All That Jazz

Description

“To be on the wire is life; the rest is waiting,” Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) says in Bob Fosse’s self-referential, self-lacerating penultimate—and prescient—feature. Like his creator, Gideon is a celebrated choreographer and stage and screen director and a dedicated womanizer, juggling estranged wife (and star of his new musical) Audrey (Leland Palmer), girlfriend Kate (Ann Reinking, who played the role to Fosse in real life) and various one-night stands. Genuine tenderness he reserves for his young daughter Michelle (Erzsebet Foldi). Frantically ping-ponging between his messy personal life, the edit on a Lenny-like feature film and show rehearsals, Gideon greets each morning the same way: eye drops, Alka-Seltzer, Dexedrine and a forced smile, “It’s showtime, folks!” Lately there is a new wrinkle: a fantasy life in which, in the company of a gorgeous, sardonic figment, Angelique (Jessica Lange), he grapples with intimations of his own mortality while looking ruefully back at his past. Fosse previously directed and choreographed the stage and screen productions of Sweet Charity (1960), the musical adaptation of Nights of Cabiria, and Federico Fellini’s influence is obvious—Fosse even employs the services of Fellini’s frequent cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno. But this Best Picture Oscar nominee is no imitation. With its arresting dance moves and show-stopping numbers that include the erotic “Take Off with Us” and the glittering, surreal “Bye Bye Life,” there is no mistaking it for anything but a Bob Fosse musical. And it is one that pulls off a neat trick, transforming the downbeat into the exuberant. –Pam Grady

Restored by Twentieth Century Fox in collaboration with The Film Foundation.

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