Rent I Am a Camera (1955)

Proto-Cabaret. - I Am a Camera review by Steve

The first screen adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical Berlin stories which would be more famously made into Cabaret. Julie Harris reprises the role of Sally Bowles which won her a Tony in the Broadway production. And her star performance is the best part of the film. Laurence Harvey as a prudish Isherwood is the main shortcoming.

This is such a cleaned up revision that it undermines the purpose of the original book, about a group of British expats living self absorbed, insouciant lives in decadent Berlin, oblivious to the rise of fascism. The film even evades Isherwood's homosexuality, which was the reason his circle was there at all. The possibility that Sally is a borderline sex worker is also omitted.

But there are tantalising episodes when the drama plugs in and turns on. There's a sensational scene when Sally and Christopher take a week's rent to a luxury restaurant which she blows in an instant. When her fatuous, hedonistic delusions come into focus. And Harris gives us a glimpse of what might have been.

Eventually, Isherwood addresses the Nazi threat as Hitler is about to come into power. Most of the film is pitched as a comedy. But, no matter how diluted the divine decadence- or limiting the lack of location footage- it is still a curious portrayal of a fascinating, careless subculture at a crossroads in history.