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Alexander’s Ragtime Band Movie Review

Alexander’s Ragtime Band is a 1938 musical film directed by Henry King and starring Tyrone Power, Alice Faye and Don Ameche. It’s a fun, but weakly scripted flick.

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“She started the heat wave

by letting her feet wave“

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The movie is set in 1915 San Francisco where society boy Roger Grant decides to pursue popular rather than serious music. The movie was made with the main purpose to track back the entire history of jazz up to that point while also heavily utilizing on famous numbers from Irving Berlin. It’s thus less a story, but more a time capsule in a way as these songs were extremely popular back in their prime.

The plot itself is quite weak. I generally find these movies that span many years and even decades tiresome, and that was certainly the case with the film’s second half. However, I did like the first half of the film quite a bit as it made use of its characters’ relationships and interactions quite well.

There are too many characters here, but I did like most of them. Alice Faye is clearly one of the standouts here in a well written role whereas Tyrone Power is just as handsome and charming as he always is. They made use of his charm quite well in this instance. Don Ameche is less memorable and all the others are forgettable. Individually, these aren’t great, but as a group they are solid as their shared histories were well depicted.

Alexander’s Ragtime Band is above all else a musical, and a grand one at that as it features a high number of songs and terrific sets, costumes and choreography. Now It Can Be Told may have been nominated for an Oscar, but to me that number was the blandest and most boring of the bunch. The titular song is fun, That International Rag is also entertaining and Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning is also a whole lot of fun. The movie is definitely amusing, but it needed more essence to it, and not just song after song. Needless to say, it did not deserve most of its Oscar nominations. The sets are great, but the acting and everything else was subpar.

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Alexander’s Ragtime Band can be a lot of fun in its first half whereas the second half became tiresome. The movie benefits from a great collection of fun Irving Berlin musical numbers and great art direction, but the characterization and especially the plot left a lot to be desired in this song-heavy Oscar nominee.