SOURCE: Thomson, David. “Redtime.” Film Comment 18, no. 1 (January-February 1982): 11-16.

In the following excerpt, Thomson argues against Ragtime's negative critical reception, asserting that the film is well adapted and masterfully directed.

Milos Forman's film of Ragtime omits many delightful views and moments from the book. Why not? It is a film, and it has assets denied to the novel. It does not go to the North Pole with Peary and Father, or to the pyramids with J. P. Morgan. J. P.'s strawberry nose and his stomach rumblings about reincarnation are both dropped: apart from a “newsreel” flash, the film's Morgan is only the absent owner of a fatuous museum that looks like the tomb left by some earlier and erased civilization, or like the spacecraft from another planet, spreading unreality through Manhattan. There is no Emma Goldman in this movie, no opportunity for Emma to administer that...