... To my ears Fosse's confession sounds like the familiar maudlin display of theatre people when they try to tell "the truth" about themselves&. Fosse flaunts his weaknesses and his sins as a way of picking up points for honesty&. Yet apart from a most unpleasant megalomania, very little is actually revealed; Fosse's over-elaborate method prevents any real exposure&. [Clutter] spins through the movie &, producing a series of fragments, images, instant epiphanies, but nothing sustained. It's as if the film had been put together by an editing machine free-associating wildly on a psychoanalyst's couch. (p. 63) We never do find out what women mean to Gideon, though we can see that they are all obsessed with him, young and old, starting with the mischievous nightclub strippers, recalled in flashback, who fondled the adolescent Gideon so eagerly that he went onstage to dance with a large stain on his pants. That stain spreads throughout the movie: All That Jazz is indeed an indiscretion, and not the youthful kind that you're happy to indulge&. We're meant to cluck our tongues over this womanizer Gideon, this bastard. But how silly, how vain! To agonize in public over your ruthless treatment of talented and beautiful women is a very luxurious form of self-criticism-it's more like boasting. In any case, hasn't it occurred to Fosse that his ex-lovers still speak well of him because they are dancers and need his friendship in order to work? Wandering around a hospital, Gideon sees an elderly woman in agony; he kisses her, tells her she's beautiful, and she attains peace, presumably ready to accept her own death. Fosse/Gideon is the Godhead, the show-biz genius-saviour. No one even dances unless he's around to watch and approve. (pp. 63-4) For a while, the framework of putting on a show gives Fosse's megalomania a plausible outlet. There's an exhilarating opening sequence, done without dialogue, in which Gideon selects a chorus line from a hundred or so dancers. ...
