From the 1930s through the 1960s, musicals were one of Hollywood's favorite genres.
The best of them were bouncy, tuneful, and fun. And almost all of them, from
42nd
Street to
The Sound of Music, were comedies that softened the dark sides
of their stories-if there
were any dark sides-with jokes, gags, and happy
endings.
Bob Fosse's spectacular
All That Jazz, now available on DVD in a "Special
Music Edition" from 20th Century Fox, belongs to the modernist breed of musicals
(e.g.,
Cabaret,
Chicago,
The Phantom of the Opera) that have
too much darkness to be called true comedies at all. If you're a traditionalist who
thinks a musical should trade in light-hearted laughs, you won't be pleased with
Fosse's tragicomic portrait of a show-business genius burning himself out with
addictions to everything from alcohol and cigarettes to speed, sex, and work, work,
work. The story has a fair share of funny moments, but even these have a fever-dream
ferocity about them. Love it or hate it, you've never seen a musical-or any kind of
movie-quite like it.
The main character, choreographer and filmmaker Joe Gideon, is based directly on
Fosse himself-so directly that you can spot Fosse's home address on the
Dexadrine bottle Joe picks up every day to jump-start his morning. Joe is hard at work
on a new Broadway show, auditioning dancers and dreaming up new production
numbers. At the same time he's editing his new movie, obviously based on Fosse's
own 1974 biopic about comedian Lenny Bruce, and trying to stay on good terms with
his exwife and young daughter.
He's also cruising for a walloping heart attack, but no amount of pleading by his
friends can get him to smoke a single Camel less or relax his work-hard-play-hard
habits for a moment. When disaster inevitably strikes, he even turns his hospital room
into a party zone. Can he keep this up forever? Probably not--which may be why he's
started looking back over his life, trading memories and might-have-beens in his
dressing room with Angelique, an alluring angel of death.
Many critics accused Fosse of shameless self-indulgence in
All That Jazz,
complaining that the movie's countless similarities to his own well-publicized
experiences amount to navel-gazing narcissism. Fosse's actual death in 1987, from
the same sort of heart attack that bushwhacks Joe, seemed to prove their point. But
what these pundits missed was the huge amount of severe self-criticism Fosse built
into the picture. As likable as he is, Joe is also a wildly irresponsible guy who's
wrecked his marriage by cheating and undermined his health by abusing every
substance in sight. Even his work is suffering from his recklessness. The dialogue for
his new show is so awful he can't bear listening to it, and his producers wouldn't mind
if his failing heart put him clean out of the business, since they're afraid his sexy
routines will scare off family audiences. Self-indulgent or not, Fosse's
autobiographical movie is anything but flattering.
Although its content is rooted in Fosse's life during the early 1970s, when he was
staging
Chicago for Broadway and editing
Lenny at the same time, the
style of
All That Jazz is plainly inspired by Federico Fellini's towering 1963
masterpiece
8½, about a director struggling to escape the filmmaking
equivalent of writer's block. Fosse even hired
8½ cinematographer Giuseppe
Rotunno to shoot
All That Jazz. Just as
8½ leaps freely between
reality and fantasy, Fosse's film embeds its copious flights of imagination in
hyperactive dances that interweave with the story as Joe conducts training sessions
and rehearsals. Realistic elements fade altogether when Joe's body kicks up a last
lethal protest against his rotten health habits. The movie's final half hour, labeled a
"hospital hallucination," is a free-flowing stream of song-and-dance delirium packed
with his fantasies and fears. The ending is exactly what you would have expected, but
it packs a strong emotional punch all the same.
Before he appeared in
All That Jazz, star Roy Scheider was best known for
action pictures like
The French Connection and
Jaws, and many
Hollywood insiders were surprised when Fosse chose him. It doesn't take much close
analysis of the movie to tell that Scheider is no dancer. But he manages to fake his
way through the modest choreography Fosse designed for him, and his acting in the
dramatic scenes is excellent, making Joe steadily sympathetic without downplaying
his zillions of character flaws. Scheider also looks exactly right, although he sports
more hair than Fosse, who covered his baldness with the hats that became one of his
trademarks. The first-rate supporting cast includes Fosse protégé Ann Reinking as
Joe's girlfriend, Erzsebet Foldi as his daughter, Jessica Lange as the dark angel, Ben
Vereen as an over-the-top entertainer, Cliff Gorman as the actor playing Lenny
Bruce-great casting, since Gorman played Bruce in
Lenny on the Broadway
stage--and Leland Palmer as Joe's former wife, based on the great dancer Gwen
Verdon, who was married to Fosse in real life.
It's appropriate that the "Special Music Edition" of
All That Jazz comes
complete with a Fosse-style top hat and gloves, fun to have even though they're
cheesier than the genuine articles. Among the DVD extras are two useless shorts
extolling Fosse's greatness, a sing-along version of the song "Take Off With Us," a
special menu for accessing the film's musical numbers, and a commentary track by
film editor Alan Heim, who says surprisingly little about his Oscar-winning film editing,
but does explain how hard it was to avoid showing the bottoms of the dancers'
feet-one of Fosse's rules, since he hated the dirt that accumulated there.
Fosse was a superb choreographer-see
The Pajama Game and
Damn
Yankees! for great examples of his brilliance-and a daring filmmaker, with
Lenny and the jolting
Star 80 to his credit. His death at 60 years old
cut short an amazing career. But according to
All That Jazz, it was a death
at least partly of his own doing.
For more information about
All That Jazz: Special Music Edition, visit
Fox Home Entertainment To
order
All That Jazz: Special Music Edition, go to
TCM Shopping.
by David Sterritt
