To say that Fosse's All That Jazz has been influenced by Fellini's 8 is merely to sum up two decades of a chi-chi Broadway reverence for the European art film in contradistinction to Hollywood's "commercial product."…

The calculations and the imitations have worked to the extent that the film looks dazzling throughout, and several of the dance numbers are genuine show-stoppers. Yet there is something missing at the center of the film. Who exactly is [Gideon], and why should we care what happens to him? Fosse and Company tend to evade these questions as if they are not worth answering in an ambiguous and artsy European-type film…. Fortunately or unfortunately, All That Jazz is better danced, photographed, and edited than it is written. The dialogue never takes off on its own. At best, it just sits there without distracting from the visual and choreographic pyrotechnics. The besetting deficiency of...