Cabaret - 30th Anniversary Special Edition [1972] [DVD]

Has the film aged well? The first thing you notice when you look at again is the almost loving way the film has been shot, especially the cabaret scenes themselves. Most of the production numbers are utterly compelling - such as the famous finale of an exuberant Sally Bowles singing "Cabaret" itself. Also watch out for another show stopper - the newly-in-love Sally singing the haunting "Maybe This Time", giving it her all before just a few tired remaining members of the audience.

The device of contrasting a pervasive sense of decadence against the rise of Nazi Germany has, however, dated badly...apart from the neat, disturbing conclusion.

The film's saving grace is that it does not stand or fall on Minnelli's performance. Joel Grey's sinister, waif-like MC is one of those happy, inspired bits of casting that transforms a good film to a great one. Michael York's stiff, well-intentioned Englishman may be far from the actual personality Isherwood, but he works well as a counterpoint to Minnelli. The sub plot of jewish gigolo marrying jewish heiress is also touching, and well handled. There are cameo performances that are equally compelling, including another famous scene of a Hitler Youth leader rousing the crowd with an Aryan folk song.

Ultimately, though, the film's reputation rests on Minnelli's performance. Sexy, she ain't, but her extraordinary voice still raises the hairs on the back of your neck if you let it. And, under firm but creative directing, she is no slouch at acting. She is by turns touching, childlike, insufferable and vulnerable. A hard act to follow.

This is a film that deserves to live on.

Michael York ('Brian Roberts') is obviously the 'Christopher Isherwood' character, and is almost immediately fascinated by Sally Bowles' (Liza Minelli - Oscar, Best Actress) 'divine decadence' black fingernails and flamboyance. His fellow tenants reflect the gamut of German middle-class society, keenly denoting the fact that not all Germans were Nazi sympathizers ... Aristocratically-arrogant, politically-naïve and bi-sexual Baron Maximilian von Heine (Helmut Griem) seduces both Sally Bowles and equally bi-sexual Brian during a champagne-sodden weekend at his estate where, among others, many promises for the future are made, suggested or implied ... although all present are quietly aware that in the 'never-never land' that is Germany during that period it could never come to pass. The only realist is one of Brian's students, the ambiguous Fritz Wendel (Fritz Wepper) who is confused by his own undeclared Jewish background until his love for tormented-by-the-SA department-store empire heiress Natalia Landauer (Marisa Berenson) forces him to acknowledge this both to her and to himself.

Unlike most musicals, where I-feel-a-song-coming-on sees the cast rather unrealistically erupt into song and dance, Cabaret's songs and acts occur only within the Kit-Kat Club, which is masterfully hosted by its falsetto Emcee (Joel Grey - utterly-deserved Oscar, Best Supporting Actor!) - the epitome of the city's and the period's arty decadence. The one exception is an outdoor scene at a lunch-time Landesgasthof where the healthy young Nordic singers of the rousing Tomorrow Belongs To Me are slowly revealed to be a squad of Hitlerjugend, 'recruiting' - successfully, as it turns out - with their discipline and earnestness many uncommitted elements of the German public.

Particularly striking is the unseen menace during Emcee's obviously final performance on what is probably 1st February, 1933, as Germany - until that very date culturally thriving - is plunged back into the Dark Ages for the next twelve years. In the Kit-Kat Club's silverware is reflected that evening's audience: all unamused, all unsmiling, and all NSDAP ...

NOTE: upon the assumption of power, the Nazis almost immediately closed-down all night-clubs, music-halls, musea and numerous other cultural establishments deemed purveyors of Entartete Kunst (decadent art).