Film

All That Jazz

Bob Fosse turned his own heart attack into a musical, splicing open-heart surgery with dazzling dance numbers and casting Death as a glamorous woman in white. It's showbiz autobiography as fever dream — vain, funny, terrified, magnificent. Roy Scheider chews Dexedrine and cigarettes like a man daring his body to quit. For anyone who wants their musicals to actually hurt, and their self-portraits unflattering.

TMDb rating7.5

If you liked this

Cabaret1972

Fosse's other great backstage nightmare, Weimar decadence curdling into fascism while a nightclub singer performs her heart out in a seedy Berlin dive. Same appetite for glamour laced with menace.

But Cooler and more historically distanced than All That Jazz — less confessional, more political horror story.

Cabaret poster

8½1963

Fellini's blocked, haunted director-surrogate wanders a carnival of memory and fantasy while the film he can't finish collapses around him. The obvious spiritual ancestor of Gideon's fever dream.

But Black and white, subtitled, and slower — pure art-cinema introspection with no jazz hands to soften it.

8½ poster

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)2014

A washed-up actor stages a comeback while his ego, ghosts and sanity all fight for narration. Same backstage vertigo, same fantasy bleeding into reality, shot to feel like one unbroken breath.

But The showy long-take gimmick can feel more clever than moving, depending on your tolerance for bravado.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Pina2011

Both ask whether choreography can contain a life, and whether dance can say what a eulogy can't — except here the death behind the camera was real, not staged.

Wim Wenders' documentary tribute to choreographer Pina Bausch, filmed after her sudden death, turns grief itself into choreography — dancers moving through her work like a living eulogy. Devastating, tender, genuinely beautiful.

But No plot, no jokes, no Roy Scheider mugging at the camera — just dance and mourning, which asks for patience.

Pina poster
More like this (8)

Whiplash2014

A drummer bleeds, literally, for a monstrous mentor's approval. Same obsessive, punishing relationship to craft, the same question of whether greatness is worth wrecking a body and a life for.

But Tighter and meaner than All That Jazz — no music-hall glitter, just sweat, blood, and a metronome.

Whiplash poster

Black Swan2010

A ballerina's perfectionism curdles into hallucination and self-harm on the way to opening night. Dance as both salvation and slow-motion self-destruction, filmed with the same feverish, unreliable eye.

But Straight-up psychological horror where All That Jazz stays mostly grounded in showbiz reality — no ambiguity about the danger.

Black Swan poster

Sunset Boulevard1950

Old Hollywood eating its young and old alike, narrated by a dead man floating in a swimming pool. The same unsentimental verdict on people who can't imagine life outside the spotlight.

But A different showbiz world — silent-era Hollywood, not Broadway — and its cruelty runs colder, less romantic.

Sunset Boulevard poster

Amadeus1984

Genius, mortality and a rival's jealousy collide in gorgeous costume and music. Salieri watches death circle a man too gifted and too reckless to save himself — a period mirror of Gideon's arrogance.

But Stately where All That Jazz is frantic — this is prestige biopic, not fever-dream confession.

Amadeus poster

Chicago2002

Fosse's own choreography and cynicism, filtered through the musical he wrote, turned into a slick, Oscar-winning crowd-pleaser about murder, fame and razzle-dazzle. His darkest instincts made friendly and commercial.

But Glossier and safer — it wants you entertained first, unsettled a distant second, if at all.

Chicago poster

The Red Shoes1948

A ballerina torn between art and love, in Technicolor so vivid it still looks feverish. The granddaddy of every film treating dance as a force that can consume the person performing it.

But Old-fashioned melodrama pacing, and its tragedy plays sincere rather than ironic — no wisecracks to cushion it.

The Red Shoes poster

A Matter of Life and Death1946

Both films literalize a negotiation with Death as a character, using fantasy sequences to argue whether one man's life is worth extending — but here the hero actually wins the argument.

A pilot who should have died puts the afterlife itself on trial to argue for more time, in a heaven rendered as black-and-white bureaucracy against a lush Technicolor Earth. Wildly inventive, strangely moving.

But It's a wartime romance at heart, gentle and hopeful where Gideon's negotiation with Death shows no such mercy.

A Matter of Life and Death poster

Climax2018

Takes Fosse's trick of letting dance dissolve into hallucination and pushes it all the way into genre horror — the same device with no ego left to redeem, and no jazz hands to make it charming.

A French dance troupe's afterparty turns hallucinatory, strobe-lit and violent after someone spikes the sangria. Extraordinary long-take choreography curdling into pure nightmare — dance as possession rather than confession.

But Genuinely disturbing and drug-drenched, with none of Fosse's warmth or wit — this is horror, full stop, no autobiography softening it.

Climax poster

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Recommended by

8½, The Band Wagon, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Rocketman, Funny Girl, Cabaret, Chicago, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Fosse/Verdon, Stardust Memories, New York, New York