Rent Cabaret (1972)

Doomed Decadence. - Cabaret review by Steve

There was an unusually tortuous path from Christopher Isherwood's 1939 collection Goodbye to Berlin to the Oscar strewn classic musical Cabaret and many changes made along the way. This film strays from Isherwood's stories, but captures their spirit. There is eloquent work from director Bob Fosse and a fabulous career defining performance from Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles, singer in the KitKat Club.

It's a character led drama which places Liza centre stage all the way, performing many legendary ragtime showstoppers including the title number and The Money Song. Michael York is well cast as Sally's inhibited, naive, bisexual English lover, and Joel Grey memorable as the cabaret MC. While the couple live in exile in divine decadence, way off downstage the Nazis are taking over Germany.

The scene where the reality crashes through their delusion is brilliantly conceived by Fosse, with a blond boy singing Tomorrow Belongs to Me in a rural bierkeller, gradually revealed to be Hitler youth, enthusiastically endorsed by the gathered revellers. The tolerance and political satire of the twenties cabaret is now an anomaly.

The weakness is there is little impression of the poverty which was the context for the Nazi's rise to power. But it is frank about the way Sally and her sometime lover lived which wasn't possible in earlier versions. It uses music only where it might naturally occur and the choreography is restricted to the stage. Which helps maintain an impressive impression of social realism.