All that Jazz (Bob Fosse 1979)
Sunday 18th December 2016
Bob Fosse was one of the most influential and innovative dance masters of his era. His sensual and provocative approach had a revolutionary effect, adapting the traditions that had been established in the first half of the 20th century in Hollywood and Broadway based musical production numbers to the more explicit sensibilities that gained traction in the 1960s and '70s.
In 1972 he won an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony Award all in the same year. In his
All That Jazz, Fosse staged an idealised and impeccably staged version of his own exit from this world, complete with celebrity cameos, disco-era stage lighting, a cast of hundreds and a warped, darkly hilarious musical soundtrack to send him on his way into eternity.
The film tells the story of Joe Gideon, a chain-smoking, hard-driving, pill-popping alcoholic womanizer who is also a supremely talented designer of dance routines. We’re introduced to him in a powerful opening scene as he magistrates over an open casting call and then find ourselves in the self-generated whirlwind of Gideon’s life. He’s beset on all sides by pressures from past and present lovers, a neglected preteen daughter who craves his attention, producers demanding accountability for the dollars they’ve entrusted to him and various sycophants seeking to hitch their fortune to his obvious success. Gideon however is on the fast track to oblivion, as a few decades of hard living fuelled by nicotine, booze and amphetamines takes its inevitable toll on his body and psyche. His alone time is disrupted by the increasingly hard-to-ignore presence of Angelique, a beautiful otherworldly messenger played by Jessica Lange. Angelique is basically on the scene to help Joe make his final reckoning, if not quite reconciliation, with all the broken relationships that trail behind him after his 50-odd years of life so far.
Fosse’s method of telling the story is that of a rapidly-cut phantasmagoria, alternating between unvarnished rehearsal sequences that show the creative process stripped of its glamour and focused on the grit, scenes of domestic clashes where Gideon is forced to come to terms with the heartaches and disappointments caused by his infidelities and vain ambitions, and the swirl of memories and fantasies that have fuelled his drive to project himself as something other than the wretched fake and failure that he views himself as when left alone with his thoughts. The needs of his current lover and his daughter belatedly start receiving more of his attention. They capture his gaze (and ours) by virtue of an adorable dance routine they perform on the stairs and floor of the home they share. It’s a welcome humanizing moment for Gideon and his clan, but the tranquillity is short-lived. We’re ushered into a different kind of theatre, that of the surgical variety, in order to get a brief but raw glimpse at open heart surgery powerful stuff for a musical and clearly a note of warning.
The final half-hour of
All That Jazz fully lives up to just about any praise bestowed on the film. It’s a full-fledged eruption of Fosse/Gideon’s psyche, the portrayal of all the guilt, fear, cynicism, aspiration, creative genius and desperate clutching after life’s elusive pleasures. Gideon himself takes centre stage, putting Roy Scheider’s talents to their supreme test as he channels the angst and inner tumult that Fosse wrote into the character of his alter-ego.
The film will be introduced by Jonathan Magonet and will be followed by discussion, tea, coffee and desserts.
