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Liza Minnelli,
Liza Minnelli,
Michael York,
more...
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Bob Fosse,
Bob Fosse
see all cast/crew...
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: Warner Home Video
: Drama, Musicals
: 124 min.
: English
: English, Spanish, French
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Originally a 1966 Broadway musical, this groundbreaking Bob Fosse musical was in turn based on Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin, previously dramatized for stage and screen as I Am a Camera with Julie Harris as Sally Bowles. Fosse uses the decadent and vulgar cabaret as a mirror image of German society sliding toward the Nazis, and this intertwining of entertainment with social history marked a new step forward for the movie musical. Michael York plays a British writer who comes to Berlin in the early 1930s in hopes of becoming a teacher. He makes the acquaintance of flamboyant American entertainer Sally Bowles, played by Liza Minnelli. Sally works at the Kit Kat Klub, a George Grosz-like Berlin cabaret where each night the smirking, androgynous Master of Ceremonies (Joel Grey) introduces a jazz-driven "girlie show" to his debauched audience. Virtually all the film's musical numbers are staged within the confines of the Kit Kat Klub, and each song comments on the plot and on Germany's "progression" from hedonism to Hitlerism. Most of the Broadway score by John Kander and Fred Ebb was retained, with the welcome addition of "The Money Song." Although it lost Best Picture to The Godfather, Cabaret won eight Oscars, including awards to Minnelli, Grey, and Fosse. A heavily expurgated 88-minute version of Cabaret has been prepared for commercial TV presentations, regarded by many as dramatically inferior to the full cut. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Special Features:
- 25th Anniversary Documentary Cabaret: A Legend in the Making
- The Recreation of an Era featurette
- Kit Kat Klub Memory Gallery: The film's stars and creators reminisce about making movie Musical history
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| disappointing in four ways
by BeneGesserit
January 21, 2008 - 2:20 PM PST
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1 out of 1 members found this review helpful
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For context, I'm nuts about some musicals--The King and I, Fiddler on the Roof, Pennies from Heaven, and The Court Jester, to name a few. There's a part of me that wants to shrink away from their occasional uncoolness, but that warmth ends up winning me over, more often than not.
But the way I see it, here's what Cabaret has to offer:
a collection of songs, a portrait of pre-war debauchery, a performance by the legendary Liza Minnelli, and drama about testing your limits.
None of it really worked for me. I must admit I found the music irritating--it's in that particular style that is repetitive, and invariably just more loudly repetitive for the big finish. As a portrait of pre-war "divine decadence," it's tame, and seems shallow in comparison to films like Mephisto. The character Sally Bowles is so starved for attention, so passive-aggressive, and so insistently spunky and unique that she annoys within minutes. And as for the drama about testing your limits, I'm afraid this is, in comparison to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, pale and heterocentric.
I'd heard accolades for Joel Grey in this, and he is good. The choreography is good. There were a couple of minor side stories that I enjoyed. And despite the consensus, I thought Michael York was excellent, slowly sliding from proper and inhibited into a dramatic hole he couldn't escape from. But those things weren't enough to hold it up.
This DVD is widescreen but not anamorphic. |
| An essential movie
by noosh
August 15, 2003 - 5:17 PM PDT
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2 out of 3 members found this review helpful
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Can America have produced this movie AND "The Godfather" in a single year? My my, cinema was healthy in 1973.
In most every way, it's a perfect movie: Fosse & Co created a unique vision and carried it through to the end to tell a compelling and meaningful story. Its extraordinary look become a force in fashion and style in the 1970s.
The main exception is that some of the acting is merely so-so and some of the story not fully developed, especially Brian (an underdeveloped character, unimpressivly played by Michael York -- strange since he's based on the real-life writer of the stories that became "Cabaret"). But Joel Grey raises the average, to the roof. If you like movies, you can't not see "Cabaret". |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 7.30)
194 Votes
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