Joe Gideon is at the top of the heap, one of the most successful directors and choreographers in musical theater. But he can feel his world slowly collapsing around him - his obsession with work has almost destroyed his personal life, and only his bottles of pills keep him going.
Ratings
Curator score: 9.3/10
IMDb: 7.8/10
Letterboxd: 4.34/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 88%
Metacritic: 72
TMDB: 7.5/10
Director
Bob Fosse
Production
Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox
Cast
Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking, Leland Palmer, Cliff Gorman, Ben Vereen, Erzsebet Foldi, Michael Tolan, Max Wright, William LeMassena, Irene Kane, Deborah Geffner, Kathryn Doby, Anthony Holland, Robert Hitt, David Margulies, Susan Brooks, Keith Gordon, Frankie Man, Alan Heim
Curator Review
Verdict
A dazzling, self-lacerating showbiz spiral that turns a backstage musical into a confession, a death fantasia, and a razor-sharp portrait of artistic obsession. It’s funny, seductive, and emotionally punishing in equal measure.
Best for
viewers who like dark, adult musicals
fans of self-reflexive art about performance and ego
people drawn to stylish editing, choreography, and visual invention
audiences who appreciate tragic character studies with wit
Skip if
you want a straightforward feel-good musical
you dislike bleak, introspective stories about addiction and mortality
you prefer conventional plot structure over fever-dream storytelling
you’re looking for light entertainment
Overview
All That Jazz is one of the great movies about making art while being consumed by it. Bob Fosse turns a director-choreographer’s breakdown into a glittering, bruising spectacle, balancing backstage razzle-dazzle with a brutally honest look at self-destruction. The result is both intoxicating and deeply sad, a film that keeps finding new ways to be funny even as it circles the drain.
Worth noting
Roy Scheider gives the kind of performance that makes the whole movie feel lived-in and dangerous. The film’s editing, staging, and musical numbers are all in constant conversation with Joe Gideon’s unraveling mind, so the showmanship never feels decorative; it feels like survival, denial, and confession at once. It’s a masterpiece of form serving character.
Bottom line
What lingers most is how personal and unsparing it feels. This is a movie about ambition, vanity, workaholism, sex, pills, and the impossible bargain of being “on” all the time. If you want a musical that is as emotionally devastating as it is electrifying, this is essential viewing.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Josh Lewis (5★) · 6434 likes
Imagine being able to conceptualize your own death with this level of bittersweet humor and sophisticated pageantry. Unreal. The most joyously and regretfully theatrical work I've ever seen. "Do you suppose Stanley Kubrick ever gets depressed?"
Jesse Knight (5★) · 4999 likes
On a scale from 1-5, this gets a 5-6-7-8.
Patrick Willems (4.5★) · 4829 likes
Apparently if you want your own great music biopic, you have to make it yourself
Karsten (5★) · 3150 likes
to buy a criterion and then actually go through with watching it on the blu ray player…nothing quite like it
James (Schaffrillas) (5★) · 2860 likes
If the ending song so horrific and disturbing then why so catchy