Movies
All That Jazz
A sort of 42nd Street with aspirations to Lincoln Center, following the blue-ribbon casserole recipe of Fellini's 8 1/2, of intermingled reality, fantasy, and memory. The changes wrought on the backstage-musical formula by these uptown ambitions are of dubious import: a dizzying, quicker-than-the-eye editing style, a blunt closeup of semen-wetted trousers, a documentary sequence of open-heart surgery. The undercover brand of Philistinism peddled in this movie is the notion that high art -- in other words, art at about the level of 8 1/2 on a scale of one to ten -- is supposed to be swallowed with a wince. Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, Jessica Lange; directed by Bob Fosse. 1979.
Reader Rating:
MPAA Rating: R
