Films › Editing
All That Jazz
Directed by Bob Fosse, 1979
Alan Heim cut musical numbers, open heart surgery and daily rehearsal into one continuous nervous rhythm. The recurring morning routine montage is a structural refrain that shortens and degrades as the film progresses. Dance is covered with enough angles to preserve the body while still cutting on musical accent. It is the most rigorous marriage of editing to score in an American musical. Heim worked closely with Fosse, himself a former editor of his own stage work, and the two treated the cutting room as a choreographic instrument rather than an assembly stage, trimming numbers to the exact beat where a movement resolves. The hospital sequences are intercut with fantasy musical numbers using matched camera movement and costume color rather than a dissolve, so the transitions read as psychological rather than temporal. That refusal to signal the fantasy conventionally is what keeps the film disorienting on repeat viewing.
What to watch for
Watch the repeated morning routine and how its length and cutting change each time.
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