All That Jazz (1979)

A theatre director and choreographer (Roy Scheider) is working overtime editing his new film and staging his new Broadway musical. His excesses which include non stop smoking and sleeping around even though he has a girlfriend (Ann Reinking) is beginning to take its toll. Directed by Bob Fosse (CABARET), this surreal drama/musical fantasy loosely based on Fosse's own life won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival. Specfically, the movie focuses on the period when he was editing LENNY (1974) while staging the original production of CHICAGO which opened in 1975. Fosse uses the old razzle dazzle to lift the film out of the ordinary. It's all style and when the style is this good, it covers up a multitude of sins. The movie Scheider is editing looks godawful and an inferior carbon of LENNY. The handful of musical numbers are terrific and so much better than the prosaic narrative. Two standouts are the Take Off With Us and Everything Old Is New Again numbers. The acting is good considering the thin material the actors are working with. As Death, Jessica Lange is lovely but her "character" is too wispy for her to make any impression. With John Lithgow, Ben Vereen, Leland Palmer, Cliff Gorman, Deborah Geffner, Wallace Shawn, CCH Pounder, Vicki Frederick and the magnificent Sandahl Bergman.