“To be on the wire is life the rest is waiting.” All that Jazz, is a semi-autobiographical showbiz drama based on aspects of director Bob Fosse's life and career as a dancer, choreographer and director. Initially inspired by Fosse's manic effort to edit his film Lenny while simultaneously staging the 1975 Broadway musical Chicago: Fosse felt like it was too much for him at the time and wanted to do something more whimsical and “not as heavy.” An interesting decision for a filmmaker to adapt events from his own life into All that Jazz, with a thin veil of fiction draped over the story jumping from past, present, memory, and fantasy all through montage and deliberate jump cuts in editing. Hilton Ais writes in, All That Jazz: Stardust, [about the film]“Produced and co written by Robert Alan Aurthur, All That Jazz is a world of bodies. We begin with bodies yearning to be validated—dancers auditioning for a spot in a Broadway show—even as the receptacle of that yearning, the director, Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), chips away at his body; nothing is real for Joe without suffering, especially his own story. Joe wants fantasy to be real, or he wants the real to be more fantastic, loose, a series of improvised gestures, free of the guilt he always feels. Part of All That Jazz takes place in Fosse’s version of Orpheus’s underworld. There, Gideon talks with, flirts with, and eventually dies in the embrace of Angelique (Jessica Lange), a blonde angel of death.” The musical drama of Bob Fosse’s life exaggerated through exhilarating musical numbers and the cut away scenes illustrate an elaborate technique that throws the audience through a loop when the story isn’t told like a generic musically theatrical film. The film has all the props, stages, old costumes and glitz of show business but the action is slower and more introspective as Joe’s life unfolds from troubling past, to stressful work, relationship issues and most of all his inability to have self control. ![]() Audiences come to expect certain traits and styles used for certain genres and will continuously expect that when they go to see a movie with a story they recognize. In many cases whether the story is the same, through editing it can be illustrated in a completely new form. An editor controls how the audience perceives the film’s shots not in isolation, but in relationship to one another. Each scene forms a link to the next scene and so on, to tell a story in a different way. Fosse was influenced by Russian director and film theorist, Sergei Eisenstein, who was also a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, believed that cinema's essential characteristic was its ability to join unrelated images together through juxtaposition, which then generated ideas. The link between seemingly unrelated images creates a deeper meaning overall. To describe his life in only a few brief moments, there is a scene where Joe is sitting in the crowd at a burlesque show, suddenly the scene cuts to what is presumably Joe’s subconscious where there is a dancer on stage, his mother cooking, and the ethereal Angelique. His mother is explaining to Angelque that Joe he always worked at burlesque clubs and “never paid any attention, didn’t even look at em” The scene quickly cuts to a young boy backstage rehearsing and preparing for his set time, as the scene continues, he leaves the room where burlesque dancers approach him and begin sexually provoking him minutes before he gets on stage. In the middle of his performance the audience roared in laughter, as the camera closed in on young Joe’s face beading with sweat, the camera pans down to show he urinated himself. Which then cuts back to his mom cooking, saying “ he's never done anything to disappoint me.” The juxtaposition of fantasy, memory, and present are evident in this series of events. The cuts are messy and confusing as we try to decipher where we are and what we are about to learn about. By the end of it, it makes more sense. Fosse deliberately makes some moments of his life longer scenes than others and we see that here. The moments we are in his mind are brief but the traumatizing moment of his life didn't get cut to a scene until it was completely over. These messy cuts give us brief explanations along with how Fosse saw how his life went and how he felt as he went down a mentally and physically destructive path. A black screen is displayed and the montage of Joe’s daily life begins, with repeating the opening scenes of Joe’s morning. Music, shower, eye drops, medication. The opening scene shows each step thoroughly but as each time the montage is repeated throughout the movie, the scenes are cut shorter to make it feel as if the repetition is getting old as we see him take more and more medications. The fast-paced cuts of these scenes increasingly become more tense as we hope that Joe will slow down and realize what he has. In the final scene of the film, the scene is cut as Joe is in the hospital to a huge musical number about how he is going to die or perhaps already dead. This ascension Fosse illustrates through actors dressed as body parts and glittering costumes as well as complicated stage transitions shows the idealization Fosse had about death. Shutting out all his problems lead to his death and through jump cuts and the change of pace in montages, we slowly but fully understand the extent of Fosse’s physical and mental well-being during the course of All that Jazz. Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVZXQQcVa-Y https://fictionmachine.com/2021/02/16/review-all-that-jazz-1979/ https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3275-all-that-jazz-stardust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_That_Jazz_(film) The Train [1964]After replacing the former director of The Train, Frankenheimer worked to enhance and prolong the action scenes as well as add more dialogue creating a longer and more expensive film than originally intended. The fictionalized story was influenced by the real museum curator at the time Rose Valland from her book Le Front de L'Art. Speaking upon her experiences during World War 2 and the fight to save France’s cultural heritage from Nazi germany. Although Frankenheimer's purpose was not to tell a historical documentary of events rather Burt Lancaster (Paul Labiche) focused on action and Frankenheimer juxtaposed the value of art with the value of human life. Excitement generates through deliberate staging, chaotic montages, and realistic details of events in his technique as the film builds. The Train is set in 1944, during World War 2, a time when Paris was occupied by Nazi Germany. The officer in charge of the operation, Colonel Franz von Waldheim, is determined to sneak all the paintings from the Jeu de Paume Museum to Germany by train, no matter the cost. Museum curator, Mademoiselle Villard, alerts the French Resistance and is soon helped by Paul Labiche, a railway inspector. Mademoiselle Villard is just as determined to get the paintings that she refers to as “a part of France” and with the some help, they change station names, paint the top of the train white, and many other actions in order to stop or reroute the train back to the museum without getting caught by German soldiers. The opening scenes include fast paced montage as the camera follows a focal point through the chaos of the Nazi party packaging France’s most valuable works of art. From fast paced montages to a repetition of staging using 2-3 figures there are complex layers that Frankenheimer uses to build to the excitement of the action scenes. Small details such as the staging of characters to the extent of using layers of characters dispersed behind the subject in the background. Not only is it an interesting stylistic choice to stage the character in such a way but the extended use of foreground and background of the scenes illustrate a space in which it feels like the audience is in the same room sitting in front the subject speaking and watching the other characters live around the main subject of the scene. These scenes are just a few examples of the recurring staging of characters in similar ways. The beginning of the film relies on the staging and montage of chaotic events as building blocks to introduce the overall intense mood of the environment surrounding as well as a visual strategy to convincingly stage action sequences and maintain cinematic clarity. Frankenheimer primarily used closeups in scenes such as the one above. The emotional intensity through such closeups enhances the intense emotional moments as they decide whether the cargo is worth risking human lives for. The lack of complex use of background in these scenes develop pure emotion from individual points of view. Knowing that Frankenheimer was influenced by the real woman, Rose Valland, whose story is partially told, I feel as if these scenes mean a lot more than when I originally watched the film. Close ups allow the audience to enter the characters personal space, focusing on their facial expressions and emotional reactions. All the small building blocks are carried from these few peaceful moments to generate the overall excitement for when the action begins. The next step to build excitement is the character development of whether the entire movie (the mission) will actually happen, with the hesitant railway conductor, Lancaster. In The Dissolve, author Scott Tobias writes, “The film delves deeper into the reluctant heroism of everyday French citizens, when it would have been safer to mind their own business and wait for liberation.” Everyone from Mademoiselle to Lancaster didn’t have to put their lives and others peoples lives at risk in regards to being caught by the Nazi party but they did. In the beginning of the film Lancaster explicitly states that, “This morning we had 4 men left in this group now we have 3. One... two... three. We started with 18, like your paintings madam moisel we couldn't replace them for certain things we take the risk but I won’t waste lives on paintings.” After hearing Madame Villard’s pleas and her colleague stating that “London agrees the art is important,” Lancaster agrees for the sake of protecting French cultural heritage. The master plans involve secret ways to reroute the train or painting the top white to track it, all without damaging any cargo or being found out. Along with use of a real character’s perspective and other character developments to keep the story moving one of the most realistic and costly decisions Frankenheimer made for The Train is the deliberate use of real trains rather than miniature models as well as using actual train stations. This elevates the movie as it is easily identifiable where the scenes take place as well as the enhancing overall intense mood of the general environment. In many ways it seems like maintaining visual clarity between the characters and the environment is seemingly impossible in an action driven film but as Brian Brem explains it best when he writes in his blog, The Last Detail, “Using this visual approach in a quiet moment helps the viewer respond to it more easily in a faster-paced one.” As every scene of a train takes on more elements of Hollywood action rather than using it as an historical moment, the film is further fictionalized but not compromised. The slowly building emotional scenes along with moments of abrupt chaos provokes the elements that make The Train the action packed sequence it was made to be. The following video shows the scene in which chaos erupts between the train moving, someone trying to switch the tracks and constant explosions in the background, the quick shots of each moment into a wide aerial shot is yet another way Frankenheimer maintains visual clarity between characters, the mission, and environment. Throughout The Train, Frankenheimer’s purpose was not to tell a historical documentary of events but to transform a significant historical event into a form of media that would be consumed and deemed as widely popular through deliberate staging, chaotic montages, and realistic details. Considering the value of art with the value of human life, Frankenheimer created an excitement filled ride through history confirming that action films can be just as crafty as any other film genre. Sources:
https://thedissolve.com/reviews/1560-the-train/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDg7XCrFjTY https://www.cineaste.com/fall2014/the-train-web-exclusive http://thelastdetailfilm.weebly.com/the-train-1964.html
8 Comments
Kayla Tomaszkiewicz
4/16/2021 11:24:28 pm
I agree throughout the film the cuts and scenes given to us in All That Jazz it is hard to follow and we don't really understand until later on in the film. I agree in the film the train the director did a fantastic job to use both background and foreground to make the emotional impact on the audience.
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Haya Fahim
4/18/2021 10:20:16 am
You explain both films very well. Fosse uses montage to transition between two scenes and attract the audience. There were certain transitions that confused me, however, later on it became clear. Frankenheimer use of close-up allows the audience to experience the character's emotions. I thought it was very interesting that Frankenheimer used real trains instead of models to make the scene more intense.
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Simra Ahmed
4/18/2021 11:16:29 am
I agree how there’s a lot of editing in All That Jazz to bring new shots and less disruption.
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Ben Vena
4/18/2021 06:46:52 pm
I'm not surprised with the editing that shown in All that Jazz. He's done this before like in the movie Sweet Charity that he directed but it was never like this.
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Justin Samborski
4/18/2021 06:52:49 pm
I think the montages in All That Jazz really helps to have a sense of continuity through out the movie. Every time I would see Joe's routine, I know that another day has passed. This really allows the movie to have a sense of time.
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Ngoc Ngo
4/18/2021 08:13:45 pm
your blogs is very detail. i like that you point out the filming techniques in the train.
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Aidan Geoffroy
4/18/2021 08:37:59 pm
I really enjoyed reading your blogpost for this weeks films. I have to say that I personally didn't like the montage throughout the movie besides in the last scene. I had a hard time following them for the most part especially when we aren't given a lot of information on them. A lot of the scenes from the montages made sense as you went on but I didn't really enjoy them.
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Gino Mate
5/16/2021 01:50:05 pm
Even though it wasn't a pleasant scene, I enjoyed how you showed a small clip of one the characters being executed while his friend was trying to convince the solider that he is a good man. It just shows how horrible war and prisoners of war can be.
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Film As Art:
From a college film course. Note: I haven't had time to write but I've seen many new movies since taking the class and hope to find spare time to continue writing reviews based on my interests rather than parameters of a class. THANK YOU! |