1972 - LIZA WITH A Z the classic Bob Fosse, Liza Minnelli concert special is mercifully short

Apparently conceived, rehearsed and shot on 16 mm film in about 8 weeks, this  legendary TV special looked pretty lonely sitting by itself on the DVD shelves at the public library.

This special came out the same year Bob Fosse won an Emmy, a Tony and an Academy award, it features Liza Minnelli at her peak as a 70's camp icon.

It's a TV special about Liza so it's all Liza all the time.  She doesn't sing every song she "kills" them as  performers say.  The special also features a lot of the Bob Fosse shake and grind style dance stuff which he picked up performing in strip clubs around Chicago as a teenager.

The film ends with a 10 minute medley of Liza performing selections from Cabaret which goes down a lot easier  then the 2 hours of Liza Minnelli in the film version of Cabaret.

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1979 - ALL THAT JAZZ, Bob Fosse films his own death.

An amazing film, Bob Fosse literally filmed his own life story before he died about 7 years later and it ain't a pretty one. 

Roy Scheider plays a Broadway director and choreographer named Joe Gideon.  Scheider dresses like Fosse, acts like Fosse and even has Fosse's gotee to make it very clear that he is playing Bob Fosse.

Fosse co wrote the screenplay and the incidents from his film are clearly from his own life.  Gideon is attempting to direct and choreograph a new musical, while editing a film and simultaneously screwing any dancer he wants.  Add Gideon's chain smoking, drinking and pill popping and you get a portrait of an artist as a real dickhead.

Gideon is constantly told how great he is by everyone around him but he clearly doubts his own abilities.   He tries to rise above the mediocrity that surrounds him but he seems embarrassed about making his living directing something as shallow as musical comedies on Broadway.

Fosse really pours on the razzle dazzle technique in this film.  He uses flash forwards and jump cuts and has some some really outlandish staging at times.

Fosse apparently cast the film with a number of women he had affairs with including the dancer Ann Reinking basically playing herself and Jessica Lange as the "Angel of Death."  But Roy Scheider really comes through for him with his outstanding performance as Gideon.  Scheider was not an actor who you would cast to be the centerpiece of a  musical but he's so good he actually creates some sympathy for this asshole.

The film ends with an amazing insane 30 minute death scene.  Here Fosse really goes nuts with his Broadway showmanship stuff completely out of control.  He mixes a surreal blend of actual open heart surgery, fantasy death dance numbers and self congragulatory pats on the back about what a great artist he is as he lies dying in his hospital bed.

An impressive film about a real asshole.

1969 - SWEET CHARITY another fricking 60's movie musical.

Universal spent 20 million bucks on Sweet Charity a film that made them 4 million dollars. They should have carefully thought through what they were getting mixed up with.

They hired the original Broadway director/choreographer Bob Fosse who was a talented guy but had never actually directed a movie before. Fosse fell in love with every weird camera angle he could think of. The film is loaded with slow motion shots, reversed film effects, still montages, hand held camera movements and just about any other faddish 60's camera technique he must have seen at his local foreign film art house. The constant zooming in and out and the bizarre film editing made the film an ordeal to sit through. Sweet Charity looks very dated now. The film was also shot in widescreen which means that when the camera moves in close on the dancers it cuts their legs off. Then of course if the camera pulls back. the the dancers look small. If you can't see dancers doing their dancing thing that kind of defeats the purpose of a musical.

Transferring a show like Sweet Charity from the stage into a movie is a lot trickier than you think. Bob Fosse clearly knew something about staging sexy bump and grind dance numbers, but in movies, long dance numbers can be a real killer to sit through. 150 minutes is a lot of time to watch people singing and dancing. Everyone dumps on The Sound of Music, but that movie is a lot more skillfully made than Sweet Charity.

Then there's the issue of the star Shirley MacClaine. Sweet Charity is the story of a dance hall hooker who is basically an innocent at heart. Shirley MacClaine was trained as a dancer and is certainly a professional. But her days of playing an innocent in the movies were pretty much over by 1969. She just wasn't the same likable actor when she first appeared in The Trouble With Harry. The intervening years had hardened her screen personality.

Fosse hops directs

Finally, who in their right mind ever thought people would want to go see a musical about a dance hall hooker. When Mommy and Daddy were looking for a film musical to take the kids too what were they going to pick, Mary Poppins or Sweet Charity?

149 minutes!

1972 - CABARET requires a high tolerance for Liza

Cabaret was loved by the critics when it was released in 1972. It starred Liza Minnelli as the likable gold digger Sally Bowles and Michael York who was portraying the original author of the stories, Christopher Isherwood. With a makeup job that makes her looks like one of the droogs from A Clockwork Orange, Cabaret featured the Academy Award winning performance of the very grating Liza.

The viewer better have a high tolerance for her over the top constantly on personality because it's the entire movie. She starts out at the peak of the emotional range and doesn't really scale it down for the rest of the film.  It's hard to top Joel Grey as the flamboyant Master of Ceremonies at the Cabaret but Minnelli succeeds brilliantly.

The movie's other major character, the bi-sexual writer who sleeps with Minnelli is supposed to be the original author Christopher Isherwood. He's in total shame when he reveals his homosexual encounter to Minnelli. Although it was 1972, the idea that his one sexual encounter with another male was the most horrible thing to ever happen to him now seems pretty silly. 

The filmmakers were so sure that Isherwood would like their adaptation of his stories and their portrayal of him they screened the film for him. Isherwood's only comment was "I never slept with a woman in my life."

Probably the best parts of the movie are the technical aspects of the film. The director Bob Fosse showed that he was beginning to understand how to put a movie together after the mess he made out of Sweet Charity. Having the legendary cinematographer, Geoffrey Unsworth who had filmed 2001: A Space Odyssey, shooting the film didn't hurt him one bit.

Cabaret is a film that takes the musical format and makes a strong statement on the evils of Nazi Germany 22 years after the end of World War II. Had Fosse lived longer perhaps he could have followed Cabaret with a musical on the evils of slavery, now that would have been a courageous movie.
 

 124 minutes, screenplay by Jay Presson Allen.