Liza with a Z (1972, Bob Fosse)

“Liza with a Z” closes with a Cabaret medley, including Liza Minnelli playing the Emcee for a couple songs. She starts in the audience, a la the “Cabaret” Broadway revival (only twenty-six years before), and quickly works her way onto the stage, joined by dancers, and does a whirlwind ten-minute set. The opening titles tell us “Z” is a “concert for television,” and it’s fascinating to watch how Fosse presents that concert.

“Z” is a spotlight for Minnelli as a singer, dancer, actor, and personality. The special’s title comes from Say Liza (Liza with a “Z”), a half colloquial memoir song where Minnelli describes her frustration at people calling her “Lisa.” It’s a hilarious, personable number and showcases Minnelli’s ability to toggle between tones. She can go from soulful to goofy to sweet to sexy (pretty sure she, Fosse, and her costume designer created go go sultry in “Z”) in less than a breath.

The medley is the first time the special directly references Cabaret, though “Z” is very much an offshoot from the film and its success. Some costumes occasionally feel a little Cabaret, but the special doesn’t open with it. Minnelli never addresses the audience as an audience, never telling them eight cameras are filming this evening’s production. At the beginning of “Z,” Fosse and cinematographer Owen Roizman shoot Minnelli as subject. It’s not about the audience; they just happen to be there for Minnelli’s performance.

For a couple numbers, Minnelli looks up towards the balcony (but also the cameras), not out at the audience below her. Fosse looks back down at her. But then, very deftly, the camera starts watching Minnelli looking up to the overhead cameras; we watch Minnelli sing from the wrong camera, only to quickly discover there’s no wrong camera. Every different shot’s going to reveal something else about Minnelli’s performance.

Once the stage fills with dancers, Minnelli starts directly addressing the audience, sometimes to set up the next song, sometimes to take a bow; there’s a spectacular Son of a Preacher Man number, ending with Fosse doing some incredible sleight of hand with the dancers. “Z” might be a filmed live performance, but Fosse and Minnelli are packaging it for the television audience. Or, frankly, theatrical. Fosse and Roizman shoot Minnelli as the only visible figure surrounded by darkness a few times, and it’d be devastating on the big screen.

There are some bumps, of course. Preacher Man is the last great number until the medley; after its commercial break, there’s a cute song about New Yawkers in love, including Minnelli and the dancers acting out a bunch of it. But it’s not a showstopper; it’s just more examples of Minnelli’s remarkable abilities.

The real problems are the last two songs before the medley sprint.

First is You’ve Let Yourself Go, which could be the anthem for the “Are the Straights Okay?” meme about a wife sick of her husband getting bald and chubby. Then comes My Mammy, a song Minnelli would regularly perform as a standard, all about how your slave mammy always loves you. I guess it’d be worse if it were a white dude singing it (as they often did), but yikes. Thank goodness Fosse and Minnelli weren’t pitching a musical Gone With the Wind… someone might’ve said yes.

Fosse tries with Let Yourself Go, using some of the spotlighting techniques he’d already iterated, but Mammy’s just a simple “it’s a variety special” number. Thank goodness. Hopefully, the blandness will make it forgettable.

The medley saves the day; the commercial, cross-promotional medley to remind people they really liked the super-depressing pre-Holocaust movie (or to encourage people with peppy dance numbers to see said film) is one hell of a way to save the day. But it works because it’s Fosse and Minnelli.

Like its star, director, cast, and crew, “Liza with a Z” is phenomenal.

This post is part of the Fifth Broadway Bound Blogathon hosted by Rebecca of Taking Up Room.

Lenny (1974, Bob Fosse)

If Lenny has a single highlight scene, it’s at the end of the second act, when comedian Lenny Bruce (played by Dustin Hoffman) does a set on dope. The film’s got a fractured narrative, simultaneously showing posthumous interview clips with the people in his life—ex-wife Valerie Perrine, mom Jan Miner, and agent Stanley Beck—recounting Bruce’s life story, but then also footage from nearer his death, after he’d made it. With Hoffman in nothing but a bathrobe and a single sock, losing track of his routine as he roams the stage, that scene is the first time we’ve gotten to see what everyone’s been talking about. It’s a seven-minute, uninterrupted take, and it’s absolutely devastating. Stellar work from Hoffman, director Fosse, screenwriter Julian Barry, and the sound department (led by Dennis Maitland). In a singular film, it’s a singular scene.

Despite the fracturing, the film’s got a straightforward narrative. Someone’s recording interviews about Bruce, starting with Perrine, then Beck and Miner join in. It’s mostly Perrine, whose story is juxtaposed against Hoffman’s. Flashbacks reveal and inform what the interviewees are talking about, then there are flashforwards to some of Bruce’s final sets. The film intersperses bits from those final sets, showing the matured comic throughout the film. Lenny’s never easy, but Fosse and Barry don’t make the narrative plotting difficult.

The film’s first act is hacky young comedian Hoffman meeting stripper Perrine. He immediately falls in love, and she thinks he’s cute. They’re married pretty soon after. Fosse introduces Perrine in the present-day interview, then through her dance routines, with he, Perrine, cinematographer Bruce Surtees, and editor Alan Heim creating a transfixing sequence. It’s an entirely objectifying one, but then the rest of the film is just realizing that object as a person; Perrine’s the protagonist of the film, while Hoffman’s the literal subject. And also, for reasons, when Lenny gets to the biopic summary montages, they work differently for Hoffman and Perrine. Hoffman wouldn’t be able to stay protagonist with them, while the devices don’t affect Perrine.

The film and Hoffman are wholly entranced with Perrine, and their salad days are fun, sympathetic, and exuberant. And then tragedy strikes, and their whole lives change. They end up in L.A. and get hooked on heroin. They clean up long enough to have a kid to save the marriage, only it doesn’t work, with Hoffman staying off but Perrine getting back on and worse.

Hoffman doesn’t have to account for any of that period outside flashback moments and intercut references in his routine, but Perrine goes through it in the interview. It’s harrowing, with Perrine getting two distinct arcs, one in flashback and one in the interviews. It’s an exceptional performance; maybe not better than Hoffman’s, but far more complex. Perrine builds her performance one way, winding through the narrative and its fractures, while Hoffman gets to build from scratch. And to a goal. In the later comedy routine, the film shows where Hoffman’s going to end. It’s just a matter of getting him there.

The thing about Hoffman (and Bruce) is there’s no early moment in his failures to foretell future greatness. At the film’s start, he’s usually bad and rarely middling. He’s affable and cute, but it’s Perrine who gets him out of the proverbial Catskills comedy circuit (whether she wants to or not). His social commentary routines start as filler between introducing dancers at one strip club or another. He initially gets those gigs because Perrine’s dancing there.

Hoffman grows his performance along the same trajectory; it’s all a coincidence of person and time. The film’s got a lengthy Bruce routine about racial slurs (which dates poorly as social commentary but provides exceptional historical insight); it’s post-integration, and people are figuring things out. It’s the time and place, not the person. There are numerous bits about men and women, husbands and wives, and even some (albeit slurry) anti-homophobia commentary. For a brief, shining moment (in the second act), Hoffman sees the world better than anyone else with a microphone. Then the third act is revealing he’s still profoundly naive about the whole thing. Initially, the film bakes that revelation and resulting tragedy into a pseudo-comedic courtroom scene. Lenny’s got great courtroom scenes. The last one kills and in the wrong way.

The finale ought to be a lot more abrupt than it plays; in the present, night has fallen after the days of interviews; there are a handful of flashbacks, shorter, with the interviewees directing attention to specific details instead of setting up. But, thanks to some pointed questions and answers, the film can stay firmly on its path, Fosse bringing it to the unavoidable but not inevitable finish. The film pulls in all the threads of the previous almost two hours, jumbles them up, then elegantly lays them out, lucidly but not obviously. Fosse’s got one last incredible move in a film of spectacular moves.

All the acting is excellent. Obviously, Hoffman and Perrine are the stars, with Miner and Beck both getting some fine moments. None of the other supporting players get more than a few short scenes, with Rashel Novikoff and Gary Morton standouts. But also pretty much the only other two actors with significant scenes. Novikoff is Hoffman’s unintentionally hilarious aunt, and Morton’s a Catskills comic gone Hollywood, so basically Hoffman’s best-case future.

Technically, it’s superlative. Fosse’s direction, composition and of performances, is great. Heim’s editing, Surtees’s black and white photography, Joel Schiller’s production design, the occasional but actually perfect Ralph Burns music.

Lenny’s remarkable.

Cabaret (1972, Bob Fosse)

The first act of Cabaret is about introducing British guy Michael York to Weimar-era Berlin and to the life and times of his neighbor Liza Minnelli. Minnelli’s an American ex-pat; she’s landed in a cabaret and is trying to sing, dance, and sleep her way into movies. York’s there to teach English and get some experience before he becomes a boring Cambridge professor.

The second act is about the rise of Nazism in the early thirties and how much effect it can have on ex-pats. Or it would be if York and Minnelli were paying attention; instead, they’re letting rich German guy Helmut Griem play with them. Griem is in need of affordable diversions, and York and Minnelli are broke.

The third act is about the tragedy of York and Minnelli and how the problems of little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in the crazy world. Director Fosse’s got an inspired narrative distance to York and Minnelli—he has it throughout the film, but in the third act, it’s even better because first, it pays off. Everyone shows their hand, both the characters and then Fosse revealing how the film’s actually been working, and the third act works through the repercussions. It’s sort of like the third act is an extended epilogue to the epical arc the film only barely spotlights.

Because while York and Minnelli are drinking champagne and playing with Griem, their friends Fritz Wepper and Marisa Berenson are experiencing the realities of Nazism. Wepper’s a wannabe gigolo; Berenson is the perfect mark. She’s rich and beautiful but Jewish. It’s not a problem for Wepper; it’s a problem for Berenson. Over the course of their courtship, in addition to Wepper falling hard for her, the local brownshirts start targeting her family.

Cabaret’s most salient arc is for Wepper and Berenson, who occasionally visit York and Minnelli to fill them in on the main plot. But the film’s not really about its arcs; it’s about the disquieting nightmare world everyone finds themselves in, the world of the cabaret.

Joel Grey plays the emcee at the club where Minnelli dances, but Fosse uses him throughout, an almost devil overseeing tragedies big and small. There are only a couple scenes where Grey and Minnelli interact—they have a remarkable musical number together, but Cabaret’s musical numbers are integrated into the narrative and compartmentalized from it—the scenes where Grey and Minnelli engage each other, however, are profoundly disturbing. Just like Fosse uses Grey to imply the macro changes to Germany, Grey’s also there to make some implications about Minnelli’s personal changes. Cabaret is about dreams never coming true while the nightmares instead do. Grey’s the master of ceremonies and nightmares.

Fosse shoots much of the film in close-ups, especially when York and Minnelli are becoming friends. The focus is on the characters, not their setting. Fosse zooms out for some other sequences, the ones contextualizing the characters in the changing Germany. The changing Germans then get the close-ups, Fosse emphasizing the humanity of their inhumanity. There’s a devastating beer garden Nazi youth singing sequence (the master race has such bad teeth and skin) where Fosse malevolently reveals the extent of Nazism among the populace. York’s ostensibly the one watching the revelation unfold, but it’s the viewer. York’s going to get to put his head in the sand while the audience presumably knows what’s coming.

It’s unclear how much the growing Nazi movement impacts York and Minnelli’s arc. It definitely has some effect, but a lot is going on; the film never reveals anywhere near all of it. Actually, the film doesn’t even show most of it. The audience is not privy to York and Minnelli’s thoughts or secrets, just what they’re going to share with the world or one another. And if they’re keeping secrets from each other, it passes over to the audience.

Minnelli and York are tragic characters without being tragic figures. Fosse always finds a way to show the character through the caricature, which is quite the trick given the importance of caricature in the cabaret performances—the most terrifying implication, of course, is Grey’s emcee isn’t a horrifying sight gag but is an active participant. It’s never more impressive than with Minnelli, however. It’s a sensational part, with Fosse and Minnelli able to do all sorts of minor character developments and reveals along the way. York’s got the epical arc—young English man abroad—and Minnelli gets the character study. Even with the film presenting Minnelli almost entirely through York’s observation in the second act. When Minnelli does a musical number, and York’s not there, it takes a second to remember it’s her movie. Well, it’s the cabaret’s movie, and she’s in the cabaret.

Fosse leans heavily into making the Life is a Cabaret song metaphor work for the whole picture. Fosse and cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth don’t exactly soft-focus the non-cabaret scenes, but there’s always more reality to the musical numbers. The camera captures the performers waiting and watching from backstage, for example. Or whatever magic Unsworth does to make the stage’s lights visually sear without changing the lighting mood. Cabaret is one hell of a gorgeous film. As impressive as Unsworth’s photography gets, David Bretherton’s editing is even better. He and Fosse cut the musical numbers precisely, seemingly on the actors’ rhythm, but the rest is just as well-edited. Every cut in Cabaret is divine.

Great costumes from Charlotte Fleming, production design from Rolf Zehetbauer, and sound from David Hildyard. The music—Ralph Burns arranging—is excellent. Ditto Jay Presson Allen’s script. Obviously, Fosse is the superstar, but he’s got a great crew and cast.

Minnelli and Grey give the best performances, then York. York never gets to be flashy—he is British, after all—and does an excellent job radiating nervous energy. Wepper and Berenson are outstanding. Griem’s fine. He’s just a shallow blue blood, de facto glamorous, and Cabaret’s about what’s behind the glamour. Both real and imagined.

It’s a devastating and devastatingly good motion picture.

All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)

There are few secrets in All That Jazz; the film immediately forecasts where it’s going, with clear shots of star Roy Scheider in the hospital amid the other quickly cut montage sequences. But these are flash forwards, as opposed to the present action and then we’re seeing flashback. Because we’re actually not even seeing “reality” yet. First we meet Jessica Lange, mysterious, magical, dressed in white, in Scheider’s head maybe. These sequences are—except when director Fosse and editor Alan Heim cut them to be so—disconnected from the main narrative. They’re even disconnected from Scheider’s eventual hospital bed hallucinations. They’re not in his imagination, not in his consciousness… maybe it’s his soul. Doesn’t really matter. Putting a noun to it doesn’t change how it functions, giving Fosse and co-writer Robert Alan Aurthur a way to do some show not tell exposition on Scheider’s history as well as give him an egoless outlet.

The film’s present action begins with Broadway director Scheider casting for his next production. Fosse goes through the introduction to Lange, then the quick cut montage sequence of Scheider gearing up for the day (Visine, Dexedrine, cigarettes, positive affirmations), and then gets to the first big dance number. The sequence—Scheider cutting auditioning dancers, then working with the ones who make it—is breathtaking. Set to a live performance (which adds a whole other layer) of George Benson covering “On Broadway,” it’s not just about Fosse’s composition, which showcases both the individual artistry of the dancers but also the scale of the audition as well as Scheider’s place in it, and he and Heim’s editing, which captures movement peerlessly, but also introducing the main supporting cast. Well, minus Ann Reinking. But we meet ex-wife Leland Palmer and daughter Erzsebet Foldi and then the show guys—producers William LeMassena and Robert Hitt, accountant David Margulies, song writer Anthony Holland—from all their various reactions, we get some grounding for Scheider. The show guys are able to tell his not show-minded interest in one of the dancers (Deborah Geffner), which Foldi and Palmer are able to pick up on as well, though they react differently. But Scheider’s not just doing the show, he’s also cutting together a movie, The Stand-Up, about a comedian (played by Cliff Gorman), and running the editing team ragged. It’s also causing Scheider’s contact guy with the studio—Max Wright—nuts.

It’s at the screening of the day’s cuts we meet Reinking, the girlfriend, which is just before we get to see what kind of womanizer everyone’s dealing with. Since leaving the auditions and editing his movie to exhaustion, Scheider’s also had time to ring up Geffner to make a date.

There’s a lot of humanity to Scheider already. The audition sequence, when he’s cutting people, there’s great care in the film to show his hesitations and sympathies. The scene between Scheider and Geffner is where we get to see how Scheider’s empathy has got a strange formula to it. He’s heartbreakingly rude to Geffner, absolutely piggish, but also aware of how his behavior plays out. The asides with Lange have set up Scheider’s convoluted, sorted sexual history with women—Keith Gordon plays him in the flashbacks to working as a young teen in burlesque theaters, where the dancers tease (and don’t tease)—and then we get to see the repercussions of his devout philandering play out with Reinking. Geffner is, apparently, to Reinking as Reinking was to Palmer. Only Palmer’s Scheider’s creative muse—he’s only doing the show so she can headline it—and Reinking’s clearly a good dancer. Geffner is not, adding further complications and giving us a chance to see how Scheider works with his dancers.

The only person Scheider can’t manage—though with Palmer, it’s more she lets him manage her—is Foldi. There’s this amazing scene where Scheider and Foldi dance, with her trying to talk to him about settling down and him workaholicing his way through it, and even though he’s in charge of choreographing the dance, everything she says takes him a little by surprise. The relationship between Scheider and Foldi—well, Foldi and everyone (Reinking and Palmer) have an amazing relationship. In the chaos Scheider drums up so he can control his creative efforts, Foldi’s the only other one able to weather it. Because, like Scheider, she’s native to it.

Scheider’s just cracked the show when the heart troubles go from giving him pause to requiring hospitalization. It’s approximately halfway through the movie. Then there’s the medical drama parts, which race by—once Scheider’s condition improves, Fosse does a lengthy montage sequence, cutting between various moments during Scheider’s hospital stay and some external factors—Foldi’s experience of her dad being hospitalized, the show guys trying to get another director (John Lithgow). Fosse will drop longer scenes in the montage, kind of taking a break before going back to spinning around, seeing all the various moments. It’s all fairly light. Lighter than anything else has been in the film to this point.

So when Scheider’s inability to control his urges hits again and he takes a turn for the worse, it’s time for the hallucination musical numbers. There are four of them, a showcase for Reinking, Palmer, Foldi, and then women in general. They’re all amazing. But whether or not they’re enough to keep Lange’s symbolic lips of Scheider’s….

The choreography of all the sequences is startling. None of them aren’t great. But then there’s how Fosse shoots them too. How Giuseppe Rotunno lights them. How Heim cuts them. It’s extraordinary work.

Scheider’s performance is great. Then Palmer. Then Foldi. Palmer doesn’t get any expository devices with angelic Jessica Langes to establish her character. She barely gets it in the script. She’s got to do it all with looks. She does it. And Foldi’s excellent. Everyone else is good… Reinking has to play a lot with a stone face and she does it well. The show guys are all good. They’re kind of the comic relief. Even as they cover their asses.

Lithgow’s fun.

The music, the dancing, the direction, the technicals… all of it is exceptional. Heim and Fosse’s editing—which is the subject of the movie in the movie subplot, so the editing is begging attention—is singular.

All That Jazz is a peerless motion picture.