All That Jazz surprised me on many levels. Underneath all that dazzle and glitter there was a really serious tone to the movie as it primarily dealt with themes of dysfunctional relationships and death. It also portrayed a deeply flawed, but therefore deeply human man played to perfection by Roy Scheider. This Academy Award-nominated performance is one of the best I've ever seen. The music and dance numbers are all brilliant. Well, perhaps the last one went on a bit too long, though it was probably done on purpose to strengthen the theme and impact of that curtain call.

All That Jazz is Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical film about a musical theater director/choreographer whose lifestyle may finally kill him, and it is a triumph of elliptical editing, working on several levels simultaneously - musical, biopic, deathbed confession, surreal fantasy - at once funny and tragic, and like all its characters, brutally honest. The names have been changed, but even the protagonist's ultimate end prefigure Fosse's own 8 years later, so one can easily see the character's lack of virtue as Fosse's own. He treats himself with such snark, however, that it's hard to find the film a self-serving apology, and I personally loved the way hallucinations broke the fourth wall and revealed the fakery of the entertainment world, which the film itself is a part of. And it all ends on a dark punchline, setting tragedy to comic timing. And of course, some great dance numbers, that goes without saying. Not always easy to take in, but worth your time.

I started clapping, alone in my livingroom. Breath taking directing.