The lives of various characters intersect in 1920s Harlem, at the renowned jazz venue the Cotton Club. Handsome horn player Dixie Dwyer falls for Vera, the stunning girlfriend of famous gangster Dutch Schultz. But Dixie aspires to a career in Hollywood, imitating Schultz on-screen.

The Cotton Club is perhaps Coppola’s most underrated film. An intricate reckoning with the race and class relations of the 30s, the film bursts at the seams with ecstasy as it lavishly revives one of the 20th century’s key spaces of black artistry.