Stars: Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Ben Vereen, Cliff Gorman, John Lithgow, Ann Reinking, John Lithgow, Leland Palmer

Director: Bob Fosse

Summary: Bob Fosse's spellbinding film celebrates show business, stripped of glamour or dizzy illusions. The storyline provides the viewer with a semi-autobiographical peek into his life, with great dancing and music.

Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical film celebrates show business stripped of glamour or giddy illusions. Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is at the top of the heap, one of the most successful directors and choreographers in musical theatre. But he can feel his world slowly collapsing around him: His obsession with work has almost destroyed his personal life, and only his bottles of pills keep him going. As he struggles to right his relationships with his ex-wife, his lover, and his daughter, he also has to cope with his failing health. Soon it's clear he'll have to make a choice: his art--or his life. A talented director and choreographer of both film and stage, Fosse was perhaps best known for helming the film version of CABARET and creating the musical CHICAGO.

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Choreographer-turned-director Bob Fosse turns the camera on himself in All That Jazz, a 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 co-wrote 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 insights into the libidinal core of the choreographer's dynamic, sexualised 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 Jazzoffers a sequence of classic Fosse numbers--hard-edged, caustic and joyously physical. --Sam Sutherland

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen, 16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Scene Specific Commentary From Actor Roy Scheider, Three Interview Clips With Roy Scheider, Five Clips Of Bob Fosse On Set, Theatrical Trailer
Subtitles:	Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish
Year:	1979
Release Date:	June 30, 2003
Runtime:	118 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	01095 D V D
Keywords:	Music, That, Jazz, Films, Shows, All, Performing, Musicals, Arts
Genre:	Music/Performing Arts