All That Jazz

Savagely witty on backstage life and audaciously edited, Jazz stands alongside Cabaret as the best “musical” of the last 20 years. Read full review

Fosse spins his runaway narcissism into self-effacing humor and filters the darkest themes through electrifying song-and-dance numbers. The musical sequences are a lesson in choreography, not just for Fosse's renowned wit and invention in handling his dancers, but also in the editing, which fuses music and movement in perfectly timed cuts. Read full review

All That Jazz is one of the most self-indulgent movies ever made—but blessedly so. Read full review

An actor of great integrity, Scheider at last makes the powerful impression we've been waiting for; he plays Joe with wonderfully delicate and telling detail. You see all the lusts and weaknesses, but you see also an underlying sweetness, a kind of forlorn and desperate innocence that makes something deeply human out of good, bad, weakness, strength, triumph, defeat and all that jazz. [24 Dec 1979, p.78]

All That Jazz may be Fosse’s finest cinematic achievement. Read full review

An uproarious display of brilliance, nerve, dance, maudlin confessions, inside jokes and, especially, ego. Read full review

Bob Fosse’s half-confession about what a jerk he was to the women in his life may pull a lot of punches, but there’s just too much art on the screen to completely disregard the effort. Read full review

All That Jazz is a self-important, egomaniacal, wonderfully choreographed, often compelling film which portrays the energetic life, and preoccupation with death, of a director-choreographer who ultimately suffers a heart attack. Read full review

All That Jazz is great-looking but not easy to watch; Fosse's indulgent vision at times approaches sour self-loathing, and nothing like the explicit open-heart surgery had been seen on mainstream American screens, let alone the morbid song-and-dance routines in an operating theater. Read full review

Though Scheider is a wry, sensitive actor, he soon gets lost in the vulgar theatrics. So does the subject of death. When Fosse attempts to put his heart on the table, he does so too literally. Read full review

By the time the film is over, the movie has degenerated with a jaundiced vengeance. Fosse's sour, grandstanding cynicism imposed an intolerable burden of self-pity on his talent, our compassion and the tradition of the backstage muscial. Read full review

Almost every scene is excruciating (and a few are appalling), yet the film stirs an obscene fascination with its rapid, speed-freak cutting and passionate psychological striptease. This is the feverish, painful expression of a man who lives in mortal fear of his own mediocrity. Read full review

The jokes are relentlessly crass and objectionable; the song'n'dance routines have been created in the cutting-room and have lost any sense of fun; Fellini-esque moments add little but pretension; and scenes of a real open-heart operation, alternating with footage of a symbolic Angel of Death in veil and white gloves, fail even in terms of the surreal. Read full review