All That Jazz
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: D Film: B
One of the boldest, darkest, autobiographical,
self-character studies ever made is Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (1979);
the choreography giants’ very hard look at life and himself. Roy Scheider stars as a surrogate version of
the man, whose drugs, smoking, womanizing, workaholic behavior, and uneven life
slowly begin to take their toll. It is
time to put together a new Broadway musical, but will it be commercial enough,
and what is the creators’ problem with wanting all that sex? Why does he land up being so hard on all
these dancers?
The film goes much further, very creatively using known
songs, then twisting them into the narrative, but there are totally new numbers
here too. Several story points are
plotted in while all this is going on, including his relationship to his
family, his conflicts with produces about creative control and the ignorance
towards anything innovative (if I is even recognized as that), the nature of
show business in general, and a reckoning with death. This is put together so smoothly and in what feels like such a
happening, spontaneous way, that it is constantly mesmerizing.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is not bad, but
the transfer looks like a later analog one, with some color trouble and the age
of the print showing. This is not
always a problem, but does keep creeping up.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround does not offer much surround and is not
very Stereo either. Though this was a
co-production between Fox and Columbia, money was only made available for old Dolby
A-type analog was used for the film and at the last minute. It is not on the credits, the trailer, and
the Pro Logic makes the sound feel like 3.0 with a Mono spread. Maybe we cal call that lightly stereo, but
that’s it. Playing it back in 2.0 gave
it better base and warmth. Finding the
original Stereo music recordings and using them for a new remix would have been
a better idea.
Extras include some scene-specific commentary by Scheider
in the supplement, matched to scenes form the film. The nice thing about this is that, since his commentary is not
non-stop, you do not have to scan through the whole film, but it is still not
enough to cover each scene completely.
There is also the original trailer, an at-the-time/on-film/on-camera
Scheider interview split into three parts, and some clips of Fosse.
Fosse is one of the all-time giants in dance, stage, and
was pretty good in film. Another
on-going joke is a mirror-image version of his film Lenny (1974), a
stand-up picture featuring Lenny Bruce.
One in-joke is that the original was in black and white, while this
version is in color. Fox issues this on
DVD as Miramax has its tremendous commercial and critical success with their
film of Chicago that won the Best picture Academy Award. Director Rob Marshall managed to capture
Fosse’s style, but All That Jazz is even closer because it carries with
it the weight of dread of its original creator and those who appreciate how
well Chicago was done will be impressed with the adultness of this
self-portrait.
- Nicholas Sheffo
