
*** watch All That Jazz!! ***
Choreographer-turned-director Bob Fosse (Cabaret, Lenny) turns the camera on himself in this nervy, sometimes unnerving 1979 feature, a nakedly autobiographical piece that veers from gritty drama to razzle-dazzle musical, allegory to satire. It’s an indication of his bravura, and possibly his self-absorption, that Fosse (who also cowrote the script) literally opens alter ego Joe Gideon’s heart in a key scene–an unflinching glimpse of cardiac surgery, shot during an actual open-heart procedure.
Roy Scheider makes a brave and largely successful leap out of his usual romantic lead roles to step into Gideon’s dancing pumps, and supplies a plausible sketch of an extravagant, self-destructive, self-loathing creative dynamo, while Jessica Lange serves as a largely allegorical Muse, one of the various women that the philandering Gideon pursus (and usually abandons). Gideon’s other romantic partners include Fosse’s own protege (and a major keeper of his choreographic style since his death), Ann Reinking, whose leggy grace is seductive both “onstage” and off.
Fosse/Gideon’s collision course with mortality, as well as his priapic obsession with the opposite sex, may offer clus into the libidinal core of the choreographer’s dynamic, sexualized style of dance, but musical aficionados will be forgiven for fast-forwarding to cut out the self-analysis and focus on the music, period. At its best–as in the knockout opening, scored to George Benson’s strutting version of “On Broadway,” which fuses music, dance, and dazzling camera work into a paean to Fosse’s hoofer nation–All That Jazz offers a sequnce of classic Fosse numbers, hard-edged, caustic, and joyously physical. –Sam Sutherland
All That Jazz is awesome. I’ve probably seen it 20 times, and I never get tired of it. Have you seen it? If you click the image above you can learn how you can watch it now, or any time.
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