“It’s showtime folks!”
Doing this series, it isn’t often that I wind up disliking a classic movie I review. Most of the time these films are classics for a reason and they stand up well to scrutiny. However one of the joys of doing Back to the Feature, and indeed a reason behind it, is when I discover something that truly astounds me, a film that proves profoundly more affecting than I expected it to be and almost instantaneously joins my personal list of Great Movies. All That Jazz I’m pretty sure is one of those films.
I shouldn’t be surprised -it’s a favourite of a lot of other movie nerds I respect. A self-indulgent yet breathtakingly stylish and exciting musical comedy-drama about the deterioration of a charismatic bastard of a Broadway director, Bob Fosse’s 1979 pseudo-biographical masterpiece is generally considered to be his version of Fellini’s 8 ½. That clearly seems to have been a model, given both films share a lot of the same themes and basically the same structure of a director’s life being largely interpreted through significant relationships with various women. But for it’s Fellini-esque narrative tendencies and indulgences in fantasy, All That Jazz is through and through a Bob Fosse movie -with no equal anywhere else.
By which I mean it is purely a personal project for Fosse, informed heavily by his own experiences and his world of the Broadway stage. I’m mostly a casual Broadway fan myself so my knowledge of the guy is pretty limited to Cabaret and Chicago (from where this movie gets its’ title); the greater nuances of Fosse’s artistic voice are lost on me, but I can still detect it all over this movie in its’ show-tune rhythm and theatricality (it would make for a great stage musical in and of itself). It is less musical than Fosse’s other musicals, with numbers coming few and far between for much of the movie, and usually belonging to the show-within-a-show –at least until the ending. This fits though with the nature of the movie being more grounded in reality than certainly Chicago (Cabaret also limits itself to diegetic musical numbers but to more frequent effect). Yet it’s more fantastical and artificial as well, dotted throughout by dreamy interludes of omniscient commentary between a seductive reaper and our portentous protagonist.
It’s about time I got to him, and the premise of the movie itself. All That Jazz is the story of Joe Gideon, played by Roy Scheider in what has to be his best performance, a theatre director turned filmmaker struggling to both prep an upcoming Broadway show and complete arduous post-production on a movie he just shot (apparently inspired by Fosse’s own stress in a similar situation casting and developing Chicago whilst editing his Lenny Bruce biopic in 1974). He is an extreme workaholic, a chain-smoker, and like Fosse, a serial adulterer, with health issues stemming from all three. The show he’s directing NY/LA stars his ex-wife Audrey (Leland Palmer –presumably based on Gwen Verdon) and requires a high level of elaborate choreography. His movie, like Lenny, is about a stand-up comic, and he pores over the same footage of a comedy set related to the stages of grief in a hopeless attempt to get it to work. On both projects he is a consummate perfectionist –his life entirely revolves around the showbiz machine, it’s even how he filters it from the outside looking in.
Right off the bat that’s one of the most interesting aspects of the movie, Joe’s inner monologue and his character outside of the main narrative as a reflective observer and audience surrogate. Shot on a dark backstage cluttered with props, it is a fitting metaphor for his mind. It would make sense too that his subconscious conjuring of the angel of death would take the form of an attractive woman. Jessica Lange’s Angelique coolly props him up, flirts with him, provokes him, and ever so subtly tries to veer him towards the end. One of my favourite moments is when in the heat of some intense talk, they lean in to kiss but Joe stops at the last moment -playfully scolding her. This Joe unlike the Joe in the corporeal world is aware of what is happening here and why, but he won’t be tricked into letting go (“don’t bullshit a bullshitter” he says). However, Angelique is a very charming and relentless temptress, and Joe can’t help but be charming back, slowly laying out his insecurities and feelings about the world, about his work, as he does. It’s these sequences that make Joe empathetic and Fosse knows it. Some might take it as too easy or pretentious a device to allow a character to spell out their foibles so openly, state exactly who they are and how they feel, but I find it really adds nuance to the guy we’re seeing in the more relatable setting -who is very much the same person but slightly more guarded as to his own insecurities, and doesn’t much reveal the depth of his depression. That is what he’s dealing with, try as he might to hide it in his physical energy and his sense of humour. In his limbo though Angelique is his therapist, his confessor, his confidant, whom he doesn’t have on Earth. With her he shares his feelings of artistic inadequacy, his patterns of failed relationships, and all in a tone bereft of high emotion -it’s just the way things are for him. Ominous in that it’s only as he nears death that he can confront them.
Joe’s performance is a well-rehearsed one -the theatre director wouldn’t have it any other way. One of the more memorable things in the movie is the repetition of his morning routine, shot and edited very precisely and set to a recording of Vivaldi (which Joe actually plays to wake himself up). He puts in eye drops, he showers, possibly more eye drops, takes some painkillers and amphetamines, plucks a new cigarette, and looks into the mirror to say “it’s showtime, folks!” (usually with jazz hands) as a way to pump himself up or reassure his ego. It’s a means of getting into character as well, but one whom he can’t keep up, his lifestyle frequently wearing him down. The films’ depiction of the effects of overwork are jarringly stark; Joe looks a wreck most of the day even as he maintains a quippy demeanour and unyielding confidence through all the stress and the glaring issues in his personal life. But we also get a good sense of his talents. Living musical theatre means you have to be good at it and he dances as well as any of them, can choreograph a musical number excellently -even if that number is a somewhat vindictive orgiastic affair with topless women and a lot of homoeroticism. His competence though is what makes it that much harder where he’s a dictator with his cast, and particularly to a young dancer he hired off her looks and is having a fling with (even as he commiserates and reassures her, he can’t lie that he won’t stop yelling). It’s egregious, but also has a distinctly honest streak to it, either for Fosse or more likely the general character of Broadway directors during this time.
Victoria (Deborah Geffner) is perhaps the least of his complicated relationships. Easily the most engaging is the one between him and Audrey, still partners professionally, and emotionally attached to one another, but with a lot of bitterness still hanging around. Audrey understands Joe better than anyone and Palmer plays their scenes with the utmost assertion of that power. With less power but still a great degree of agency in her relationship to him is Joe’s current and most committed of his affairs Katie, played by Ann Reinking, Fosse’s own partner at the time. Katie is the woman Joe knows he needs to settle down with, the only woman around who seems to genuinely love him in spite of all his awfulness -the one who can see his greater qualities. Plus, she has an awesome relationship with Joe’s daughter Michelle (Erzsébet Földi) that is incredibly endearing -Michelle also really wants Katie to be her new mom. In one touching scene, the pair of them put on a dance number for him, both of course having been taught by him, and it’s the only time his barriers are broken down and he cries. And yet somehow he can’t quite bring himself to take the steps necessary to make such an arrangement permanent. Because his womanizing is implied to be another outlet of insecurity and in pursuit of a certain kind of love he craves. When Audrey snaps at him to tell her the name of the blonde in Philadelphia with a T.V. show, Joe can’t remember and is genuinely distressed by this. Callous and toxic though he is, he cares about these flings because he desperately wants them to have meaning. And hence why it’s the three most important women who have come the closest to giving him that: Audrey, Katie, and Michelle, who appeal to him in his subconscious as he starts to slip away.
The heart issues he is eventually treated for are a ticking time bomb all through the movie -there’s only so much stress he can take and habits like his near constant smoking and sex can’t be helping matters. Eventually he collapses at a table read and is diagnosed with critical angina -he spends much of the rest of the film reluctantly in hospital. But even in these circumstances he refuses to let up on his self-destruction, throwing parties in his hospital room and continuing to engage in hazardous vices. What’s most disheartening about this is that it is in lieu of the support he receives from his family, who come to his bedside with sympathy and love. As a part of his guardedness, he can’t take his condition seriously. What finally pushes him over though, convinces him this is real, is when he sees a negative review on T.V. of his now released movie -in spite of the assurances by his colleagues that it is a hit. Having invested so much time into that project, it’s what causes him a heart attack.
Well, the first of several heart attacks. Joe even undergoes a bypass surgery, graphically and chillingly shown as investors (one of whom is Wallace Shawn!) morbidly entertain the possibility that his death would be better for their insurance on his show. It’s downright reminiscent of Network. No longer able to delude himself and being too far gone to do anything, he sinks back to the recesses of his mind. And apart from one disorienting escape through the hospital in which he enacts those five stages of grief repeated so often throughout the film in the stand-up clip he was obsessively editing, the action remains internal from then on. It’s here where Fosse just lets loose with whimsy and musical fantasy, finally injecting more musical numbers (though not original ones) into the piece; starting with one performed by images of Audrey, Kate, and Michelle on a lavish set, “After You’ve Gone” -in which they beg Joe not to die as he lays in a hospital bed in an empty chasm, the ladies being directed by an approximation of himself, who is dryly critical and sardonic to his bedridden counterpart.
I recognize now where the central conceit and much of the tone for “The View from Halfway Down”, the masterful penultimate episode of BoJack Horseman, came from. In fact I might venture to guess that All That Jazz is a favourite of Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s as there are a lot of other elements to the movie that BoJack seems to have taken influence from, not least in the lead character (and perhaps that’s another reason I liked it so much). This final sequence of the movie though is really creatively and aesthetically exceptional, I can see why it makes for a great reference point. The variety show format that Joe’s subconscious ultimately takes on, once again foreshadowed all throughout, is such a compelling construct. They say your last moments reveal who you really are, and that’s certainly how its’ presented here. Joe is a showman till the very end. Each song sung to him, mostly by those women, is explicitly relevant. “Who’s Sorry Now” sticks it to his pride, “Some of These Days” emphasizes the emptiness without the people he took for granted. Reinking especially gets to show off her dance talents here in increasingly elaborate numbers -Fosse staging it all impeccably with every technique in his toolbox. It culminates in Scheider’s first song of the film, which he performs well, decked out with an uncharacteristic glamour, attractive and stylish and in his prime. “Bye Bye Life” is exactly what it sounds like, but Joe performs it for everyone he ever knew with an upbeat spirit and bravura passion. It’s a wild exuberant number too that he sings with Ben Vereen’s talk show host and back-up dancers dressed as arteries. At last and in the wake of a standing ovation he finds himself conveyed down a formidable tunnel, Angelique waiting for him at the end. He looks relieved.
Fosse ends his film by sharply cutting to Joe being wrapped in a body bag, as unremarkable as can be next to everything that preceded it. A stark and bitter reminder that Joe’s fantasy was only that, his death had no grandeur. It’s hard not to speculate on what Fosse meant by this -perhaps it was to dispel any romanticism lingering in that final segment. One has to imagine he had renewed convictions about his mortality following his own open-heart surgery five years earlier.
All That Jazz was a risky film to put out, as it seems to reveal so much about its’ filmmaker, both the good and the bad. He’s upfront about it all, self-conscious and critical, which makes it even more personal; very much the epitome of a therapy movie, driven by ego and about ego. But the powerful insight it offers through that is undeniable, the captivating ideas and symbols and themes on depression and death it provokes are indelible. Fosse, very much like his movie double, sees art as his primary means of personal expression; what he expresses in All That Jazz and how transcends any pompous self-absorption. The humanity of the film I think helps as well, it applies to multiple facets. It’s not a ‘woe-is-me’ kind of movie either, it’s fun: weird, entertaining, semi-satirical, and awfully funny when it wants to be -Scheider’s performance is charismatic in the extreme! All That Jazz is one of those movies you hear of, hear that it’s good -if not necessarily one of the greats, but once you do see it you realize you’ve been missing out. I’ll be watching it again for sure.
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