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Fosse/Verdon
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The working collaboration and intimate marital life of
choreographer-director Bob Fosse (1927-1987) and dancer-actor Gwen Verdon
(1925-2000) – what could be so awful and dramatic in that subject matter?
In fact, Fosse himself had already imagined – and
pictured – the worst of it in his scarcely veiled autobiography, the classic
“mutant musical” All That Jazz (1980). Once you have survived, from that film, the relentlessly drawn-out
spectacle of Roy Scheider as Fosse alter
ego Joe undergoing open-heart surgery and (39 year-old spoiler alert)
getting zipped up in a body bag – all to the tune of Ben Vereen hammily
performing “Bye Bye Life” – you are ready for almost any screen extreme.
This element of the grotesque was, indeed, a crucial
part of Fosse’s mature, creative work in theatre and cinema, at least from the
time of Sweet Charity (1969) until
his final film, the underrated Star 80 (1983), by way of Chicago (1975) on
stage. (The subsequent 2002 film version of Chicago by Rob Marshall is something of a betrayal of the Fosse aesthetic, while still
retaining many “archaeological” traces of the original production’s
conception.)
Fosse/Verdon, created by Steven
Levenson and Thomas Kail with the full co-operation of the star couple’s
daughter (Nicole Fosse) and The VerdonFosse Legacy, owes a lot to the model of All That Jazz – while dialling back on
its proud excesses. Like the film, the series darts about in time, shuffling
the (often traumatic) highlights of both subjects' lives. (In the type of odd
echo that has become increasingly common in contemporary TV, young Verdon here
is played by Kelli Burgland, co-star of Gregg Araki’s Now Apocalypse!)
There is, again, the fatalistic sense of a countdown
to death, marked out by ominous date-stamped intertitles. And there is, one
more time, a dazzling array of pills popped, productions for stage and screen
mounted, and sexual affairs consummated, especially by Fosse (Sam Rockwell) –
one of the most captivating vignettes of interpersonal drama presents him with
Verdon at his door and another woman in his bed. Ah, yes: It’s Showtime!
The series offers something of a compromise between
portraying the types of trashy sordidness and vulgarity that Fosse himself was
never afraid to embrace on screen (see his fascinating underground-showbiz
biopic Lenny [1974], which comes
around for much exposure both here and in All
That Jazz), and a somehow more affirmative message – especially angled
toward the supposed rehabilitation of Verdon’s career (but does she really need
it?) for the Me Too era.
There’s no doubting that Michelle Williams (like
Rockwell, also serving as executive producer) is particularly impressive as the
adult Verdon, combining both uncanny mimicry and psychological depth. But the
slanted depiction of her as someone increasingly cast into the shadow of her
outsize auteur husband, even well
beyond his death? Things do tend to get a little contrived on this retro-retribution,
settling-history’s-accounts ideological plane.
More intriguingly (for me, at least), Fosse/Verdon trades shamelessly in
fantasy-shortcut depictions of the creative process. It’s made to seem as if
the big musical numbers of Cabaret (1972) were caught (like porn scenes in The
Deuce) in a single master shot (they weren’t); as if choreography magically
happens with Verdon mindreading the moves Fosse hasn’t yet shown her (she
didn’t); and as if films are edited by people pacing a darkened room and merely
snapping their fingers (if only). In this respect, mainstream cinema and TV
have hardly advanced beyond the sight of Cary Grant as Cole Porter in Night and Day (1946) sitting down at the
piano, fiddling a few keys, and instantly producing an immortal song-standard.
The “working” of art (any kind of art)
is still rendered so magically that it seems an almost taboo item of mass-cult
representation; either that, or it’s just too darn complicated and difficult to
show quickly.
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