--- title: "All That Jazz" year: 1979 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/all-that-jazz" fi1m_score: 84 critics_score: 71 critics_reviews: 9 published: "2026-09-20T06:14:05.425251+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T06:14:05.835699+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # All That Jazz (1979) Directed by Bob Fosse · 2h 03m · MPA R · Drama **Fi1m score: 84** · Critics 71 from 9 reviews *In a sentence:* A choreographer flirts with the Angel of Death for two hours and she seems to be enjoying it > Bob Fosse’s film about a director dancing himself into the grave is vain, brilliant and often hard to like, and it is one of the few films about show business that knows exactly what the business costs. Roy Scheider carries it on a cigarette and a cough. ## Synopsis New York, the late 1970s. Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is a director and choreographer with two jobs and no sleep: by day he is casting and rehearsing a new Broadway musical, and by night he is in a cutting room failing to finish a film about a stand-up comedian, Davis Newman (Cliff Gorman). Every morning he takes Dexedrine, eye drops and Alka-Seltzer with Vivaldi playing, looks in the mirror and says, “It’s showtime, folks.” His girlfriend Kate Jagger (Ann Reinking), his ex-wife Audrey Paris (Leland Palmer) and his daughter Michelle (Erzsebet Foldi) all know he is sleeping with dancers from the chorus. Between scenes he sits in a white dressing room and talks about his life with a woman in a veil called Angelique (Jessica Lange), and she seems to be waiting for something. ## Review Bob Fosse made [*Cabaret*](https://film.one/film/cabaret) in 1972 and [*Lenny*](https://film.one/film/lenny) in 1974, and then he made a film about a man called Joe Gideon who has just made a film about a comedian and is now staging a Broadway musical while his heart gives out. He has changed the names and almost nothing else. *All That Jazz* is a confession dressed as a musical, and it is one of the best things Fosse did. It is also exhausting, self-regarding and about twenty minutes too pleased with itself, and we would still recommend it. The opening tells you what kind of film you are in. Hundreds of dancers audition in a theatre to “On Broadway”, and Alan Heim cuts them down to a dozen in a few minutes, so that we watch a room of hope become a room of rejection without a line of dialogue. Heim then builds the film around a refrain: Gideon’s morning routine, the pills, the drops, the shower, the mirror, “It’s showtime, folks”, repeated until it stops being a joke. Giuseppe Rotunno lights the rehearsal halls in plain grey daylight and the dressing room where Gideon talks to Angelique in a soft white haze, so that we always know which world we are in. Nobody has to explain who the woman in the veil is. The centrepiece of the first half is a backers’ showing of a number called “Take Off With Us”. It begins as a cheery airline jingle, and then Gideon rebuilds it as a sweaty, near-naked orgy in half-light, with Ralph Burns’s arrangement slowing to a pulse and Albert Wolsky’s costumes reduced to almost nothing. We squirmed, frankly; it goes on, and it means to. Then Fosse cuts to the producers watching it, and their faces are so stricken that we laughed out loud and felt better. That is the film in one scene: it shows you the thing, and then it shows you what the thing costs the people who paid for it. Scheider is the reason it holds. He plays Gideon with a goatee, a cigarette that is never out and a cough he keeps pretending not to hear, and he never once asks us to like the man. He is charming to dancers because it is quicker than being honest with them, and he knows it. Lange plays Angelique as a woman who has heard all his excuses before and is fond of him anyway. Reinking’s Kate and Palmer’s Audrey get the film’s best small moments, two women who have both been let down by him and have compared notes. The scene that got at us is a quiet one. Kate and the young Michelle rehearse a dance for Gideon in his flat to “Everything Old Is New Again”, with no set, no lighting effects and no audience but him, and Foldi and Reinking are so clearly delighted to be dancing that we found ourselves moved before we had worked out why. It is the only number in the film that nobody is selling anything with. Gideon watches it and, for once, says the right thing. The faults are real. Gorman’s Davis Newman does a routine about the five stages of dying, and the film plays it back so many times, in so many cuts, that it stops being clever and starts being homework. The second half moves into a hospital and slows badly; the fantasy sequences get bigger and the film gets smaller. And Fosse cannot help forgiving himself. Every woman Gideon has wronged turns up to say she loved him anyway, which may be true and is certainly convenient. Philip Rosenberg and Tony Walton’s sets are handsome throughout, but the late ones exist mainly to give the director a large room to be sorry in. Critics have never agreed about this film, and the split is honest: what one viewer sees as candour another sees as a man filming his own eulogy. We lean towards candour, because Fosse puts the vanity on screen and lets us watch it kill him. *Cabaret* was about other people; this is about the one person he never managed to direct. See it in a cinema if one will have it, because the audition needs a big room. It runs 123 minutes, carries a 15, and the music will stay in the head for a week whether wanted or not. *Fi1m score 84, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics admire All That Jazz, and the praise settles on Bob Fosse himself: his direction, his choreography, and the nerve of making a musical about his own excess and his own death. The production numbers are singled out again and again, as is the editing, which several reviews credit with the film’s manic energy. Its candour about show business sleaze and a man’s preoccupation with dying is taken as a virtue rather than a confession too far, and Roy Scheider’s performance is noted with approval. The reservations cluster on the ego. Even the admirers concede that Fosse’s self-regard is enormous and that parts of the film make one wince. The two dissenters go further: Variety calls it self-important and finds no explanation of what drives the man beyond vanity, while Time Out judges the whole thing self-indulgent, the dance numbers built in the cutting room and the surreal passages flat. The spread is wide, from outright dismissal to unreserved acclaim. ### Reviews we read (9) - **Slant Magazine** (90/100, inferred): The Criterion edition confirms the film as a brilliant musical X-ray of showbiz excess and self-destruction. The transfer preserves the seamy, gritty, furious poetry of Fosse's direction and choreography. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/all-that-jazz-bd/) - **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (90/100, inferred): The film is an uproarious display of brilliance, nerve, dance, maudlin confessions, inside jokes and ego, essentially a funny movie that operates on too many levels at once but gives the customers their money's worth. Some of it makes you wince, but a lot of it is great fun, with big beautiful steamy Fosse production numbers and the figure of a man who deserves the attention he affords himself. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1979/12/20/archives/the-screen-roy-scheider-stars-in-all-that-jazzpeter-pan-syndrome.html) - **Empire**, Kim Newman (85/100, inferred): The critic calls it a fascinating, imaginative and intimate biographical musical drama, a startlingly candid testament from Bob Fosse featuring sensational dancing and eye-popping production numbers. It is praised as an unmistakable classic that stands alongside Cabaret as one of the best musicals of its era. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/jazz-review/) - **Film Comment**, Michael Koresky (85/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a tricky masterpiece and a wrenching autobiographical work, noting its uncommonly heterosexual perspective on a philandering showman in a gay-dominated milieu while praising its matter-of-fact treatment of identity and personal neuroses. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/queer-now-introduction-1979/) - **Los Angeles Times** (70/100, inferred): Fosse warped the movie musical to his purposes in a way that could never quite be repeated; it is a bravura feat of narcissism and an obsessive biopic that exerts a morbid fascination rather than seeking audience approval, reaching a black-comic peak in the final musical number. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-apr-01-ca-second1-story.html) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (30/100, inferred): It is a self-important, egomaniacal, wonderfully choreographed, often compelling film portraying the energetic life and preoccupation with death of a director-choreographer who suffers a heart attack; Roy Scheider gives a superb performance, but the major flaw is its lack of real explanation of what beyond ego motivates the character. [Read](https://variety.com/1978/film/reviews/all-that-jazz-2-1200424549/) - **Time Out**, HM (20/100, inferred): The critic finds the film wretched and self-indulgent, with crass jokes, unfun dance routines assembled in editing, pretentious Fellini-esque moments, and ineffective surreal elements involving open-heart surgery and the Angel of Death. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/all-that-jazz) - **Collider**, Adam Chitwood (95/100, inferred): The critic calls All That Jazz a masterpiece that blends musical, dark comedy, biopic and fantasy elements into a self-portrait of its director. He praises its hypnotic musical numbers, visceral style, and profound rumination on life and death. [Read](https://collider.com/all-that-jazz-criterion-blu-ray-review/) - **Den of Geek**, David Crow (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a stunning work of art and one of the 1970s’ last masterpieces of cynicism, singling out its manic energy, self-examination of show business sleaze, masterful editing, and unique embrace of death and fatalism. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/all-that-jazz-the-musical-s-closest-brush-with-death/) ## Details - **Director:** Bob Fosse - **Director:** Bob Fosse - **Writer:** Robert Alan Aurthur, Bob Fosse - **Cinematography:** Giuseppe Rotunno - **Editor:** Alan Heim - **Music:** Ralph Burns - **Production design:** Tony Walton, Philip Rosenberg - **Costume design:** Albert Wolsky - **Cast:** Roy Scheider as Joe Gideon; Jessica Lange as Angelique; Ann Reinking as Kate Jagger; Leland Palmer as Audrey Paris; Cliff Gorman as Davis Newman; Ben Vereen as O'Connor Flood; Erzsebet Foldi as Michelle Gideon; Michael Tolan as Dr. Ballinger - **Runtime:** 2h 03m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 20 December 1979 - **Genres:** Drama - **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Nominee, 1979); [Palme d'Or winners](https://film.one/collections/palme-dor.md) (Winner, 1980) - **Budget:** $12 million - **Box office:** $38 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_aIhkKlrwk ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: BR, FR, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1980: Best Actor (nominated); Best Cinematography (nominated); Best Director (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Writing, Original Screenplay (nominated); Best Costume Design (won); Best Film Editing (won); Best Original Song Score (won); Best Production Design (won) - Cannes Film Festival 1980: Palme d'Or (won) ## If you liked this - *8½* (1963), Fi1m 86: Fellini’s director in crisis, the film Fosse plainly had on his mind throughout. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/812.md) - *Cabaret* (1972), Fi1m 88: Fosse’s earlier musical, sharper about other people than he ever was about himself. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/cabaret.md) - *Opening Night* (1977): Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands on a stage actress coming apart before curtain up. - *The Red Shoes* (1948), Fi1m 92: Powell and Pressburger on dancing as the thing you cannot stop even when it kills you. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-red-shoes.md) - *Birdman* (2014), Fi1m 82: Another vain man of the theatre, another camera that will not leave him alone. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/birdman-or-the-unexpected-virtue-of-ignorance.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/all-that-jazz