All That Jazz

Director: Bob Fosse

1979 / 123min / DCP

“It’s showtime, folks!” Playing the chain-smoking, Dexedrine-and-Alka-Seltzer-popping, serially womanizing workaholic choreographer/filmmaker Joe Gideon, a perpetually black-clad Roy Scheider is the thinly-disguised alter ego of director Fosse, whose musical film à clef dramatizes a bout of manic work in the mid-’70s that nearly killed him. A gloomy, death-obsessed, self-flagellating work that nevertheless crackles throughout with moments of ecstatic cinematic verve, including the bravura audition scene set to George Benson’s cover of “On Broadway” and the flatline grand finale of “Bye, Bye Life,” cut with flair by editor Alan Heim.

"I find this movie still enthralling even though I must have seen it 100 times. It has workplace and work process minutia, which I always love, it is really funny without taking away any of the weight of the feelings, all the performers are at the peak of their abilities and since their artform is completely unfamiliar, I can’t be distractedly jealous but only be in awe. Surrealism even gets in there out of left field. The absolute feeling of passion it was made with is what really stays with you." — Louise Bonnet