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Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1980 Cannes film festival, All That Jazz is Bob Fosse’s semi-autobiographical love letter to Broadway, show business, and himself, based on Fosse’s own experiences surrounding his heart attack while working on the Lenny Bruce biopic Lenny and the Broadway production of Chicago. Roy Scheider plays a fictitious version of Bob Fosse named Joe Gideon, a workaholic, sex-crazed director and choreographer who “allowed himself to be adored, but not loved.” Weaving a narrative of Gideon’s work and personal life with incredibly staged fantasy sequences featuring Jessica Lange as the Angel of Death (saved from the chopping block despite the studio’s efforts), All That Jazz fully unlocks the manic power of the motion picture musical and throws away any concern about what that should be. Scheider (whose resemblance to a younger Fosse is downright spooky) got addicted, too, and said he wished the production could go on forever. Though the film is probably most resonant to egomaniacs — Stanley Kubrick once described it as “the best film I think I’ve ever seen” — it is an accurate portrayal of how it feels to be burning the midnight oil even in the most menial part of show business: thrilling and disappointing, life-defining and meaningless, and unexplainably, undeniably important. 

35mm from Criterion Pictures, USA

Preceded by: Trailer for “Lenny” (Bob Fosse, 1974) – 35mm