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Category:    Home > Reviews > Backstage Musical > Autobiography > Post Modernism > Stage > Surrealism > All That Jazz (1979/Fox/Criterion Collection/Blu-ray, Double DVD Dual Format Edition)

All That Jazz (1979/Fox/Criterion Collection/Blu-ray, Double DVD Dual Format Edition)


Picture: B+/B- Sound: B+/B- Extras: A Film: B+



Bob Fosse's 1979 semi-autographical film All That Jazz is another fabulous addition to the Criterion Collection and celebrates theater, love, lust, cinema, and life all in a top tale comparable in tone and story to Federico Fellini's masterpiece 8 1/2 (which is also available from Criterion). What makes this film notable is not only its incredible choreography, camera work, editing, and overall filmmaking but its ability to capture the essence of the life of the director and choreographer himself, Bob Fosse, and the life of a man who is dedicated to the arts to unhealthy and extreme lengths. As mentioned in the booklet that comes with this great set with an essay by critic Hilton Als, All That Jazz is a world of bodies.


All That Jazz stars Roy Scheider (Jaws) as Joe Gideon who is a famous theatre director and choreographer trying to balance work on his latest Broadway musical with editing a Hollywood film he has directed. He is a workaholic who chain-smokes cigarettes and sleeps with a number of his dancers. Without a daily dose of Vivaldi, Visine, Ala-Seltzer, Dexedrine, and sex then he wouldn't have the energy to keep up the biggest show of all - his life. After quick cutting montages of taking his daily drugs (an inspiration for the editing in Requiem For A Dream for sure) Scheider inevitably sells his character by looking at himself and proclaiming in the mirror - It's Showtime!


Joe's gorgeous girlfriend Katie Jagger, his famous dancer ex-wife Audrey Paris, and cute as a button daughter Michelle try to pull him back from the brink, but it is too late for his exhausted body and stress-ravaged heart to kept the showing going. Decades of overwork and constant stress have gotten to Gideon. In his imagination, throughout the film in a set that looks like a backstage disaster area, he flirts with a white angel of death named Angelique (played by Jessica Lange) and slowly gives himself to her.


Gideon's condition gets progressively worse. He is rushed to a hospital with chest pains after a particularly stressful script rehearsal (with the penny-pinching backers) and admitted with severe attacks of angina. Joe brushes off his symptoms, and attempts to leave to go back to rehearsal, but he collapses in the doctor's office and is ordered to stay in the hospital for three to four weeks to rest his heart and recover from his exhaustion.


The show is postponed, but Gideon continues his antics from the hospital bed. Champagne flows, endless strings of women frolic around his hospital room and the cigarettes are always lit. Cardiogram readings don't show any improvement - Gideon is playing with death. As the paltry reviews for his feature film (which has been released without him) come in, Gideon has a massive coronary and is taken straight to coronary artery bypass surgery. In an excellent sequence of crosscutting between surgery and a meeting - the backers for the show must decide now whether it's time to pack up or replace Gideon as the director.


The producers realize that the best way to recoup their money and make a profit, is to bet on Gideon dying - which would bring in a profit of over $500,000. Meanwhile, elements from Gideon's past life are staged in dazzling dream sequences of musical numbers he directs from his hospital bed while on life support. Realizing his death is imminent, his mortality unconquerable, Gideon has another heart attack. In the glittery finale, he goes through the five stages of death, which are anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance all that are featured in the stand-up routine he has been editing. As death closes in on Gideon, the fantasy episodes become more hallucinatory and extravagant and in a final epilogue that is set up as a truly monumental live variety show featuring everyone from his past, Gideon himself takes center stage.


The last act admittedly is a bit of a drag and there are one too many musical numbers that seem to all kind of be beating you over the head with the same message but the first two acts are so strong, it makes the long winded-ness forgivable. From a filmmaking and theatrical standpoint, the film is simply incredible.


The image on Blu-ray is so crisp that you feel like the dancers are going to jump off the screen and into your living room. The startling new 4K digital restoration in 1080p high definition preserves the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and was taken from the original film negative to ensure restoration accuracy. The sound is very good with a lossless 3.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray and a lossy Dolby Digital track for the DVDs. The Blu-ray contains the film and the supplemental materials while the DVDs in the set divide up the content with the feature on one disc and the supplements on the second. Total running time for the film clocks in around 123 minutes.


The special features on the disc are on par with previous Criterion Collection releases including Audio commentary featuring editor Alan Heim, Selected-scene audio commentary by actor Roy Scheider, New interviews with Heim and Fosse biographer Sam Wasson, New conversation between actors Ann Reinking and Erzsebet Foldi, Episode of the talk show Tomorrow from 1980, featuring director Bob Fosse and choreographer Agnes de Mille, Interviews with Fosse from 1981 and 1986, On-set footage, Portrait of a Choreographer, a 2007 documentary on Fosse, The Soundtrack: Perverting the Standards, a 2007 documentary about the film's music, and an Interview with George Benson from 2007, about his song On Broadway, which opens the film. PLUS: A terrific booklet featuring an essay by critic Hilton Als of The New Yorker as noted above.


If you are a fan of theater then this is a film that is a must see - especially in this excellent Criterion release.



- James Harland Lockhart V

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