CABARET (FILM)

'''Cabaret''' is a 1972 Academy Award-winning American musical film.
It was directed by Bob Fosse and it stars Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey. The film is set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931 prior to the coming to power of the Nazis under Adolf Hitler.
It is loosely based on the 1966 Broadway musical ''Cabaret'' by Kander and Ebb, which was adapted from the Berlin stories of Christopher Isherwood and the play ''I Am a Camera'' which they inspired. Only a few numbers from the stage score were used, with Kander and Ebb writing new ones to replace those that were discarded. In the traditional manner of musical theater, characters in the stage version of ''Cabaret'' sing to express emotion and advance the plot, yet in the filmed version, musical numbers are confined to the stage of the cabaret and to a beer garden. Aside from a chorus in the beer garden scene, only two of the film's major characters sing any songs.
The film is largely made in low light and has a film noir feel, although it was filmed in color.
In 1995, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In 2006 this film ranked #5 on the American Film Institute's list of best musicals.

Contents

Storyline

Differences in film from stage version

The score

Trivia

Works that inspired the musical

See also

External link

Storyline

Sally Bowles is an American singer in the Kit Kat night club in early 1930s Berlin. A new tenant, Brian Roberts, moves into a room in Sally's apartment building. A reserved English academic and writer, Brian gives English lessons to earn a living while completing his German studies. She unsuccessfully tries to seduce him and suspects he may be gay (Christopher Isherwood, on whose semi-autobiographical book the film is indirectly based, was indeed gay and reportedly "went to Berlin in search of boys to love"). Brian tells her that he has indeed tried to have romantic relationships with women, all of which have failed. They become friends, and Brian is witness to Sally's anarchic, bohemian life in the last days of the German Weimar Republic.
The Nazis' violent rise is a powerful, ever-present undercurrent in the film. Though explicit evidence of their actions are only sporadically presented, one can track their progress through the changing actions and attitudes of the major and minor characters. While in the beginning of the film Nazis are sometimes harassed, towards the end one scene is presented where everyday Germans rise in song to rally around Nazism.
Although the songs allude to and advance the narrative of the film, every song except "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" is executed in the context of a Kit Kat Club stage performance. The realism and seriousness of the movie is enhanced by limiting the musical numbers to the club stage instead of presenting characters who burst into song as they go about their usual business.
Despite their earlier reservations, Sally and Brian eventually become lovers, and Brian concludes with irony that his previous failures with women were because they were "the wrong three girls".

Sally befriends a rich playboy baron named Maximilian von Heune, who takes them to his country estate. It becomes ambiguous which of the duo Max is seducing, which is epitomized by a central scene in which the three dance intimately together in a wine-induced reverie.
Max eventually loses interest in the two, and leaves them back in Berlin. It is then revealed that he had slept with not only Sally, but with Brian as well. After the ensuing argument, Brian storms off and picks a fight with a group of Nazis, who proceed to beat him senseless. Brian and Sally make up in the hospital, where Sally reveals that Max has left them an envelope of money.
Later on, Sally finds out that she's pregnant and she's unsure whether Brian or Max is the father. Brian offers to marry her and take her back to his university life in Cambridge. Sally realizes they could never coexist in such a life, and goes ahead with a planned abortion. The film ends with Brian departing for England by train, and Sally continuing her life in Berlin.
The club's (unnamed) master of ceremonies is seen only in his stage persona, but provides repeated knowing looks to the camera that the party is about to end. A brief sequence which might be Sally's reminiscence or fantasy indicates that she had sexual relations with him at some time, or alternately that she fantasises of having such.
A subplot concerns a Jewish man, Fritz Wendel, who had been passing as a Christian, who falls for and marries Natalia Landauer, a wealthy Jewish heiress. Although they marry, we are left wondering what their ultimate fate will be.

Differences in film from stage version

The film is significantly different from the Broadway musical. To accommodate Minnelli, Sally Bowles is Americanized. The character of Cliff Bradshaw was renamed Brian Roberts and made British and probably bisexual. The character of Max didn't exist in the play, nor did the trip out of Berlin. The Broadway version used special settings to separate the fantasy world of the Cabaret from the darker rest of the world. Fosse essentially created a film with music instead of a musical.
Fosse cut all the book songs that advanced the plot, leaving only the songs that are sung within the confines of the Kit Kat Klub. (One exception is "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," which is sung in a beer garden. Another is Married, which is played on a phonograph record when Sally and Brian are having a picnic in the woods). Kander and Ebb wrote several new songs for the movie and removed others; "Don't Tell Mama" was replaced by "Mein Herr" and "Sitting Pretty" (retained in various instrumental versions) by "Money, Money". Several characters were cut (including Herr Schultz, with Fraulein Schneider's part greatly reduced and the whole romantic subplot removed) and several from Isherwood's original stories put back in. The entire score was re-orchestrated, with all the numbers being accompanied by the stage band.
The following songs from the original Broadway production are missing in the film version, but are still available on the Original Broadway Cast album:

★ ''So What?''

★ ''Don't Tell Mama''

★ ''Telephone Song''

★ ''Perfectly Marvelous''

★ ''Why Should I Wake Up?''

★ ''Meeskite''

★ ''What Would You Do?''

The score

★ ''Willkommen'' - performed by the Emcee and the Cabaret Girls

★ ''Mein Herr'' - performed by Sally Bowles

★ ''Tiller Girls'' - performed by the Emcee and the Cabaret Girls

★ ''Maybe This Time'' - performed by Sally Bowles

★ ''Money, Money'' - performed by the Emcee and Sally Bowles

★ ''Two Ladies'' - performed by the Emcee and by two of the Cabaret Girls

★ ''Heiraten (Married)'' - performed by Greta Keller

★ ''Tomorrow Belongs To Me'' - sung by Mark Lambert

★ ''If You Could See Her'' - performed by the Emcee and someone in a gorilla suit

★ ''(Life is a) Cabaret'' - performed by Sally Bowles

Trivia

★ Brian expresses surprise that Sally Bowles is an American, a sly reference to the fact that in the musical on which the movie is based, Sally is British.

★ The song "Married", originally in the Broadway version, was cut from the movie. It can be heard playing on a radio in the background during the scene where Brian and Sally are discussing marriage, sung in German (the title thus becoming "Heirat".) The song "Sitting Pretty," replaced in the film by "Money", can also be heard several times coming from record players, including the scene in which Sally and Brian first go to Max's house. Also, "Don't Tell Mama," a song from the stage production, can be heard throughout the film.

★ ''Cabaret'' has the distinction of winning the most Oscars (eight) without "Best Picture" (which went to ''The Godfather'').

★ Both Billy Wilder and Gene Kelly turned down the offer to direct the project before it was accepted by Bob Fosse.

★ "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" was written by John Kander and Fred Ebb as a pastiche of the rousing German patriotic songs of the period (Die Wacht am Rhein[1] and the Horst Wessel Lied[2], for instance). Sung by a stereotypical Hitler Youth, it often has been mistaken for genuine. This has led to the songwriters (both Jewish, incidentally) being accused of anti-Semitism.

★ Speculation continues about the actual singer of "Tomorrow Belongs to Me". Apparently, Bob Fosse's biography states that the song was recorded for the film by Broadway singer/actor, Mark Lambert. Lambert is said to have refused to dye his hair blond for filming so - in one of the film's most powerful scenes - a young German extra stood in for him and mimed the song on camera. However, the singer has an English accent and sounds like an older man.

Works that inspired the musical

★ ''The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin'' by Christopher Isherwood 1945

★ ''Sally Bowles'' by Christopher Isherwood 1937

★ ''I Am a Camera'' a 1951 stage play by John Van Druten, also inspired by Christopher Isherwood's ''The Berlin Stories'' and which influenced the stage musical.

See also

★ ''Chicago''

External link

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