Jazzz, pizzazz, and a whole lot of razzmatazz
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Quite possibly the most autobiographical film musical ever made, All That Jazz (1979) was helmed by Bob Fosse, who also co-wrote and choreographed the movie. It offers a riveting peek into Fosse’s life via the character of Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), focusing on his struggles with artistic ambition, personal relationships, and his confrontation with mortality. Joe is a talented but self-destructive Broadway choreographer and director juggling the creation of a musical with his declining health and personal chaos.
Blending reality with fantasy, All That Jazz—costarring Jessica Lange, Leland Palmer, Ann Reinking, Ben Vereen, and John Lithgow—features surreal musical sequences that illustrate Gideon’s internal turmoil and relentless pursuit of artistic flawlessness. It earned widespread critical praise and several accolades, including the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Part of the fun of watching this film is paying attention to its meta elements – the way it’s self-referential and slyly comments on the process of filmmaking. Consider how the character of Joe is a loose representation of Bob Fosse, the film's director and choreographer. This adds a layer of self-reflection, as the narrative draws from Fosse’s own experiences in the entertainment world, turning the film into a commentary on both his personal life and professional journey. This movie is loosely based on a highly stressful period in Fosse’s life, in the mid-1970s, when he was both editing the film Lenny, which he directed, and attempting to stage the Broadway musical Chicago; Fosse actually did suffer a heart attack and underwent cardiac surgery, as does Joe, only Fosse survived until 1987, when he ended up succumbing to another heart attack.
Throughout the film, characters are also shown navigating the challenges of creating both a Broadway show and a movie. This behind-the-scenes perspective invites the audience to recognize that they are watching a story about the very process of filmmaking and theater production. But the meta-Easter eggs don’t stop there: the character of Kate is played by Fosse’s former girlfriend at the time, Ann Reinking; the editor Joe works with on the standup comic film he’s cutting is the actual editor of the film All That Jazz, Alan Heim; Cliff Gorman, who won a Tony Award for playing Lenny Bruce in the original stage production of Lenny, was cast as the lead in the film Joe is editing, The Stand-Up; and Audrey’s character is based on Fosse’s wise Gwen Verdon, his ongoing collaborator until Fosse’s death.
All That Jazz has been fairly criticized by some as being too self-indulgent. Of course, Fosse is an easy target here because, one could argue, he’s too close to the subject matter he’s directing to be impartial. It’s impossible to ignore the built-in subjectivity of his storytelling and direction. As overwhelming proof of his over-the-top self-importance, he has the character of Joe stage his own funeral as a song-and-dance showstopper.
However, Joe—and, by extension, Fosse—is quite self-deprecating and relatively censorious in how he’s depicted as a womanizer, substance abuser, perfectionist, and in denial about his physical health. Many of his lines and monologues are disparaging and regretful of his choices and behaviors. Criterion Collection essayist Hilton Als wrote: “…how can you think of All That Jazz as being self-indulgent when Fosse is so happy to take the piss out of himself? It’s part of what made him such a witty filmmaker—the joke was on him, and some other people too.” AV Club reviewer Scott Tobias had a similar take in his review: “With a sly wink and a devil's grin, courtesy of uncanny alter ego Roy Scheider, Fosse absorbs and defuses any criticism that could be leveled against him, constantly poking holes in his inflated reputation. He counters every piece of show-stopping craft, such as the dazzling cattle call that opens the 1979 film, with bitter, excoriating truths about his weaknesses and regrets, coming clean about the bad behavior that he correctly predicts will lead him to an early grave.”
At its core, this film is about fearing and flirting with death. All That Jazz is a cautionary tale about burning the candle at both ends, pushing the boundaries of indulgence and workaholism, and trying to defy death and mortality as a figurative tightrope walker – an innovator who sacrifices health and longevity for an opportunity to be great, suffering the ultimate punishment for his art. We literally see Joe dallying coquettishly with an angel of death, as personified by Jessica Lange in the mysteriously unveiled character of Angelique.
An obsessive pursuit of perfection and its consequences is a further treatise. Joe is always trying to top himself, to make a flawless film, choreograph a pristine song and dance number, and innovate the stage musical in ways that have never been done before. “It’s showtime,” we hear him say to himself in the mirror morning after morning, suggesting how pressured he feels to constantly perform. Joe is surely concerned about obsolescence and legacy, and his ego and narcissism fuel him toward a self-realized greatness, although at a great cost to his health and relationships. Per Slant Magazine’s Chuck Bowen: “All That Jazz is so head-spinning because it’s a deeply felt, deeply stylish, deeply alive movie about disconnection, degradation, and estrangement that abounds in lewd, boozy, intellectualized poetry. The fusion of those various contrasts was Fosse’s great specialty, and it’s right there, subsumed, in the film’s rococo photography and, especially, in the amazing dance numbers, which revel in a tone of macabre erotica that contextualizes Joe’s narcissism and self-aggrandizement vis-à-vis his sex fantasies and death wishes (dying, the ultimate stage exit, absolves Joe of selflessness)… All That Jazz is Fosse’s assertion that he can make art out of anything… The source of the film’s disconcertingly contradictory power resides in its understanding that, for the loved ones left in the wake of Joe’s aloof remoteness, the art, no matter how amazing it is for us, ultimately isn’t enough.”
Viewers are also continually reminded about the price paid for hubris. Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, Joe unrealistically aims for simultaneous superhuman success and conquest on the stage, the screen, and in the bedroom without reckoning upon the proper balance needed in his life to juggle all these endeavors effectively.
Additionally, Fosse’s film explores fact versus fiction, reality versus fantasy. All That Jazz blends realistic vignettes of Joe’s work and life with illusory sequences of surreality (such as the scenes involving Angelique, the hallucinatory segment in the hospital, and the Bye Bye Life number that concludes the film). The intercutting between the real world and the dream world creates a memorably visual hybrid that is as cinematically entertaining as it is also contrastingly jarring.
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To hear a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of All That Jazz, conducted last week, click here.
Part of the fun of watching this film is paying attention to its meta elements – the way it’s self-referential and slyly comments on the process of filmmaking. Consider how the character of Joe is a loose representation of Bob Fosse, the film's director and choreographer. This adds a layer of self-reflection, as the narrative draws from Fosse’s own experiences in the entertainment world, turning the film into a commentary on both his personal life and professional journey. This movie is loosely based on a highly stressful period in Fosse’s life, in the mid-1970s, when he was both editing the film Lenny, which he directed, and attempting to stage the Broadway musical Chicago; Fosse actually did suffer a heart attack and underwent cardiac surgery, as does Joe, only Fosse survived until 1987, when he ended up succumbing to another heart attack.
Throughout the film, characters are also shown navigating the challenges of creating both a Broadway show and a movie. This behind-the-scenes perspective invites the audience to recognize that they are watching a story about the very process of filmmaking and theater production. But the meta-Easter eggs don’t stop there: the character of Kate is played by Fosse’s former girlfriend at the time, Ann Reinking; the editor Joe works with on the standup comic film he’s cutting is the actual editor of the film All That Jazz, Alan Heim; Cliff Gorman, who won a Tony Award for playing Lenny Bruce in the original stage production of Lenny, was cast as the lead in the film Joe is editing, The Stand-Up; and Audrey’s character is based on Fosse’s wise Gwen Verdon, his ongoing collaborator until Fosse’s death.
All That Jazz has been fairly criticized by some as being too self-indulgent. Of course, Fosse is an easy target here because, one could argue, he’s too close to the subject matter he’s directing to be impartial. It’s impossible to ignore the built-in subjectivity of his storytelling and direction. As overwhelming proof of his over-the-top self-importance, he has the character of Joe stage his own funeral as a song-and-dance showstopper.
However, Joe—and, by extension, Fosse—is quite self-deprecating and relatively censorious in how he’s depicted as a womanizer, substance abuser, perfectionist, and in denial about his physical health. Many of his lines and monologues are disparaging and regretful of his choices and behaviors. Criterion Collection essayist Hilton Als wrote: “…how can you think of All That Jazz as being self-indulgent when Fosse is so happy to take the piss out of himself? It’s part of what made him such a witty filmmaker—the joke was on him, and some other people too.” AV Club reviewer Scott Tobias had a similar take in his review: “With a sly wink and a devil's grin, courtesy of uncanny alter ego Roy Scheider, Fosse absorbs and defuses any criticism that could be leveled against him, constantly poking holes in his inflated reputation. He counters every piece of show-stopping craft, such as the dazzling cattle call that opens the 1979 film, with bitter, excoriating truths about his weaknesses and regrets, coming clean about the bad behavior that he correctly predicts will lead him to an early grave.”
At its core, this film is about fearing and flirting with death. All That Jazz is a cautionary tale about burning the candle at both ends, pushing the boundaries of indulgence and workaholism, and trying to defy death and mortality as a figurative tightrope walker – an innovator who sacrifices health and longevity for an opportunity to be great, suffering the ultimate punishment for his art. We literally see Joe dallying coquettishly with an angel of death, as personified by Jessica Lange in the mysteriously unveiled character of Angelique.
An obsessive pursuit of perfection and its consequences is a further treatise. Joe is always trying to top himself, to make a flawless film, choreograph a pristine song and dance number, and innovate the stage musical in ways that have never been done before. “It’s showtime,” we hear him say to himself in the mirror morning after morning, suggesting how pressured he feels to constantly perform. Joe is surely concerned about obsolescence and legacy, and his ego and narcissism fuel him toward a self-realized greatness, although at a great cost to his health and relationships. Per Slant Magazine’s Chuck Bowen: “All That Jazz is so head-spinning because it’s a deeply felt, deeply stylish, deeply alive movie about disconnection, degradation, and estrangement that abounds in lewd, boozy, intellectualized poetry. The fusion of those various contrasts was Fosse’s great specialty, and it’s right there, subsumed, in the film’s rococo photography and, especially, in the amazing dance numbers, which revel in a tone of macabre erotica that contextualizes Joe’s narcissism and self-aggrandizement vis-à-vis his sex fantasies and death wishes (dying, the ultimate stage exit, absolves Joe of selflessness)… All That Jazz is Fosse’s assertion that he can make art out of anything… The source of the film’s disconcertingly contradictory power resides in its understanding that, for the loved ones left in the wake of Joe’s aloof remoteness, the art, no matter how amazing it is for us, ultimately isn’t enough.”
Viewers are also continually reminded about the price paid for hubris. Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, Joe unrealistically aims for simultaneous superhuman success and conquest on the stage, the screen, and in the bedroom without reckoning upon the proper balance needed in his life to juggle all these endeavors effectively.
Additionally, Fosse’s film explores fact versus fiction, reality versus fantasy. All That Jazz blends realistic vignettes of Joe’s work and life with illusory sequences of surreality (such as the scenes involving Angelique, the hallucinatory segment in the hospital, and the Bye Bye Life number that concludes the film). The intercutting between the real world and the dream world creates a memorably visual hybrid that is as cinematically entertaining as it is also contrastingly jarring.
Similar works
- Fellini’s 8½
- Stardust Memories
- A Chorus Line
- Flashdance
- Chicago
- Marriage Story, also directed by a man whom the lead male character is based upon
- A Star Is Born
- Birdman
- Synecdoche, New York
Other films directed by Bob Fosse
- Sweet Charity
- Cabaret
- Lenny
- Star 80