Le monde des musicals

Brillant chorégraphe de Broadway, Joe Gideon prépare son dernier spectacle. Il veut que cet opus soit la comédie musicale la plus explosive et la plus érotique de sa carrière. Mais si Gideon a conscience d'avoir brûlé sa vie par les deux bouts. Trop d'alcool, trop de drogue, trop de femmes. Ce spectacle sera son dernier tour de piste. Et, tandis que la mort attend en coulisses et que Gideon fait le bilan de sa vie, le spectacle continue…

Joe Gideon is a theatre director and choreographer trying to balance work on his latest Broadway musical with editing a Hollywood film he has directed. He is a workaholic who chain-smokes cigarettes and "chain-sleeps" with his dancers. Without a daily dose of Vivaldi, Visine, Alka-Seltzer, Dexedrine and sex, he wouldn't have the energy to keep up the biggest "show" of all — his life. His girlfriend Katie Jagger, his ex-wife Audrey Paris, and daughter Michelle try to pull him back from the brink, but it is too late for his exhausted body and stress-ravaged heart. Decades of overwork and constant stress have gotten to Gideon. In his imagination, he flirts with an angel of death named Angelique.
Gideon's condition gets progressively worse. He is rushed to a hospital with chest pains after a particularly stressful script rehearsal (with the penny-pinching backers) and admitted with severe attacks of angina. Joe brushes off his symptoms, and attempts to leave to go back to rehearsal, but he collapses in the doctor's office and is ordered to stay in the hospital for three to four weeks to rest his heart and recover from his exhaustion. The show is postponed, but Gideon continues his antics from the hospital bed. Champagne flows, endless strings of women frolic around his hospital room and the cigarettes are always lit. Cardiogram readings don't show any improvement - Gideon is playing with death. As the paltry reviews for his feature film (which has been released without him) come in, Gideon has a massive coronary and is taken straight to coronary artery bypass surgery.
The backers for the Broadway show must decide now whether it's time to pack up or replace Gideon as the director. Their matter-of-fact money-oriented negotiations with the insurers are juxtaposed with graphic scenes of (presumably Joe's) open heart surgery. The producers realize that the best way to recoup their money and make a profit, is to bet on Gideon dying — which would bring in a profit of over USD$500,000. Meanwhile, elements from Gideon's past life are staged in dazzling dream sequences of musical numbers he directs from his hospital bed while on life support. Realizing his death is imminent, his mortality unconquerable, Gideon has another heart attack. In the glittery finale, he goes through the five stages of death — anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance - featured in the stand-up routine he has been editing. As death closes in on Gideon, the fantasy episodes become more hallucinatory and extravagant and in a final epilogue that is set up as a truly monumental live variety show featuring everyone from his past, Gideon himself takes center stage.

Un film autobiographique
Dans "All That Jazz", Bob Fosse cumule les fonctions de scénariste, réalisateur et chorégraphe. Le film, fortement autobiographique, est une libre évocation de sa propre vie d'artiste. Le personnage de Joe Gideon, incarné par Roy Scheider, aborde les grandes étapes de la vie de Bob Fosse : les débuts sur les planches, puis, au terme d'une carrière marquée par de nombreux succès, l'épuisement consécutif à une vie de travail, de drogues et de conquêtes féminines. Que le spectacle commence! va même jusqu'à reproduire à l'écran l'infarctus subi par Fosse lui-même alors qu'il travaillait sur le film Lenny.

Le clin d'oeil de Chicago
Chicago, sorti en 2003 et adaptation sur grand écran da la pièce de Bob Fosse, rend un vibrant hommage à ce dernier. La chanson-phare du long métrage, intitulée And all that jazz renvoie en effet directement à All that Jazz, le titre original de Que le spectacle commence!.

Bob Fosse : tout pour la musique
L'Américain Bob Fosse a consacré la quasi-totalité de sa vie à la musique. Après des débuts passés sur les planches, il devient acteur, danseur et chorégraphe pour les studios MGM. Les années cinquante le voient ainsi évoluer dans de nombreuses comédies musicales telles que Embrasse-moi chérie ou Ma soeur est du tonnerre. A la fin des années 60, il se lance dans la réalisation : on lui doit notamment la comédie musicale Cabaret, mais également Lenny et Que le spectacle commence!, film basé sur sa propre existence. Il est également l'auteur de nombreux spectacles, dont le fameux Chicago, adapté en 2003 sur grand écran (Chicago de Rob Marshall). Travailleur acharné, séducteur impénitent, Bob Fosse fut également un grand consommateur de drogues. Après avoir été victime d'un infarctus en 1975, s'éteint en 1987 d'une crise cardiaque, à l'âge de soixante ans.

Recherche d'authentisme
Afin de pousser plus loin encore l'aspect autobiographique de son oeuvre, Bob Fosse a fait appel à son ex-femme Leland Palmer et à sa compagne du moment Ann Reinking pour jouer dans le long métrage. De son côté, l'acteur Roy Scheider fit tout son possible pour ressembler physiquement metteur en scène et chorégraphe.

Le casting de Joe Gideon
Le personnage de Joe Gideon, incarné à l'écran par Roy Scheider, devait à l'origine revenir à Richard Dreyfuss. Ce dernier se désista du projet peu avant le début du tournage.

Une Palme et trois Oscars
Que le spectacle commence! A obtenu la Palme d'Or au Festival de Cannes 1980 (ex-aequo avec Kagemusha, l'ombre du guerrier). Le long métrage de Bob Fosse a également été récompensé de quatre Oscars la même année : meilleure musique pour Ralph Burns, Meilleur montage pour Alan Heim, Meilleurs décors et Meilleurs costumes.

1 All That Jazz (Film) peut-être considéré comme un Top musical

2 All That Jazz (Film) peut-être considéré comme un backstage musical.

All That Jazz is a 1979 American musical film directed by Bob Fosse. The screenplay by Robert Alan Aurthur and Fosse is a semi-autobiographical fantasy based on aspects of Fosse's life and career as dancer, choreographer and director. The film was inspired by Bob Fosse's manic effort to edit his film Lenny while simultaneously staging the 1975 Broadway musical Chicago. It borrows its title from a Kander and Ebb tune in that production.

"Que le spectacle commence ! " pour la version française

01."On Broadway" - George Benson
02."A Perfect Day" - Harry Nilsson
03."Everything Old Is New Again" - Peter Allen
04."Take Off With Us" - Paul
05."Take Off With Us (Reprise)" - Victoria, Dancers
06."Hospital Hop" - Paul
07."After You've Gone" - Audrey, Kate, Michelle
08."You Better Change Your Ways" - Kate, Audrey, Michelle
09."Who's Sorry Now?" - Kate, Audrey, Michelle
10."Some of These Days" - Michelle, Kate, Audrey
11."Sing, Sing, Sing" - Joe
12."Bye Bye Life" (from the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love) - O'Connor
13."There's No Business Like Show Business" - Ethel Merman

Roy Scheider (Keith Gordon, young) as Joe Gideon
Jessica Lange as Angelique
Leland Palmer as Audrey Paris
Ann Reinking as Kate Jagger
Cliff Gorman as Davis Newman
Ben Vereen as O'Connor Flood
Erzsébet Földi as Michelle Gideon
Michael Tolan as Dr. Ballinger
Max Wright as Joshua Penn
William LeMassena as Jonesy Hecht
Deborah Geffner as Victoria Porter
John Lithgow as Lucas Sergeant
Chris Chase as Leslie Perry
Anthony Holland as Paul
Sandahl Bergman, Eileen Casey, Bruce Anthony Davis, Gary Flannery, Jennifer Nairn-Smith, Danny Ruvolo, Leland Schwantes, John Sowinski, Candace Tovar, and Rima Vetter as Principal dancers
Ben Masters as Dr. Garry
Robert Levine as Dr. Hyman
C. C. H. Pounder as Nurse Blake
Wallace Shawn as Assistant insurance man
Michael Hinton as band drummer (uncredited)

Aucun dossier informatif complémentaire concernant All That Jazz (Film)

Aucun dossier informatif complémentaire concernant All That Jazz (Film)

According to Shirley MacLaine in her autobiography "My Lucky Stars," the idea for this film was hatched when Bob Fosse was hospitalized for a heart attack. MacLaine claims she was the one who gave Fosse the idea to do "a musical about his death" though she said Fosse seemed to not remember this later. Fosse did, however, offer her the role of Audrey Paris, she wrote.
Many of the characters in the film are based on real-life characters from the New York theater world. Aside from Roy Scheider, Leland Palmer's character was based on his wife/frequent star Gwen Verdon. John Lithgow's character was also based somewhat on the New York theater director Michael Bennett, director of "Dreamgirls" with whom Bob Fosse had a longstanding rivalry. The character of producer Jonesy Hecht was based upon his fellow longtime rival Harold Prince. Ann Reinking was more or less playing herself. The character of songwriter "Paul Dann" is a swipe at Stephen Schwartz, with whom he had unhappily worked on "Pippin." Jules Fisher, the lighting designer on many of Fosse's shows, and later the producer of his show "Dancin'", makes an appearance as a lighting designer in the scene with John Lithgow. The film is based on Fosse's real-life heart attack while directing the original 1975 Broadway production of "Chicago."
Bob Fosse went over-budget before filming the famous "Bye, Bye Life" finale, and Columbia refused to give him any more money. At an impasse, Columbia execs privately showcased for the president of Twentieth Century-Fox much of what was in the can. Impressed, he agreed that Fox would finance the remainder of the shoot; he also asked for and received distribution & cable rights. Profits from "All That Jazz" were split according to the contract between Columbia and Fox, although Fox receives top billing over Columbia in the credits.