All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)

[The following is a belated entry in last year's Blind Spots series.]

All That Jazz is a New Hollywood film from an Old Hollywood filmmaker; more than that, it’s a film that so thoroughly ticks off all the aesthetic and tonal properties of the American New Wave that one is left to think that New Hollywood would have been commonplace far earlier but for the intervention of moral censors and artistically conservative studio producers. Bob Fosse’s semi-autobiographical film opens with his avatar, Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), starting his day to a montage of classical music, Alka Seltzer, eyedrops and dexies, a wake-me-up that does not prevent him from lolling in the shower with a soaked cigarette limply dangling from his lips. Red-eyed and weary, Joe nevertheless looks as good as he ever will in this movie, as his increasingly stressful work schedule and the accumulated residue of his hard living start to crush him physically and emotionally.