Amazon.com video review:
Choreographer-turned-director Bob Fosse (Cabaret,
Lenny) turns the camera on
himself in this nervy, sometimes unnerving 1979 feature, a nakedly
autobiographical piece that veers from gritty drama to razzle-dazzle
musical, allegory to satire. It's an indication of his bravura, and
possibly his self-absorption, that Fosse (who also cowrote the script)
literally opens alter ego Joe Gideon's heart in a key scene--an
unflinching glimpse of cardiac surgery, shot during an actual open-heart
procedure.
Roy Scheider makes a brave and largely successful leap out of his usual
romantic lead roles to step into Gideon's dancing pumps, and supplies a
plausible sketch of an extravagant, self-destructive, self-loathing
creative dynamo, while Jessica Lange serves as a largely allegorical Muse,
one of the various women that the philandering Gideon pursues (and
usually abandons). Gideon's other romantic partners include Fosse's own
protégé (and a major keeper of his choreographic style since his
death),
Ann Reinking, whose leggy grace is seductive both "onstage" and off.
Fosse/Gideon's collision course with mortality, as well as his priapic
obsession with the opposite sex, may offer clues into the libidinal core of
the choreographer's dynamic, sexualized style of dance, but musical
aficionados will be forgiven for fast-forwarding to cut out the
self-analysis and focus on the music, period. At its best--as in the
knockout opening, scored to George Benson's strutting version of "On
Broadway," which fuses music, dance, and dazzling camera work into a paean
to Fosse's hoofer nation--All That Jazz offers a sequence of
classic Fosse numbers, hard-edged, caustic, and joyously physical. --Sam
Sutherland
