All That Jazz

1979 mortality musical

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 16/20)

Plot: A life of self-abuse and dance choreography and looking in mirrors and not being happy with what you see.

"I look in the mirror, and I'm embarrassed."

I pay attention to mirrors in movies anyway. I think the mirrors of this movie are especially important as director Bob Fosse is taking a brutally honest look at his own life, the decisions that have gotten him to where he's been and where he's at and where he can go, and his mortality. I love how cinema in the 1970's explored that idea of mortality. The decadence, all those drugs and all that sex, almost seem like forces beyond the control of these 70's characters. And the sex wasn't quite killing anybody yet, was it? From the hysterical montages at the beginning where the juxtapositions and editing and transitions develop the character of Joe Gideon to the 70's-flashed finale, one that defiantly puts the "final" in the word, one man's mortality shadows over this thing. It's in the recurring "joke" of a comedian talking about the "five stages of death," which I believe are actually supposed to be the five stages of grief. It's in that omnipresent cough. It's in the wrinkles on Scheider's face and the angelic Jessica Lange, a little too obviously named Angelique in this.

You might be tempted to watch this for the dance numbers, like a Busby Berkeley nightmare covered in film and jizz and cigarette ash and booze. And there are some very good ones. The climactic scene has some wonderful moments as Joe's life flashes before his eyes, seemingly. The risque performance of the work-in-progress for investors is also dazzling, Gideon working a flashlight, legs and more legs on full display, nipples making an appearance. Maybe it's the time period jive-talking, but it felt like watching Travolta, all beautiful body moving beautifully in a grimy world.

Scheider's really good in this. That guy had a nice run in the seventies with this, Jaws, Jaws 2, Sorcerer, Marathon Man, and The French Connection. He even got to play Dr. Benway in Naked Lunch a few years later. I wonder if you could show people this and Jaws back to back and fool them into thinking it's not the same guy in those movies. I guess you have to call that range, going from a movie that is all about a giant phallic symbol to one where he has trouble controlling his own phallus.

Sweet Charity, Cabaret, Lenny, and All That Jazz. That's a nice run for Bob Fosse! Of those, this is closest to Lenny, but that doesn't have the same gritty impressionistic style of this one. This is a late life in fragments, memory bursts, and flashes. Initially, I was irritated, but once I fell into the rhythm, it created this character at this particular moment in his life almost perfectly.

I feel like I spelled Roy Scheider's name wrong in this whole thing. I apologize to his family.