Other Titles • Cabaret • Cabaret: Goodbye Berlin (1972)
Synopses for Cabaret (1972)
1.
Winner of eight Academy Awards, including Best Director (Bob Fosse), Best Actress (Liza Minnelli), and Best Supporting Actor (Joel Grey), Cabaret would also have taken Best Picture if it hadn't been competing against The Godfather as the most acclaimed film of 1972. (Francis Ford Coppola would have to wait two years before winning Best Director, for The Godfather, Part II.) Brilliantly adapted from the acclaimed stage production, which was in turn inspired by Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and the play and movie I Am a Camera, this remarkable musical turns the pre-war Berlin of 1931 into a sexually charged haven of decadence. Minnelli commands the screen as nightclub entertainer Sally Bowles, who radiantly goes on with the show as the Nazis rise to power, holding her many male admirers (including Michael York and Helmut Griem) at a distance that keeps her from having to bother with genuinely deep emotions. Joel Grey is the master of ceremonies at the Kit Kat Klub who will guarantee a great show night after night as a way of staving off the inevitable effects of war and dictatorship. They're all living in a morally ambiguous vacuum of desperate anxiety, determined to keep up appearances as the real world--the world outside the comfortable sanctuary of the cabaret--prepares for the nightmarish chaos of war. Director-choreographer Fosse achieves a finely tuned combination of devastating drama and ebullient entertainment, and the result is one of the most substantial screen musicals ever made. The dual-layered Special Edition widescreen DVD includes an exclusive 25th-anniversary documentary, Cabaret: A Legend in the Making, a 1972 promotional featurette, a photo gallery, production notes, the theatrical trailer, and more. --Jeff Shannon
(15 votes)
2.
Sally Bowles, a singer at the Kit Kat Klub, is an American caught up in the faux-glamour of prewar Berlin. Although Sally giddily ignores the decadence that has begun to permeate every aspect of society, her Jewish friend Natasha cannot; Natasha constantly faces persecution by Nazi authorities, and her lover has entirely hidden his Jewish identity.
But Sally continues to bury herself in her own problems: in addition to the difficulties of sharing her bisexual English lover with a wealthy German homosexual, she keeps getting more and more drawn in by the sleazy and sinister atmosphere of the Kit Kat Klub.
(15 votes)
3.
Winner of eight Academy Awards, Cabaret brings 1931 Berlin to life inside and outside the Kit Kat Klub. There, starry-eyed Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) and an impish emcee (Joel Grey) sound the call to decadent fun, while in the streets a certain political party grows into a brutal force. Cabaret caught lightning (and won Oscars) for Minnelli, Grey and director Bob Fosse, who shaped a triumph of style, showmanship and substance. On Side B, the commemorative 25th-anniversary documentary, Cabaret: A Legend in the Making, visits Minnelli, Grey, Michael York and several behind-the-camera talents, reminiscing about this movie landmark.
(15 votes)
4.
Cabaret is one of those film musicals whose cultural and stylistic influence extend well beyond the cinema. It confirmed Bob Fosse's status as one of the boldest choreographers of the 20th century and gave Liza Minnelli an early peak in a film career which would never scale such heights again. Minnelli is both the film's strength--on its own merits her performance is an Oscar-winning tour de force--and weakness. The real Sally Bowles was a third-rate performer and just one of a rich gallery of characters; here, the constant allowances for Minnelli's star turns and mannerisms ultimately throw the story off balance. But the source material is impeccable: Kander and Ebb's stage show, based on the autobiographical stories of Christopher Isherwood, has long since been acknowledged a classic. The songs, augmented by some new numbers in the film, are ageless.
Joel Grey from the original Broadway production is the Emcee, the master of ceremonies who, with his Kit Kat Klub girls, provides a depraved Greek chorus satirising the rise of the Nazi regime and the lazy complacency of the 1930s Berlin cabaret-goers. The "divine decadence" tag is only part of the story, though. Cabaret still works a sinister, uncomfortable magic which sets it apart as a uniquely powerful film musical.
On the DVD:Cabaret's 30th Anniversary Special Edition is packed with extras which include a scratchy "making of" documentary from 1972 and a retrospective from 1997, the latter featuring reminiscences from the cast. There’s also the original theatrical trailer, though in the absence of the late director Fosse the lack of some kind of commentary is a disappointment. The picture itself, presented in widescreen 16:9 letterbox format with a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack, gleams as sharply, visually and aurally, as it did on its first release. --Piers Ford
(15 votes)
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