FOSSE/VERDON

In the 1950’s and 60’s, the heyday of the Broadway musical, Bob Fosse (played by Sam Rockwell) was one of the premier choreographers. Gwen Verdon (Michelle Williams) was a much sought-after Broadway dancer and comedian. They both lived for the stage and for creative collaboration. Fosse won five Tony's for best choreography during his years on Broadway- and then in the late ‘60’s and early ’70s he started directing movies: Sweet Charity with Shirley MacLaine, which was a box office failure, then Cabaret with Liza Minelli, which garnered eight Oscars including Best Director. Fosse then made Lenny with Dustin Hoffman, about the legendary stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce, then auto-biographical musical All That Jazz,  in which he was portrayed by Roy Scheider – it won the Palme D’or at Cannes in 1979 –  and in it, Fosse depicted himself as a pill-popping, philandering workaholic. Not too far from the truth – but people are complicated. Verdon and Fosse were married, contributed creatively towards each other’s work, but Fosse’s philandering saw them become estranged, yet they remained friendly and still very much professionally intertwined. Fosse/Verdon uses a fragmented style of flashbacks and editing reminiscent of Fosse’s own style and follows their careers from when they were both young dancers, right through their successes and their failures. Fosse became increasingly dependent on Verdon for creative support, as his career goes stratospheric and hers stagnates. Their relationship IS dysfunctional - but aren’t they all? She was instrumental in the making of Cabaret and many of his stage productions (very much the dynamic that Hitchcock famously had with his wife Alma, where Hitchcock wouldn’t make a film unless Alma approved the script) so Gwen’s input was so integral in Fosse’s process that it’s been somewhat subsumed by Fosse’s reputation. Fosse/Verdon traces their relationship: the sometimes transactional nature of it, through Fosse’s co-dependency and self-destructiveness as well as the grey areas and the complexity of the emotional baggage they both carried.