Cabaret airs on Friday, March 4th at 5:30 PM
A landmark, Oscar-winning movie musical that changed the form forever. A director/choreographer crystallizing a style that became synonymous with his name.
An iconic, heart-stopping star performance supported by a brilliant cast and technical bravado. A pair of haunting love stories made all the more urgent by the growing Nazi threat in pre-World War II Berlin.
A collaborative effort by an exceptional group of artists performing at full throttle. And an originality and freshness of approach that allow the movie to remain modern and spellbinding 50 years after its initial appearance.
In a word: Cabaret (1972).
It’s hard to think of a single other film in which every major contributor hit the peak of her or his creative powers, never to top themselves.
First released in 1972, this film marked an explosion of talent in which all the participants were challenged to extend their abilities in remarkable ways, to perform at their absolute and heartfelt best.
In a thoughtful essay about the movie published in The Boston Globe in February 2022, Tom Joudrey wrote that “A film best remembered for sex and decadence is actually an indictment of the toadies, lackeys, voluptuaries and bluebloods who failed to oppose the gathering storm of fascism.”
Cabaret won eight Academy Awards: for Director Bob Fosse, Actress Liza Minnelli, Supporting Actor Joel Grey, Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, Film Editor David Bretherton, Original Score for Ralph Burns, Sound (Robert Knudson and David Hildyard) and Art Direction/Decoration (Rolf Zehetbauer, Hans Jürgen Kiebach and Herbert Strabel).
The film scored further Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay (Jay Presson Allen), losing in both instances to The Godfather (1972).
Cabaret was named Best Picture of the Year by the National Board of Review. In 1995 it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
The original 1966 Broadway production of Cabaret was the first big success of the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb and contains what is arguably their best (and best-known) song score.
The composer and lyricist later demonstrated their gift for show-stopping razzle-dazzle in such musicals as Chicago, Woman of the Year and Kiss of the Spider Woman.
But no other score or song – the title number trumpeted by Minnelli to such exhilarating effect in the film – demonstrates the brassy do-or-die Kander and Ebb bravado as vividly as Cabaret.
For her screenplay, Allen drew on the material’s famously convoluted history, from an episode in Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories through the John Van Druten stage and film comedy I Am a Camera and Cabaret the Broadway musical.
Julie Harris won a Tony for playing Sally Bowles, the part later taken by Minnelli, in the Broadway version of I Am a Camera. Harris repeated the role in the 1955 film version.
Allen incorporated the best elements of the various versions into her screenplay for Cabaret, along with her own original ideas. (Later, revisionist revivals of the stage show would borrow generously from the film.)
Concentrating on the contrast between the “divine decadence” of the heroine’s promiscuous lifestyle and the brutal backdrop of incipient Nazism, Allen hit the high point of a writing career that also included stage and/or film versions of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Tru and Travels with My Aunt.
She gave the characters in Cabaret a depth and complexity they had not shown before, setting them adrift in a world of relaxed social and moral boundaries that seemed to reflect the American counterculture movement of the 1970s.
The concept of Cabaret was revolutionary in that it was the first screen adaptation of a book musical to confine the numbers to a performing arena – in this case the Kit Kat Klub, a sleazy cabaret in 1931 Berlin.
Minnelli as the talented but tawdry would-be star Sally Bowles, and Grey as the salacious, grotesquely made-up master of ceremonies, perform all their song-and-dance routines on the Kit Kat stage.
The only exception to the cabaret staging is the chilling “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” an anthem of German patriotism led by a Hitler youth in a crowded open-air beer garden.
The Broadway original, directed by Hal Prince with a book by Joe Masteroff, had set some numbers in the club but also followed the conventional pattern of having characters burst into song in their day-to-day lives.
For better or worse, Cabaret delivered a serious setback for the standard, “I feel a song coming on” movie musical. Missing from the film, along with a sentimental older couple who take up considerable time in the original musical, are several patter songs and ballads.
Kander and Ebb added even more vitality to the movie’s score with the substitution of the high-energy, cabaret-bound numbers “Mein Herr,” “Money, Money,” and “Maybe This Time.”
The approach used by Fosse and Allen offered a new and bracing realism to movie audiences who were shying away from the artifice of the old-style musicals.
Fosse reinforces the air of reality with naturalistic performances, even Minnelli’s as the inherently over-the-top Sally, that allow for genuine feeling while placing the dynamic production numbers in high relief.
More than any previous version of the story, the film of Cabaret never lets the audience forget that just beyond the frivolous confines of the cabaret, genuine horror is waiting in the wings.
1972 was Fosse’s year, bringing him not only an Oscar for Cabaret but an Emmy for the Minnelli TV special Liza with a Z and a Tony for Pippin. He became the only person to have won all three Best Director awards in a single year.
Although he would create other galvanizing works onstage (Chicago) and film (All That Jazz, 1979) before his death in 1987, Cabaret remains the most vibrant expression of the unique Fosse talent.
Minnelli had made a name for herself in movies and cabaret with a small “c” before being cast in the film. (Legend has it that she had auditioned for the original stage musical 14 times before losing the role of Sally to Jill Haworth.)
But it was this movie that turned Liza into an international sensation, putting her on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week and making her, for a time, the hottest name in film.
Minnelli has acknowledged that her interpretation of Sally was influenced not only by Fosse but by her father, director Vincente Minnelli, and Fosse’s then-wife Gwen Verdon, a vibrant performing talent in her own right.
Liza’s dad suggested that she study Louise Brooks for Sally’s “look,” noted in Joudrey’s essay as being marked by “the garish chemises, the glinting black helmet of hair, the claw-like eyelashes, the sparkling emerald fingernails…”
Verdon, who accompanied the film company for its location filming in Germany, helped Minnelli piece together her eccentric wardrobe for the movie from local thrift shops. As an unofficial advisor to Fosse on the cabaret numbers, she undoubtedly had an influence on performance styles.
Ironically, Cabaret interrupted Minnelli’s burgeoning career as a gritty young dramatic actress in movies such as 1969’s The Sterile Cuckoo (for which she won a Best Actress Oscar nomination) and 1970’s Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon.
After her intense identification with Sally’s overstated, false-eyelashes style and her successes as a concert performer of electrifying powers, it became difficult for the film industry to envision Minnelli in non-theatrical roles.
The Minnelli movie career, which reached such breathtaking heights in Cabaret, was diminished by such disappointing follow-ups as Lucky Lady (1975) and A Matter of Time (1976).
Minnelli’s checkered film history included one other innovative and darkly brilliant musical, Martin Scorsese’s 1977 New York, New York (with a dazzling Kander and Ebb score); and a charming performance in Lewis Gilbert’s lightweight 1991 Stepping Out (also Kander and Ebb).
She will be remembered for her sell-out concert performances and countless awards. But if there is one image with which Minnelli will forever be identified, it is that of Sally Bowles prowling the cabaret stage with erotic abandon in black knickers, vest, garters and bowler hat.
Grey had originated the part of the sinister emcee in the Broadway production of Cabaret, building it under the enthusiastic guidance of the show’s creators into a larger and more dominant role that came to embody the jaded soul of pre-war Germany.
He won a Tony award for his efforts, and producer Cy Feuer wisely insisted upon retaining him and his character for the movie, allowing a brilliantly original performance to be preserved on film.
Grey has been memorable in other movies (Kafka, 1991) and stage musicals (George M!, Chicago, Anything Goes). In Cabaret, he is unforgettable.
Michael York, playing Sally’s bisexual boyfriend Brian, delivers a deliciously understated performance that’s a perfect complement to Minnelli’s extravagance.
He is the film’s calm center, the ballast that prevents the explosive talents of Minnelli and Grey from overpowering the narrative.
With his confidence, sensitivity and sexy James Mason voice, York has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in movies and on television and the stage.
York has yet to receive an Oscar nomination, although it seems in retrospect that his extraordinarily appealing performance in Cabaret was worthy of one.
Secondary players in Cabaret also found their brightest opportunities here, at least as far as American films are concerned.
Marisa Berenson, an elegant model in her second film appearance, plays Natalia Landauer, the privileged German-Jewish heiress befriended by Sally and Brian.
Berenson, suggesting the early and gorgeous Loretta Young, is treated by Fosse and Unsworth as an exquisite art object, underscoring her character’s romantic allure and vulnerability.
Berenson was never captured on film to more stunning effect than in Cabaret.
German actors Fritz Wepper and Helmut Griem, who enjoyed long careers in film and television productions in various countries, also made their most indelible impressions in the U.S. in Cabaret.
Wepper plays Fritz Wendel, Natalia’s impoverished Jewish suitor; Griem (who died in 2004) is Maximilian von Heune, a dashing and hedonistic baron who enjoys sexual dalliances with both Sally and Brian.
Unsworth won many awards during his 47-year career in cinematography, including another Oscar for 1979’s Tess, the picture he was shooting at the time of his death.
Even with such films as A Night to Remember (1958), Becket (1964) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) to his credit, however, Cabaret remains Unsworth’s masterpiece.
Filming on location in Germany, Unsworth worked with production designer Rolf Zehetbauer and art director Hans Jürgen Kiebach to create a world of decadence and dazzle that carries echoes of German Expressionism.
Inspiration for the physical look of Cabaret was drawn from painters of that school including Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and George Grosz. Unsworth’s deliberately murky colors lend a lurid appeal to the stylized sets, especially the mirrored smokiness of the cabaret itself.
Cabaret won David Bretherton (who died in 2000) his only Oscar and his only nomination, despite a 40-year career of editing films that included George Stevens’ The Diary of Anne Frank (1959).
Bretherton’s innovative work on Cabaret, with its staccato rhythms and frequent cross-cutting, proved influential in subsequent film musicals including the Oscar-winning Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Chicago (2002).
After Cabaret, neither the talent who created it nor the movie musical itself would ever again be quite the same.
