Directed by Bob Fosse
Written by Jay Presson Allen from stories by Christopher Isherwood and the play by John Van Druten and musical book by Joe Masteroff
1972/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing, Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
Sally: Does it really matter so long as you’re having fun?
Bob Fosse took a pretty good Broadway musical and elevated it to art that withstands the test of time. Fifty years from now I bet this will still look interesting as well as be entertaining.
Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) is a cabaret singer in 1931 Weimar Berlin at a time when Hitler’s Nazi Party was positioning itself to take over the Government. Sally, an American expat, thinks she is “divinely decadent” and maintains that persona but she is oblivious to what is going on around her and terribly naive when it comes to real decadence.
The Kit Kat Klub where Sally sings is a cesspool of real decadence. Its girlie show is vulgar and its Master of Ceremonies (Joel Grey) is positively devilish, growing increasingly crude and anti-Semitic as time goes on. Into this milieu comes Brian Roberts (Michael York) who hopes to support himself by teaching English while he completes his German studies. He is immediately befriended by Sally who makes it her mission to shock him at all times. She says she doesn’t mind that he’s not attracted to women but they end up sleeping together any way. Concurrently, Sally picks up a German playboy who ends up romancing both of them.
One of Michael’s students is wealthy and beautiful Jewess Natalia Landauer (Marisa Berenson). There is a fairly extensive subplot about her extremely complicated courtship by Michael’s friend Fritz Wendel.
The various numbers in the cabaret show parallel the growing Nazification of Germany. Sally and Michael are kind of innocents in hell. Will they have the savvy to get out?
I’ve seen the Broadway musical on stage a couple of times over the years and its soundtrack was on rotation at my house for several years. It’s good but the extensive rewrite and a brillliant production makes the film achieve a kind of perfection. And that perfection is attributable to the genius of Bob Fosse and the excellence of the film’s cast. I can’t argue with any of the many Oscars it won. Most highly recommended.
Cabaret won Oscars for Best Actress (Minnelli); Best Supporting Actor (Grey); Best Director; Best Cinematography; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration; Best Sound; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation. It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. The film lost in those categories to The Godfather (1972). I’m looking forward to see how I feel about the Academy’s choices!.
Agreed. Cabaret does something that few movies can do. I dislike Sally intensely as a character, and yet I am completely sympathetic to what she is going through.
Cabaret is my runner-up in a lot of 1972 categories (and a very close runner-up), but Liza Minnelli was absolutely the right winner, as was Joel Grey. In a different year, this would win a lot more Oscars from me.
I was thinking that the story is really two relatively uncorrupted souls that are given every German’s choice in Nazi Germany, complacency or resistence or exile. Sally makes all the wrong decisions. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that Cabaret is actually one of the great anti-Nazi films.
Liza, to me a one hit wonder…….but oh what a hit, a performance for the ages in, perhaps, the last great conventional musical.
Hi, Laurie! Yes, sometimes magic really hits but once. I find her kind of self-concious in most movies but here she is perfect.
I love CABARET and own it. Thanks for the beautiful still of Liza and Fosse.
Do you remember their television special? Liza with a “Z” (1972). Currently, it is available through Amazon Prime.
Yes I do remember that! I believe I watched it when it first aired. That goes on the list! Perfection for lockdown viewing.
I had the LP!
I pick Cabaret over Godfather in every category. The soundtrack is part of my childhood as my mother played it constantly for a while, and I would wonder what these songs were about. My mother’s explanations gave me a little context for Weimar Germany and the rise of Hitler. In much the same way that my father’s explanations about Hogan’s Heroes provided me with a scanty framework for World War II in Europe.
LOL. I think I’m with you though The Godfather is overdue for a rewatch at my house.
I am totally with you on the music and the spectacle. Every time we went back to the Kit Kat Club I would sit up in my chair and hum along. There is also a production quality to it that is ahead of its time.
I had more trouble with the story of Sally and Brian, but I guess you are right, it is an innocents in hell story.
I agree with you about the plot. The story of the original stage musical was different and only six songs were retained for the movie. There was no Max character. The male lead was an American writer. He was not gay. Sally Bowles convinces him to let her share his room. There was no young Jewish couple. Lotte Lenya played the middle-aged landlady to Cliff and Sally. The character is being courted by a Jewish grocer and she has to decide whether she is brave enough to commit to him. I don’t know if this is more or less boring than the movie’s story. At any rate, after the success of the movie the Broadway revivals format has seemed to move closer to the movie story and soundtrack songs.
This movie is all about Fosse, Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey.