Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome! Fremde, etranger, stranger. This movie is phenomenal, one of the best of all time musicals ever. Directed by Bob Fosse, what a marvelous performances by Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli in this picture. Cabaret is a lot of fun to watch. The film is loosely based off the 1939's book written by Christopher Isherwood call 'Berlin Stories: Goodbye to Berlin" and John Van Druten's 1951's play, 'I am a Camera'. Cabaret was made into a Broadway musical in 1966 with music by John Kander, and lyrics by Fred Ebb. When it became a hit, a movie was produce in 1972, to capitalize on this fame. The film is set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931, under the ominous presence of the growing Nazi Party where a small night club call Kit Kat Klub is struggling to survive during the coming months of the harsh new regime. Since the musical kept on rewriting the script, as years passed by. A lot of the source material has change over time. In this version, young American Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) performs at the Kit Kat Klub, while running a boarding house. A new English teacher arrival in the city, Brian Roberts (Michael York), and moves in with her. At first, they kept each other at reservations, trying not to fall in love with each other. As time go on, the two find themselves madly in love with each other, while the world is finding new ways to keep them apart. The acting is pretty good. I really can't picture anybody else in the role of Sally Bowles. Indeed, Liza singing is way too talent than her character is supposed to be, but it didn't really hurt the film. Sally Bowles was based on Jean Ross, an aspiring actress, singer and writer, who lived a colorful life. Jean Ross was offended by the character portrayal by Liza, call it apolitical. After all, Jean Ross is kinda right. Sally Bowles might not be the most likable character as she does a lot of pretty awful stuff, but the way, Liza Minnelli sink you in, with her charm. You can't help, feeling for her. She always had that frantic, nervous, almost desperate disposition in everything Liza's in. It really does explain why she didn't had much of a film career after this. Normally I find this off-putting, but here, it works perfectly in this role. Sally always looks and sounds like she's in deep, desperate denial about her life and the state of Berlin, and constantly seems on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I really fell pity for Michael York's character to having to deal with her. I never understood why, they change the character name from Cliff Bradshaw to Brian Roberts. It seem a bit odd. I found York acting alright, but he never stood out, much. I did find his big reveal to Sally about what happen to Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem), midway through the movie to be a great twist. That wasn't in the stage versions. The movie also dealt with sub-plots, dealing with other characters like Fritz Wendel (Fritz Wepper), a German Jew passing as a Christian who fall in love with Natalia Landauer (Marisa Berenson), a wealthy German Jewish heiress. This part of the film, always felt like a different movie. It never mixed, well. The sub-plot from the novel, involves the doomed romance between German boarding house owner Fräulein Schneider and her elderly suitor, Herr Schultz, a Jewish fruit vendor never got anywhere, as it was cut from the film. I also glad, they cut the dead dog scene. That was pretty awful. In the traditional manner of musical theater, every significant character in the stage version of Cabaret sings to express emotion and advance the plot, foreshadowing every song with Master of Ceremonies (Joel Grey). Fosse cut a lot of songs like 'Don't tell momma', 'So What?", "Telephone Song", "Perfectly Marvelous", "Why Should I Wake Up?", "The Money Song", "It Couldn't Please Me More", "Meeskite" and "What Would You Do?" He replace them with new songs like 'Mein Herr' and 'Money, Money". There were a lot better than those other songs. The song 'Willkommen' and 'Cabaret' were after all the best pieces in the musical. The club serves as a metaphor for the threatening state of late Weimar Germany that is clear. While this might be long stretch, the film could also be a metaphor of American Ku Klux Klan movement that was gaining ground in the 1960s. After all, the club had the same initials of the Klan. Indeed, the KKK didn't embrace Nazism, because they believes in an entirely different form of government and freedoms. But like the film, the culture of the KKK embracing Nazism into their lives. It might be something to think about. Honestly, the only song that wasn't play at the club was 'Tomorrow belongs to me' in the beer garden by the German youth was powerful. What a really great haunting song by two great Jewish songwriters. Great use of the elderly man in the background of that scene. Director Bob Fosse knew how to film this movie, and that's one of his greatest shots in the film. For a movie rated PG. It's has strong adult themes. The ending to the film is hard to swallow. Unlike other musicals at the time, this one doesn't end with a positive note. Still, the movie was indeed a success, and won many Academy Awards with 8. It would had won Best Picture in that year if the Godfather film wasn't so damn awesome. The movie is easy to find, despite not being available in high-def or digital presentation, due to a really bad scratch on the original film. Overall: it's was a great commentary on the "mask of normalcy" people are wearing during the rise of Fascism in Germany. A must watch for any musical lover.
Review of Cabaret
