February 2007

Cabaret

• Starring: Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Joel Grey, Helmut Griem, Marisa Berenson, Fritz Wepper
• Director: Bob Fosse
• Theatrical release: 1972
• DVD release: 2003
• Video: Widescreen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0
• Released by: Warner Home Video

Life is a cabaret, old chum. This amazing pseudo-love story turned the Hollywood musical on its ear, and offered the darkest, most chilling view of love gone awry ever committed to music. I thought it would be perfect for Valentine’s Day.

Cabaret is the story of Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), a singer with a few overtly sexual dance moves and a bizarre sense of style she calls "divine decadence." It’s Berlin in 1931. Sally works at the seedy Kit Kat Klub, where sex-starved Germans go for a little titillation. The Klub is overseen by the Master of Ceremonies (Joel Grey), a devious and spine-tingling character who is sometimes an all-knowing observer, sometimes a devilish enabler. Sally enters into a sexual relationship with Brian Roberts (Michael York), a teacher in her apartment house who’s looking for work and a little excitement. Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem) shows up and steals Sally away, but Maximilian and Brian then begin their own sexual relationship. All of this is set against a backdrop of rampant unemployment, devastating inflation, and the downfall of the Weimar Republic -- or, as the Germans called it, the Deutsches Reich. It’s also the era when the National Socialist German Workers Party -- the Nazis -- transformed itself from a bunch of uniformed buffoons into a dangerous group of thugs. This is not your normal MGM-style musical.

Cabaret has the ring of historical truth. In early-1930s Berlin, cabarets had become the playground of the rich. Besides the usual singers, dancers, clowns, and comedians, it was a place for the rich to play out their sexual fantasies, whether watching sex or participating in it in one of the back rooms. It was also one of the last places one could poke public fun at the Nazis. But as the Nazis rose to power, they sought revenge for the ribbing by sending groups of brown-shirted brutes to beat up cabaret patrons. When Hitler was elected Chancellor in 1933, the cabarets were all shut down, or transformed into light-comedy houses with positive messages about der Führer. Few periods in history are as dark as Europe in the 1930s; if you’re bold enough to choose it for the storyline of a musical, you’d better come up with something new.

Cabaret began life as a quasi-memoir by Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin, which John Van Druten turned into a play, I Am a Camera, which Henry Cornelius directed as a film in 1955. The Broadway musical Cabaret, based on Van Druten’s play and with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, ran from 1966 to 1969, won eight Tony awards, and made millions of dollars. With all that success, Hollywood sniffed a winner.

When the producers spoke to Billy Wilder, a notorious hater of Nazis, about directing the film version of Cabaret, he turned it down. They then contacted legendary song-and-dance man Gene Kelly, who also declined. Finally, they approached choreographer-turned-director Bob Fosse, whose expressionistic, jazz-tinged dance episodes (see Kiss Me Kate, from 1953, for quintessential early Fosse) seemed an obvious fit. Fosse jumped at the opportunity.

Fosse wanted the film to be even more frightening, edgy, and unsettling than the Broadway version. He had famous cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth shoot Cabaret in low lights and muted colors, to give it the feel of a strangely musical film noir. Several characters and story lines were dropped from the musical, and new ones written, and half of the songs were replaced by new ones written by Kander and Ebb. The Nazis play a more prominent role in the film, with Fosse using dissolves and overlays to eventually create a horrifying film that’s all the more frightening because of how much truth it contains.

As Sally Bowles, Liza Minnelli gives the performance of her life, at once silly, wild, poignant, insecure, brassy, sexual, and virginal -- she covers all the bases with pizzazz. Her costumes lend an alluring sexiness, while her wild makeup -- created by Minnelli and her father, the legendary director Vincente Minnelli -- makes her outlandishness seem a little childish.

The rest of the cast supports her perfectly. In fact, Joel Grey was so perfect as the Master of Ceremonies that he could hardly get another role -- from that point on, no one could imagine him as anything else. Michael York and Helmut Griem, who join Sally Bowles in the ménage a trois, play convincingly. Fritz Wepper and Marisa Berenson play a secondary story of a Jewish man passing himself off as a Christian, then falling in love with a Jewish woman. Their performances are both funny and heartbreaking.

Fosse’s direction was seminal. You can’t see anything today that includes a dance number -- musical, MTV video, or commercial -- without seeing some trace of Cabaret’s influence. The screen is crowded and kinetic, giving the audience the same sense of claustrophobia felt by the characters. Darkness prevails, both spiritually and in the muted lighting. When light suddenly appears in a beer garden, a young boy stands to sing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." Fosse slowly shows more and more of the boy, then crushes you with a single shot of the boy’s arm. He is wearing the swastika insignia of the Nazi youth. Then, to send the final big chill down your spine, Fosse has Joel Grey sing "If You Could See Her" to an ape, who grotesquely represents the Jews.

With such alarming asides, you might think Cabaret is a monumental downer. Far from it. Instead, Fosse and his cast play up the characters’ missteps and foibles as well as their innate goodness -- you laugh with them as easily as you cry for them. By the end, when the characters are overtaken by events, you feel both the horror and their humanity.

Cabaret has been released twice on DVD. The first edition, in 1998, was good enough, if letterboxed, and included three featurettes that revealed a wealth of backstage information that any fan will love. In 2003 Warner Home Video reissued the film on DVD in anamorphic widescreen, apparently from the same master, and with all three featurettes. This is the one to get, even if you already have the older version.

Cabaret was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Beet Picture, and won eight -- for Best Director, Best Actress (Minnelli), Best Supporting Actor (Grey), Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Music, and Best Sound. That is more than any other film that did not also win Best Picture. That honor in 1972 went to another pretty good film, The Godfather.

Last year, my wife and I traveled to Krakow, Poland. I was amazed at the resilience of the people, who had been robbed, raped, and looted by the Hapsburgs, then the Nazis, and finally the Soviets. Visiting the Jewish Quarter, once home to 60,000 Jews, I was struck by the fact that fewer than 200 Jews now live in Krakow. On the way to Prague, we stopped at Auschwitz, an experience that changed our lives. Walking in, we found three groups of Israeli children sitting on the ground, hearing the story of what had happened there. Groups of Israeli soldiers were also on tour. I don’t speak Hebrew, but it was pretty clear that the topic of the tour was Why We Fight. At the killing wall, one of the soldiers was inserting miniature Israeli flags in the bullet holes. When we saw the exhibits, we cried.

I have never had much interest in the actual details of Nazism. All of that happened a long time ago to people in a distant land. But being where the atrocities took place is very different from merely hearing about them. I can’t even begin to imagine how the outcast people felt, sent to the camps to die, or to work until they died. Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and anyone accused of conspiring to help any of the others, were killed, either slowly or quickly. Men could live if they could work, women could live if they could amuse the soldiers. Everyone else was killed on arrival.

Knowing now what I learned in Poland, Cabaret takes on a completely new meaning. It is as chilling as most horror films and as hopeful as most romances. That juxtaposition is what makes the film so powerful. It is Fosse’s masterpiece.

...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com

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