Encore has been showing the movie Chicago the past few days, with Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones-Douglas, and Rene Zellweger. I love the music and dancing and singing, but I have one question.
When Roxie realizes she’s losing her lawyer’s focus to a new client, she faints at the jail cell and claims she hopes the fall didn’t hurt the baby. Of course, the press goes wild and she’s back in the spotlight.
She’s taken to a hospital where a doctor confirms that yes, she is pregnant.
But after the trial, when her husband offers to take her back, she says, “There is no baby.”
I am unclear on what happened. I don’t think she could have obtained an abortion in prison, and she was using the baby as sympathy during the trial, so it’s unlikely she would have gotten one anyway. There was no mention of a miscarriage. Was the doctor bribed to lie? It didn’t seem like it to me, but maybe he was?
If you watch the scene with the doctor carefully (or not so carefully), you can see a clear implication that Roxie performed some sort of sex act (probably oral sex) with the doctor just before he declared her pregnant.
My focus was split while watching the other day (I was busy winning an online poker tourney) but IIRC there was an implication that Roxie had sex with the doctor in exchange for his “confirming” she was pregnant.
As long as we’re on the topic of Chicago, here’s a question that I’ve been pondering. The director has stated that his conceit for the movie was that all of the musical numbers were fantasies, taking place inside Roxie’s mind. He expressed regret at having to cut CZ-J and Queen Latifah’s number, “Class,” as violative of that conceit. What then of “Mister Cellophane”? Doesn’t that number take place in Billy Flynn’s office while Roxie is in jail, thus violating the conceit? Has the director ever addressed this?
Odd coincidence – I watched this just last night. (Coincidence because I don’t have cable – I was watching my copy of it.) For those of you who were looking for the old thread about the Hungarian lyrics in Cell Block Tango, here it is.
Not all of the musical numbers are fantasies. The one that takes place in the beginning(All that Jazz) is definatly real. THe one at the end(Nowadays?) may be real but it’s hard to tell for sure. The rest are interprative, mostly to roxie, but “Mr. Cellophane” is the exception in that it’s Amos doing it. It’s going on entirely in his mind.
Right, All That Jazz is not a fantasy (although Roxie does project herself into it momentarily. That’s fine, it’s taking place at a night club. Nowadays is also not a fantasy; it starts off with Roxie at an audition and concludes with Roxie and Velma’s act.
Marshall states in the DVD commentary, according to this review (and other sources I’ve seen),
Mister Cellophane violates the concept also and IMHO is a much weaker song that Class. I’m wondering if Marshall has ever addressed the issue as to why he would cut one number for violating the conceit and not the other.
At least among my musical theatre geek circle “Mister Celophane” is a very popular and well known number, while “Class” is often overlooked. I wouldn’t expect the director to cut such a popular song even if it does slightly deviate from the ‘in Roxie’s head’ concept.
My problem with the whole “in Roxie’s head” conceit is that it forced them to cut Velma’s post-intermission number, probably the cutest, cleverest song in the entire original score, I Know a Girl. Velma as Greek chorus to the whole press orgy with the baby news is classic.
I was wondering this myself until I noticed that the song starts while Roxie is being taken away in the police van and she looks back and sees Amos standing there alone. Therefore the song is how she imagines her husband to be, intercut with scenes of him fulfilling this fantasy. It is the same as with “All I Care About is Love.” Roxie is imagining the way Billy Flynn acts while we see him getting dressed at the tailors, driving to the courthouse, etc. Obviously she wasn’t there to see those actions, they are just the real life counterparts to her imagination.
This is correct - it’s clearer if you listen to the director’s commentary on the DVD. “Mr. Cellophane” begins with Roxie watching Amos standing all alone on the street as she is taken away – the song is in her mind, like all the others except “All that Jazz” and the final number in the movie (even in “All That Jazz,” Roxie briefly imagines herself on stage singing).
I dealt (briefly) with this issue in a paper once. Almost all reviews of Chicago describe the musical numbers as being Roxie’s fantasies, and apparently this was the director’s intent, but I don’t think that explanation works very well. The “Mr. Cellophane” number is problematic for reasons already discussed. Although the director’s explanation shows how it really could be Roxie’s fantasy, I don’t think this would be clear to many viewers without that explanation. I know I didn’t get it when I saw the movie.
There are other numbers that do take place when Roxie is present but that I don’t think make sense as being her fantasies either. “When You’re Good to Mama” reveals the key to Mama’s character, but Roxie demonstrates no understanding of this. After the song, she still seems to expect that Mama will help her without having to be bribed. During “I Can’t Do It Alone” Roxie appears to be genuinely uninterested in Velma’s offer and doing her best to ignore her. So why would she imagine a musical number for her? Especially a musical number that expresses exactly the same meaning that Velma is really trying to convey? I think “Cell Block Tango” is questionable for similar reasons (Roxie obviously doesn’t care about any of the other women’s problems), although I can accept it as Roxie simply being bored enough to imagine that the complaints of her sister prisoners are really a song-and-dance number.
I think Chicago works better if we take the musical numbers to be mostly Roxie’s fantasies, but occasionally the fantasies of other characters.
This number should be classed with And All That Jazz and Nowadays as actually happening. IIRC Velma remains in her prison garb throughout the number, lending credence to its actually happening. Still kinda leaves Mister Cellophane dangling out there rather tenously on the edge of the conceit.
But Roxie does ask Hunyak whether or not she did it, so there is some rudimentary level of interest. But low level of interest or boredom, either way I have no problem with CBT being Roxie’s fantasy.
[QUOTE=Otto]
This number should be classed with And All That Jazz and Nowadays as actually happening. IIRC Velma remains in her prison garb throughout the number, lending credence to its actually happening.I remember the scene as cutting between the “reality” of Velma in her regular clothes talking about the act and dancing around a bit in the cell and the “fantasy” of Velma in full makeup and her skimpy black dance costume doing a full-out performance in the cell with colored lights and everything. It seemed to me that Velma really was dancing, but that someone was at the same time imagining it with all the trappings of a nightclub performance. But I may be mixing it up with one of the other numbers.
It doesn’t actually bother me either, and when I was watching the movie it didn’t seem at all out of place. Yet while I can easily accept it as Roxie’s fantasy, I think it could be interpreted as Velma’s fantasy or that of the other prisoners collectively.
