Cabaret (1972 film)
Cabaret is a 1972 American musical drama film directed by Bob Fosse, and starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York, and Joel Grey.
Set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931, under the presence of the growing Nazi Party, the film is loosely based on the 1966 Broadway musical Cabaret by Kander and Ebb, which was adapted from Christopher Isherwood's semi-autobiographical novel "The Berlin Stories" (1945) and the 1951 play "I Am a Camera" adapted from the same work. Only a few numbers from the stage score were used for the film; Kander and Ebb wrote new ones to replace those that were discarded. In the traditional manner of musical theater, called an "integrated musical", every significant character in the stage version sings to express his or her own emotion and to advance the plot. In the film version, the musical numbers are entirely diegetic. All of them take place inside the club, with one exception: "Tomorrow Belongs to Me",[Note 1] the only song sung neither by Grey's character of the Kit Kat Klub's Master of Ceremonies nor by Minnelli's character of Sally Bowles.
After the box-office failure of his film version of "Sweet Charity" in 1969, Bob Fosse bounced back with Cabaret in 1972, a year that made him one of the most honored working directors in Hollywood. The film also brought Liza Minnelli, the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, her own first chance to sing on screen, and she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. With Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Joel Grey), Best Director (Bob Fosse), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Original Song Score and Adaptation, and Best Film Editing, Cabaret holds the record for most Oscars earned by a film not honored for Best Picture. It is listed as number 367 on Empire’s 500 greatest films of all time. Cabaret opened to glowing reviews and strong box office, eventually taking in more than $20 million. In addition to its eight Oscars, it won Best Picture citations from the National Board of Review and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and took Best Supporting Actor honors for Grey from the National Board of Review, the Hollywood Foreign Press, and the National Society of Film Critics. In 1995, Cabaret was the ninth live-action musical film selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Plot
In 1931 Berlin, young American Sally Bowles performs at the Kit Kat Klub. A new British arrival in the city, Brian Roberts, moves into the boarding house where Sally lives. A reserved academic and writer, Brian wants to give English lessons to earn a living while completing his doctorate. Sally tries to seduce Brian, but he tells her that on three previous occasions he has tried to have sexual relationships with women, all of which failed. They become friends, and Brian witnesses Sally's bohemian life in the last days of the Weimar Republic. When Brian consoles Sally after her father cancels his meeting with her, they become lovers, concluding that his previous failures with women were because they were "the wrong three girls".
Maximilian von Heune, a rich playboy and baron, befriends Sally and takes her and Brian to his country estate where they are both spoiled and courted. After a somewhat enigmatic experience with Brian, Max drops his pursuit of the pair in haste. During an argument, Sally tells Brian that she has been having sex with Max, and Brian reveals that he has as well. Brian and Sally later reconcile, and Sally reveals that Max left them 300 marks and mockingly compares the sum with what a professional prostitute earns.
Sally learns that she is pregnant but is unsure of the father. Brian offers to marry her and take her back to his university life in Cambridge. At first, they celebrate their resolution to start this new life together, but after a picnic between Sally and Brian, in which Brian acts distant and uninterested, Sally becomes disheartened by the vision of herself as a bored faculty wife washing dirty diapers. Ultimately, she has an abortion, without informing Brian in advance. When he confronts her, she shares her fears, and the two reach an understanding. Brian departs for England, and Sally continues her life in Berlin, embedding herself in the Kit Kat Club.
A subplot concerns Fritz Wendel, a German Jew passing as a Protestant, who is in love with Natalia Landauer, a wealthy German Jewish heiress who holds him in contempt and suspects his motives. Through Brian, Sally advises him to be more aggressive, which eventually enables Fritz to win her love. However, to gain her parents' consent for their marriage, Fritz must reveal his religion, which he does and the two are married by a rabbi.
The rise of fascism is an ever-present undercurrent throughout the film. Their progress can be tracked through the characters' changing actions and attitudes. While in the beginning of the film, a Nazi is expelled from the Kit Kat Klub, the final shot of the film shows the cabaret's audience is dominated by uniformed Nazis. The rise of the Nazis is also demonstrated in a rural beer garden scene. A blonde boy sings to an audience of all ages ("Tomorrow Belongs to Me") about the beauties of nature and youth. It is revealed that the boy is wearing a Hitler Youth uniform. The ballad transforms into a militant Nazi anthem, and one by one nearly all the adults and young people watching rise and join in the singing. "Do you still think you can control them?" Brian asks Max. Later, Brian's confrontation with a Nazi on a Berlin street leads to him being beaten.
Controversies
Although less explicit compared with other films made in the 1970s, Cabaret dealt explicitly with topics like corruption, sexual ambiguity, false dreams, and Nazism. Tim Dirks at Filmsite.org notes: "The sexually-charged, semi-controversial, kinky musical was the first one ever to be given an X rating (although later re-rated) with its numerous sexual flings and hedonistic club life. There was considerable sexual innuendo, profanity, casual sex talk (homosexual and heterosexual), some evidence of anti-Semitism, and even an abortion in the film." It was also rated X in the UK and later re-rated as 15.
On the topic of Nazism, there was little consensus among critics about the possibly fascist implications of the film and play. However, critic Steven Belletto wrote a critique of Cabaret in the Criticism journal, published by Wayne State University Press, in which he highlighted the anti-fascist themes in the film present both within and outside of the musical acts. According to Belletto, "despite the ways that the film has been understood by a variety of critics, [Cabaret] rejects the logic of fascist certainty by staging various numbers committed to irony and ambiguity."
The "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" scene was controversial, with Kander and Ebb, both of whom were Jews, sometimes being wrongly accused of using a historical Nazi song. According to an article in 'Variety' in November 1976, the film was censored in West Berlin when it was first released there theatrically, with the sequence featuring the Hitler Youth singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" having been deleted. This elimination was made "because of the feeling that it might stir up resentments in the audience by showing the sympathizers for the Nazi movement during the '30s."The sequence was restored, however, when the film was shown on West German television on November 7, 1976.
Another topic of discussion was the song "If You Could See Her", which closed with the line: "If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn't look Jewish at all." The point of the song was showing anti-Semitism as it begins to run rampant in Berlin, but there were a number of Jewish groups who interpreted the lyrics differently.
Notes
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