Directed by: Bob Fosse
Starring: Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking, Leland Palmer, Cliff Gorman
From: 20th Century Fox/Columbia
It’s showtime, folks!
I don’t even want to admit to how long I’ve had this movie on Blu-ray (from the Criterion Collection) and never pressed “play” to watch this in full until last night. There is no real explanation for this action on my part, especially after discovering that All That Jazz was as great as I had heard. I’m not a Broadway guy so I know precious little about Bob Fosse except that he was a choreographer and director on the stage who also directed several motion pictures. I have no idea if the behavior exhibited through his proxy in the film was a greatly sanitized version of a person who was a tyrant or just terrible in general… also, I don’t know if Fosse ever changed his hedonistic ways; as he suffered multiple heart attacks and this is how he died at the age of 60… perhaps it is better if I don’t know for certain.
Roy Scheider was great as Joe Gideon, a very thinly version of Fosse himself. Many events from his life were mirrored here; that includes Gideon working on preparing a new Broadway show while also editing a movie he directed about an infamous stand-up comedian. He constantly has a cigarette in his mouth, has a regiment of uppers/Alka-Seltzers/Visine each morning, and is a flagrant womanizer who has multiple partners who wish for commitment but he refuses. What a searing self-skewering Fosse delivers against himself; Gideon is rather sensitive to negative reviews, admits to being a bad spouse to his ex-wife & a father to his daughter, has bad health, seemingly doesn’t care if he lives or dies, and is just a selfish jerk overall. Many people probably wouldn’t want to expose all his flaws & faults to the entire world yet this is what Fosse did.
This story is told in a rather flashy style; I don’t want to spoil the journey for those that haven’t taken it yet, except that the movie morphs into something far wilder & weirder than what is presented in the beginning. I will say that Fosse took a rather morbidly humorous look at his own mortality and how his health was apparently so on the edge that this is why he did not star as himself. His internalized monologue was presented in a much more interesting fashion than just hearing his voice-over over random footage. The highlight (even more so than the music or the excellent choreography throughout) was the editing from Alan Heim-who you see in this movie as… an editor for Gideon’s film. Fosse and Heim’s work was a key component in making this movie such an enthralling watch—the two hours flew by rather quickly.
I’ve seen some hate the Gideon character and I won’t criticize those who felt turned off by that, or how horny this picture is in general. Personally, I am in the majority that thought this was a captivating motion picture due to its idiosyncratic storytelling and OOT lead character.
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