Bob Fosse's acerbic musical, red in tooth and claw, has a lot to offer in one way or another, not least Roy Scheider as you have never seen him before - singing, jumping, clowning, being allowed to react a lot visually and generally to dominate a film in such a way as he rarely got elsewhere. The film itself is quasi-autobiographical in that it deals with a dance director who suffers a heart attack, but Fosse has only used his own experiences as a starting point for a dazzling display of cinematic pyrotechnics that resemble one of those fragmented patterns you see at the bottom of a kaleidoscope. It's almost impossible to realise such a project without being self-indulgent at one stage or another or making the occasional miscalculation (the open-heart surgery at the end is massively difficult to watch), but it's entertaining, imaginative, and at its highpoints, thrilling stuff. The girls all excel in the dance numbers, which have the exhilaration of Fosse's all-out, sweatgland-bursting snap without ever becoming ragged.

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