Word: scheider
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...disturbing than in All That Jazz, a highly personal film that swings wildly from the sublime to the ridiculous. For half its length, Jazz is a knowing and witty tour of high-powered show biz, with Fosse as the guide. The film's hero, Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), is a driven director-choreographer who not only looks like Fosse but also shares his personal and professional history. As Gideon rehearses a new musical that recalls Chicago and edits a new movie that resembles Lenny, he carries on harried, selfish relationships with a lively crew of often recognizable figures...
...Though Scheider is a wry, sensitive actor, he soon gets lost in the vulgar theatrics. So does the subject of death. When Fosse attempts to put his heart on the table, he does so too literally. All That Jazz contains close-ups of open-heart sur gery, but few insights into Gideon's soul. What Fosse regards as self-analysis often comes out as egomaniacal self-congratulation: there's even a scene where Gideon cries at his own funeral. Still, Fosse is no fool, and at times he is his own best critic. All That Jazz is never...
...stylish horror films, because they're so good about being shocked: "A vampire you say? My word..." Here are a few of the most precious moments in horror history: Ernest Thesiger plying Boris Karloff's Frankenstein monster with brandy and cigars; Carrie telekinetically crucifying her Jesus freak mother; Roy Scheider spooning fish entrails into the sea, prissily calling out to Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss "Why don't you guys shovel some of this shit?" and as he hits the last word, noticing this big shark a few feet from his face; Vincent Price, dressed as Richard III, leaning over...
Much running about ensues, as two forces stumble over themselves in their desire to dispatch Scheider. Like so many younger film makers today, Demme is generous in his implied homages to Hitchcock. His camera buzzes around like a mosquito looking for some place to draw blood. Maddeningly, the script offers a number of scenes that suggest an air of gathering menace, but it never quite manages to stitch them together into a tense line of force. Nor does it offer substitutes that can compensate for that defect-an off-the-wall characterization here, an unexpected plot twist there, a memorable...
Still, there is a haunting and finally deadly darkness in the romantic entanglement between Scheider and Margolin. She is driven by a slightly implausible need to revenge wrongs done to her grandmother over half a century before. Even as he falls in love with her, it becomes interestingly possible that he may be the vic tim of her loony side too. Add in those neat acting cameos and Last Embrace is not a total loss. It is just that the movie is not all that it might have been or promised to be. The title implies a certain passionate intensity...