmosphere, Richard Gere’s soigné cornet player recruited by sneering mobster ‘Dutch’ Schultz as chaperone to mistress Diane Ladd, quickly falls for her, then breaks away for Early Talkie stardom as Hollywood's on-screen mob guy. (It’s the George Raft Story.) Romance #2 has brother act Gregory & Maurice Hines splitting up when Gregory yearns for solo spots and fast-rising chanteuse Lonette McKee who keeps him at arm’s length since she ‘passing’ for white in segregated boîtes.* The Hines pair all but modeled on the famous Nicholas Brothers, but then two other guys show up as them! Still, this latter romance has dramatic interest and better music, slightly sabotaged by Coppola’s penchant for reaction shots when we just want to see the routines. Still, those Hineses can dance! But wait, there’s a third romance; or rather bromance for Cotton Club owners Bob Hoskins & Fred Gwynne. This beats ‘em all, pushing the usual platonic boundaries. These guys the only two who don’t look like they’re playing dress-up in period clothes. A bigger problem: the stories don’t feed off each other in William Kennedy’s screenplay. (Written during Kennedy’s brief heyday: this and a Pulitzer prize for IRONWEED, no other film credits.) Then, and it’s pure Coppola, a violent fugal ending lifted straight out of THE GODFATHER with inter-cut tap dance & mob hits rather than inter-cut baptism and rub-outs. Francis just asking for it.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *McKee fresh off a B’way revival of SHOW BOAT was the first Black actor to play Julie LaVerne, the river-boat beauty caught ‘passing’ for white. ALSO: Wait to the very end to see Gwen Verdon, as Gere’s mom, finally do a little dance step. (Verdon’s dancing on film worth every second captured.)
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